Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA.
Department of Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Nat Hum Behav. 2020 Jun;4(6):567-576. doi: 10.1038/s41562-020-0862-5. Epub 2020 May 11.
Social science genetics is concerned with understanding whether, how and why genetic differences between human beings are linked to differences in behaviours and socioeconomic outcomes. Our review discusses the goals, methods, challenges and implications of this research endeavour. We survey how the recent developments in genetics are beginning to provide social scientists with a powerful new toolbox they can use to better understand environmental effects, and we illustrate this with several substantive examples. Furthermore, we examine how medical research can benefit from genetic insights into social-scientific outcomes and vice versa. Finally, we discuss the ethical challenges of this work and clarify several common misunderstandings and misinterpretations of genetic research on individual differences.
社会科学遗传学关注的是理解人类之间的遗传差异与行为和社会经济结果之间的关联，以及这种关联存在的原因和方式。我们的综述讨论了这一研究工作的目标、方法、挑战和影响。我们调查了遗传学的最新进展如何开始为社会科学家提供一个强大的新工具箱，使他们能够更好地理解环境效应，并通过几个实质性的例子来说明这一点。此外，我们还研究了医学研究如何从对社会科学结果的遗传见解中受益，反之亦然。最后，我们讨论了这项工作的伦理挑战，并澄清了对个体差异的遗传研究的一些常见误解。
