References for The Gene-Environment Roots of Inequality

References & Notes for:

The Gene-Environment Roots of Inequality

Please note the following: In the context of the interplay of genes and environments–unless the article states otherwise–cultural, historical, political, economic, natural and biophysical factors are viewed as dynamic and interwoven environmental conditions and not as isolated variables.

In addition, the use of the word ‘interplay’ in the context of ‘gene-environment interplay’ and other similar sentences is defined according the following article: Allegrini, A. G., Karhunen, V., Coleman, J. R., Selzam, S., Rimfeld, K., von Stumm, S., … & Plomin, R. (2020). Multivariable GE interplay in the prediction of educational achievement. PLoS Genetics, 16(11), e1009153.

“Quantitative genetic theory distinguishes two types of interplay between genetic and environmental effects, genotype-environment correlation (rGE) and genotype-environment interaction (GxE).”

1. Richter, D., Grün, R., Joannes-Boyau, R., Steele, T. E., Amani, F., Rué, M., Fernandes, P., Raynal, J.-P., Geraads, D., Ben-Ncer, A., Hublin, J.-J., & McPherron, S. P. (2017). The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age. Nature, 546(7657), 293–296.

2. Pinker, S. (2010). The cognitive niche: Coevolution of intelligence, sociality, and language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(supplement_2), 8993-8999.

Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2003). The nature of human altruism. Nature, 425(6960), 785-791.

3. Nesse, R. M. (2004). Natural selection and the elusiveness of happiness. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 359(1449), 1333–1347

4. Briley, D. A., Livengood, J., & Derringer, J. (2018). Behaviour genetic frameworks of causal reasoning for personality psychology. European Journal of Personality, 32(3), 202-220.

“…individuals actively create or select environmental experiences aligned with their genetically influenced preferences and desires.”

von Stumm, S., & d’Apice, K. (2022). From genome-wide to environment-wide: Capturing the environome. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(1), 30–40.

“People select themselves into, adapt to, and shape the environments that correspond to their genotypes.”

Graham, J., Haidt, J., Koleva, S., Motyl, M., Iyer, R., Wojcik, S. P., & Ditto, P. H. (2013). Moral foundations theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 55-130.

Scarr, S., & McCartney, K. (1983). How people make their own environments: A theory of genotype → environment effects. Child Development, 54(2), 424-435.

Zakharin, M., & Bates, T. C. (2023). Testing heritability of moral foundations: Common pathway models support strong heritability for the five moral foundations. European Journal of Personality, 37(4), 485-497.

Forsyth, D.R., O’Boyle, E.H. & McDaniel, M.A. East Meets West: A Meta-Analytic Investigation of Cultural Variations in Idealism and Relativism. J Bus Ethics 83, 813–833 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-008-9667-6

5. Laland, K. N., Odling-Smee, J., & Feldman, M. W. (2000). Niche construction, biological evolution, and cultural change. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(1), 131–146.

Saltz, J. B., & Nuzhdin, S. V. (2014). Genetic variation in niche construction: Implications for development and evolutionary genetics. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 29(1), 8–14.

Laland, K. N., Uller, T., Feldman, M. W., Sterelny, K., Müller, G. B., Moczek, A., Jablonka, E., & Odling-Smee, J. (2015). The extended evolutionary synthesis: Its structure, assumptions and predictions. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 282(1813), 20151019.

Odling-Smee, J., Erwin, D. H., Palkovacs, E. P., Feldman, M. W., & Laland, K. N. (2013). Niche construction theory: A practical guide for ecologists. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 88(1), 3–28.

6. Briley, D. A., Livengood, J., & Derringer, J. (2018). Behaviour genetic frameworks of causal reasoning for personality psychology. European Journal of Personality, 32(3), 202-220.

“…individuals actively create or select environmental experiences aligned with their genetically influenced preferences and desires.”

von Stumm, S., & d’Apice, K. (2022). From genome-wide to environment-wide: Capturing the environome. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(1), 30-40.

“People select themselves into, adapt to, and shape the environments that correspond to their genotypes.”

“…most of people’s differences in affect, behavior and cognition are influenced by both genetic and environmental factors…”

Beam, C. R., Turkheimer, E., Dickens, W. T., & Davis, D. W. (2015). Twin differentiation of cognitive ability through phenotype to environment transmission: The Louisville Twin Study. Behavior Genetics, 45, 622-634.

“People do not randomly select environments, but maneuver and position themselves into environments and milieus where they can thrive, as well as react to environments provided to them (e.g., by caregivers). That is, people select into certain environments (e.g., niches) to reinforce innate or learned abilities…”

Scarr, S., & McCartney, K. (1983). How people make their own environments: A theory of genotype → environment effects. Child Development, 54(2), 424-435.

Mann, F. D., et al. (2019). Social-relational exposures and well-being. Journal of Research in Personality, 83, 103880.

“…individuals are not randomly assigned to social-relational environments. Rather, individuals select into and evoke responses from environments based on their heritable characteristics.”

Avinun, R. (2020). The E is in the G. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(1), 81-89.

Hufer, A., Kornadt, A. E., Kandler, C., & Riemann, R. (2020). Genetic and environmental variation in political orientation in adolescence and early adulthood: A nuclear twin family analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118(4), 762–776. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000258

7. Alexander, R. D. (1974). The evolution of social behavior. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 5(1), 325–383.

“When man developed his weapons, culture, and population sizes to levels that essentially erased the significance of predators of other species, he simultaneously created a new predator: groups and coalitions within his own species.”

Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2010). Groups in mind: The coalitional roots of war and morality. Human morality and sociality: Evolutionary and comparative perspectives (pp. 191-234).

Kurzban, R., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2001). Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(26), 15387-15392.

Pietraszewski, D. (2016). How the mind sees coalitional and group conflict: The evolutionary invariances of n-person conflict dynamics. Evolution and Human Behavior, 37(6), 470-480.

8. Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (2001). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. Cambridge University Press.

Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2010). Groups in mind: The coalitional roots of war and morality. Human morality and sociality: Evolutionary and comparative perspectives, 191-234.

9. Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (2001). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. Cambridge University Press.

Alexander, R. D. (1974). The evolution of social behavior. Annual review of ecology and systematics, 5(1), 325-383.

Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2010). Groups in mind: The coalitional roots of war and morality. Human morality and sociality: Evolutionary and comparative perspectives, 191-234.

10. Abdellaoui, A., Martin, H. C., Kolk, M., Rutherford, A., Muthukrishna, M., Tropf, F. C., … & Visscher, P. M. (2025). Socio-economic status is a social construct with heritable components and genetic consequences. Nature human behaviour, 9(5), 864-876.

11. Belsky, D. W., Domingue, B. W., Wedow, R., Arseneault, L., Boardman, J. D., Caspi, A., … Moffitt, T. E. (2018). Genetic analysis of social‑class mobility in five longitudinal studies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(31), E7275–E7284.

12. System-Justified Harms are a theoretical construct by the author.

13. Tilly, C. (2011). Cities, states, and trust networks: chapter 1 of Cities and States in World History. In Contention and trust in cities and states (pp. 1-16). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

“No states existed anywhere in the world before 4000 BCE.”

“Cities, then, first appeared in the same periods and regions as states. Like cities, states can only exist in symbiosis with agriculture that produces enough to support significant non-agricultural populations. Cities differ from strictly agricultural settlements, furthermore, by virtue of substantial populations, differentiated and specialized activities, and location as nodes in far-reaching networks of trade and political coordination. Cities and states maintain ambivalent relations: urban merchants and intellectuals seek the protection that states can provide, but resist the extraction and control that states’ rulers impose on them. Rulers of states, on their side, commonly try to combat urbanites’ independence, but also seek to benefit from concentrations of resources in cities as well as from the relative defensibility of compact cities as compared with scattered rural populations.”

“What of the state? A state is a structure of power involving four distinctive elements: 1) major concentrated means of coercion, especially an army, 2) organization that is at least partly independent of kinship and religious relations, 3) a defined area of jurisdiction, and 4) priority in some regards over all other organizations operating within that area. Although the four elements had existed separately for some time, no one put all four of them together before the Middle East’s creation of both cities and states. No states existed anywhere in the world before 4000 BCE. By the era of Gilgamesh’s Uruk, however, full-fledged cities and states were flourishing across significant parts of the Middle East, and possibly forming in other parts of Eurasia as well.”

Scheidel, W. (2017). The Great Leveler: Violence and the history of inequality from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century. Princeton University Press.

Turchin, P. (2016). Ultrasociety: How 10,000 years of war made humans the greatest cooperators on earth.

Žegarac, A., Winkelbach, L., Blöcher, J., Diekmann, Y., Krečković Gavrilović, M., Porčić, M., … & Burger, J. (2021). Ancient genomes provide insights into family structure and the heredity of social status in the early Bronze Age of southeastern Europe. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 10072.

Allentoft, M.E., Sikora, M., Refoyo-Martínez, A. et al. Population genomics of post-glacial western Eurasia. Nature 625, 301–311 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06865-0

Gretzinger, J., Sayer, D., Justeau, P., Altena, E., Pala, M., Dulias, K., … & Schiffels, S. (2022). The Anglo-Saxon migration and the formation of the early English gene pool. Nature, 610(7930), 112-119.

14. Behavioral Genetics & Gene-Environment (GxE) Interplay

Avinun, R. (2020). The E is in the G: gene–environment–trait correlations and findings from Genome-Wide Association Studies. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(1), 81–89.

Allegrini, A. G., Karhunen, V., Coleman, J. R., Selzam, S., Rimfeld, K., von Stumm, S., Pingault, JB, Plomin, R. (2020). Multivariable GE interplay in the prediction of educational achievement. PLoS Genetics, 16(11), e1009153.

Bartels, M., Nes, R. B., Armitage, J. M., van de Wijer, M. P., de Vries, L. P., & Haworth, C. (2022). Exploring the biological basis for happiness. World Happiness Report 2022, Chapter 5

https://www.worldhappiness.report/ed/2022/exploring-the-biological-basis-for-happiness/

Erola, J., Lehti, H., Baier, T., & Karhula, A. (2022). Socioeconomic background and gene–environment interplay in social stratification across the early life course. European Sociological Review, 38(1), 1-17.

Kandler, C., Riemann, R., Angleitner, A., Spinath, F. M., Borkenau, P., & Penke, L. (2016). The nature of creativity: The roles of genetic factors, personality traits, cognitive abilities, and environmental sources. Journal of personality and social psychology, 111(2), 230.

Plomin, R., Gidziela, A., Malanchini, M., & von Stumm, S. (2022). Gene–environment interaction using polygenic scores: Do polygenic scores for psychopathology moderate predictions from environmental risk to behavior problems? Development and Psychopathology, 1-11.

“GxE is important because it recognizes that one size does not fit all and offers the possibility of personalized tailoring of children’s environments based on their genetic propensities. Moreover, weak environmental effects in the population could have strong effects on children with particular genetic proclivities. GxE is the genetic extension of phenotypic research on differential reactivity to the environment.”

“GxE is distinct conceptually from gene-environment correlation, which denotes experiences that are correlated with genetic propensities, that is, genetic exposure to environmental effects and genetic mediation of associations between environmental factors and psychopathology.”

Polderman, Tinca JC, et al. “Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies.” Nature genetics 47.7 (2015): 702-709.

Sauce, Bruno, and Louis D. Matzel. “The paradox of intelligence: Heritability and malleability coexist in hidden gene-environment interplay.” Psychological bulletin 144.1 (2018): 26.

Turkheimer, E. (2000). Three laws of behavioral genetics and what they mean. Current directions in psychological science, 9(5), 160-164.

von Stumm, S., & d’Apice, K. (2022). From genome-wide to environment-wide: Capturing the environome. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(1), 30-40.

Epigenetics, Biology, & Developmental Models

Belsky, J. (2024). The nature of nurture: Darwinian and mendelian perspectives. Development and Psychopathology (2024): 1-10.

Gene-Culture Coevolution & Cultural Evolution

Henrich, J. (2016). The secret of our success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter. Princeton University Press.

Laland, K. N. (2017). Darwin’s unfinished symphony: How culture made the human mind. Princeton University Press.

Laland, K. N., Odling-Smee, J., & Myles, S. (2010). How culture shaped the human genome: bringing genetics and the human sciences together. Nature Reviews Genetics, 11(2), 137-148.

Mesoudi, A. (2011). Cultural evolution: How Darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences. University of Chicago Press.

Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2008). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. University of Chicago press.

15. Boyce, W. T., Sokolowski, M. B., & Robinson, G. E. (2020). Genes and environments, development and time. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(38), 23235–23241.

Hunter, N. (2015). Meiotic recombination: The essence of heredity. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology, 7(12), a016618. https://doi.org/10.1101/cshperspect.a016618

16. van de Werfhorst, H. G. (2026). The sociogenomics of social stratification and general theories of inequality. The British Journal of Sociology, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.70138

Barcellos, S. H., Carvalho, L. S., & Turley, P. (2018). Education can reduce health differences related to genetic risk of obesity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(42), E9765–E9772. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1802909115

Wedow, R., Zacher, M., Huibregtse, B. M., Harris, K. M., Domingue, B. W., & Boardman, J. D. (2018). Education, smoking, and cohort change: Forwarding a multidimensional theory of the environmental moderation of genetic effects. American Sociological Review, 83(4), 802–832. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418785368

Trejo, S., Belsky, D. W., Boardman, J. D., Freese, J., Harris, K. M., Herd, P., Sicinski, K., & Domingue, B. W. (2018). Schools as moderators of genetic associations with life course attainments: Evidence from the WLS and Add Health. Sociological Science, 5, 513–540. https://doi.org/10.15195/v5.a22

Tucker-Drob, E. M., & Bates, T. C. (2016). Large cross-national differences in gene × socioeconomic status interaction on intelligence. Psychological Science, 27(2), 138–149.

17. EQEXs are a theoretical construct by the author.

18. Environmental Moderation & Reversibility

Barcellos, S. H., Carvalho, L. S., & Turley, P. (2018). Education can reduce health differences related to genetic risk of obesity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(42), E9765–E9772. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1802909115

Wedow, R., Zacher, M., Huibregtse, B. M., Harris, K. M., Domingue, B. W., & Boardman, J. D. (2018). Education, smoking, and cohort change: Forwarding a multidimensional theory of the environmental moderation of genetic effects. American Sociological Review, 83(4), 802–832. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418785368

The Scarr-Rowe Effect (Gene × SES Interaction)

Tucker-Drob, E. M., & Bates, T. C. (2016). Large cross-national differences in gene × socioeconomic status interaction on intelligence. Psychological Science, 27(2), 138–149.

Turkheimer, E., Haley, A., Waldron, M., D’Onofrio, B., & Gottesman, I. I. (2003). Socioeconomic status modifies heritability of IQ in young children. Psychological Science, 14(6), 623–628.

Theoretical Framing & Remediation

Harden, K. P. (2021). The genetic lottery: Why DNA matters for social equality. Princeton University Press.

END NOTES

The Scarr-Rowe effect sharpens this argument rather than threatening it. Because high-opportunity environments increase the proportion of trait variance attributable to genetics (Tucker-Drob & Bates, 2016; Turkheimer et al., 2003), deprivation does the reverse…where institutions impose it, they suppress the expression of inherited potential, so the resulting fixity of low-SES outcomes cannot be attributed to genes but to institutions. That the effect is pronounced in the United States yet weak or absent in several other wealthy democracies (Tucker-Drob & Bates, 2016) is itself direct evidence that institutional context, not the genome, governs how far inherited differences translate into life outcomes. Institutions heavily moderate the penetrance of genetic associations across the life course (Barcellos et al., 2018; Trejo et al., 2018; Wedow et al., 2018), and as Harden (2021) argues, genetic influence on outcomes underscores the need for structural remediation rather than justifying rigid social strata.

19. The ‘Jack-in-the-Box’ Pattern: Development and Influences

The following sources provide a range of historical, structural, and socio-genetic context for the concept…demonstrating the many dimensions of Jack.

I. Core Historical & Cyclical Influences

These works establish the recurring nature of hierarchical reset through violent “leveling” events and elite-driven disintegration cycles.

Scheidel, W. (2017). The Great Leveler: Violence and the history of inequality from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century. Princeton University Press.

Turchin, P., & Nefedov, S. A. (2009). Secular cycles. Princeton University Press.

Turchin, P. (2023). End times: Elites, counter-elites, and the path of political disintegration. Penguin Press.

Wallerstein, I. (1974-1989). The Modern World-System (Vols. 1-3). Academic Press.

II. Structural Mechanisms of Systemic Failure

These sources identify the mechanical “tension” and specific vulnerabilities that lead to a failure or a reset of the hierarchy.

Scheidel, W. (2024). Beyond technology and wages: Power and the history of inequality. Oxford Open Economics, 3 (Supplement_1), 1212–1216.

Turchin, P., Currie, T. E., Whitehouse, H., François, P., Feeney, K., Mullins, D., … & Spencer, C. (2018). Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(2), E144-E151.

Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century (A. Goldhammer, Trans.). Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Tainter, J. A. (1988). The collapse of complex societies. Cambridge University Press.

Kennedy, P. (1987). The rise and fall of the great powers: Economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000. Random House.

III. The “Jack-in-the-Box” Replacement Dynamics

Khaldun, I. (2015). The Muqaddimah: An introduction to history (N. J. Dawood, Ed.; F. Rosenthal, Trans.). Princeton University Press.

Describes Asabiyyah (social cohesion) as the social force that allows a new group to replace a failing elite.

Socio-Genetic & Genomic Evidence

These references provide evidence in the archaeological record of large-scale population change and the hereditary transmission of status.

Theory & Mechanism:

Plomin, R., & von Stumm, S. (2018). The new genetics of intelligence. Nature Reviews Genetics, 19(3), 148–159.

Polderman, Tinca JC, et al. “Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies.” Nature genetics 47.7 (2015): 702-709.

Causadias, J. M., & Korous, K. M. (2017). How are genes related to culture? An introduction to the field of cultural genomics. The handbook of culture and biology, 151-177.

Boyce, W. T., Sokolowski, M. B., & Robinson, G. E. (2020). Genes and environments, development and time. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 117(38), 23235–23241.

Population Turnover & Heritable Status:

Allentoft, M.E., Sikora, M., Refoyo-Martínez, A. et al. (2024). Population genomics of post-glacial western Eurasia. Nature 625, 301–311 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06865-0

Gretzinger, J., et al. (2022). The Anglo-Saxon migration and the formation of the early English gene pool. Nature, 610, 112–119.

20. Direct genetic effects on attainment, income and class mobility

Belsky, D. W., Domingue, B. W., Wedow, R., Arseneault, L., Boardman, J. D., Caspi, A., Conley, D., Fletcher, J. M., Freese, J., Herd, P., Moffitt, T. E., Poulton, R., Sicinski, K., Wertz, J., & Harris, K. M. (2018). Genetic analysis of social-class mobility in five longitudinal studies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(31), E7275–E7284.

Hill, W. D., et al. (2019). Genome-wide analysis identifies molecular systems and 149 genetic loci associated with income. Nature Communications, 10(1), 5741.

Papageorge, N. W., & Thom, K. (2020). Genes, education, and labor market outcomes: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study. Journal of the European Economic Association, 18(3), 1351–1399.

von Stumm, S., Smith-Woolley, E., Ayorech, Z., McMillan, A., Rimfeld, K., Dale, P. S., & Plomin, R. (2020). Predicting educational achievement from genomic measures and socioeconomic status. Developmental Science, 23(3), e12925.

Genetic nurture and parental effects

Demange, P. A., Hottenga, J. J., Abdellaoui, A., et al. (2022). Estimating effects of parents’ cognitive and non-cognitive skills on offspring education using polygenic scores. Nature Communications, 13(1), 4801.

Kong, A., Thorleifsson, G., Frigge, M. L., et al. (2018). The nature of nurture: Effects of parental genotypes. Science, 359(6374), 424–428.

Socioeconomic status as a heritable, selected construct

Abdellaoui, A., Martin, H. C., Kolk, M., Rutherford, A., Muthukrishna, M., Tropf, F. C., … & Visscher, P. M. (2025). Socio-economic status is a social construct with heritable components and genetic consequences. Nature human behaviour, 9(5), 864-876.

Hyeokmoon Kweon et al. (2022). Human brain anatomy reflects separable genetic and environmental components of socioeconomic status. Sci. Adv.8, eabm2923DOI:10.1126/sciadv.abm2923

Marioni, R. E., Davies, G., Hayward, C., Liewald, D., Kerr, S. M., Campbell, A., Luciano, M., Smith, B. H., Padmanabhan, S., Hocking, L. J., Hastie, N. D., Wright, A. F., Porteous, D. J., Visscher, P. M., & Deary, I. J. (2014). Molecular genetic contributions to socioeconomic status and intelligence. Intelligence, 44, 26–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2014.02.006

Heritability of educational attainment across populations

Branigan, A. R., McCallum, K. J., & Freese, J. (2013). Variation in the heritability of educational attainment: An international meta-analysis. Social Forces, 92(1), 109–140.

Biological embedding of stratification

Raffington, L., Tanksley, P. T., Sabhlok, A., Vinnik, L., Mallard, T., King, L. S., Goosby, B., Harden, K. P., & Tucker-Drob, E. M. (2023). Socially stratified epigenetic profiles are associated with cognitive functioning in children and adolescents. Psychological Science, 34(2), 170–185. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976221122760

Theory and framing

Harden, K. P., & Koellinger, P. D. (2020). Using genetics for social science. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(6), 567–576.

Plomin, R. (2014). Genotype-environment correlation in the era of DNA. Behavior Genetics, 44(6), 629–638.

21. Slavich, G. M., & Cole, S. W. (2013). The Emerging Field of Human Social Genomics. Clinical Psychological Science, 1(3), 331-348.

McGowan, P., Sasaki, A., D’Alessio, A. et al. (2009). Epigenetic regulation of the glucocorticoid receptor in human brain associates with childhood abuse. Nat Neurosci 12, 342–348. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2270

22. Greenough, W. T., Black, J. E., & Wallace, C. S. (1987). Experience and Brain Development. Child Development, 58(3), 539–559. https://doi.org/10.2307/1130197

23. Gottlieb, G. (1998). Normally occurring environmental and behavioral influences on gene activity: From central dogma to probabilistic epigenesis. Psychological Review, 105(4), 792–802. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.105.4.792-802

24. Allegrini, A. G., Karhunen, V., Coleman, J. R., Selzam, S., Rimfeld, K., von Stumm, S., et al. (2020). Multivariable GE interplay in the prediction of educational achievement. PLoS Genetics, 16(11), e1009153.

25. Kweon, H., Burik, C., Karlsson Linnér, R., De Vlaming, R., Okbay, A., Martschenko, D., … & Koellinger, P. (2020). Genetic fortune: Winning or losing education, income, and health.

26. Schlag, F., et al. (2022). Polygenic risk for mental disorder reveals distinct association profiles across social behaviour in the general population. Molecular Psychiatry, 27(3), 1588–1598.

Knafo, A., & Plomin, R. (2006). Prosocial behavior from early to middle childhood: Genetic and environmental influences on stability and change. Developmental Psychology, 42, 771–786.

Saudino, K. J., Ronald, A., & Plomin, R. (2005). The etiology of behavior problems in 7-year old twins: Substantial genetic influence and negligible shared environmental influence for parent ratings and ratings by same and different teachers. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 33, 113–130.

Scourfield, J., John, B., Martin, N., & McGuffin, P. (2004). The development of prosocial behaviour in children and adolescents: A twin study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45, 927–935.

St Pourcain B, Haworth CMA, Davis OSP, Wang K, Timpson NJ, Evans DM, et al. (2015). Heritability and genome-wide analyses of problematic peer relationships during childhood and adolescence. Hum Genet. 134:539–51.

27. Rietveld, C. A. (2025). Heritability and public policy–a reappraisal: Cornelius A. Rietveld. The Journal of Economic Inequality, 1-21.

28. Morris, T. T., von Hinke, S., Pike, L., Ingram, N. R., Davey Smith, G., Munafò, M. R., & Davies, N. M. (2022). Implications of the genomic revolution for education research and policy. British Educational Research Journal.

29. Chetty, R., Stepner, M., Abraham, S., Lin, S., Scuderi, B., Turner, N., … & Cutler, D. (2016). The association between income and life expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014. JAMA, 315(16), 1750-1766.

Case, A., & Deaton, A. (2015). Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(49), 15078-15083.

Killingsworth, M. A., Kahneman, D., & Mellers, B. (2023). Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(10), e2208661120.

Steptoe, A., & Fancourt, D. (2019). Leading a meaningful life at older ages and its relationship with social engagement, prosperity, health, biology, and time use. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(4), 1207-1212.

30. World Happiness Report 2022, Chapter 5: “Exploring the Biological Basis for Happiness” (Bartels et al.) https://www.worldhappiness.report/ed/2022/exploring-the-biological-basis-for-happiness/

31. van de Weijer, M. P., et al. (2024). Capturing the well-being exposome in poly-environmental scores. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 93, 102208.

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