Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-27T09:40:21.764Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cognitive traits are more appropriate for genetic analysis than social outcomes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2023

Franck Ramus Open the ORCID record for Franck Ramus [Opens in a new window]
Franck Ramus*
Affiliation:
CNRS, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL University, Paris, France franck.ramus@ens.psl.eu; https://lscp.dec.ens.fr/en/member/663/franck-ramus
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The critique of the genetics of complex social outcomes is partly well-founded, insofar as social outcomes sometimes have unreliable relations with cognitive traits. But the correct conclusion is not to dismiss the entire field altogether. Rather, the implication is to redirect geneticists' attention to the stable cognitive phenotypes that are natural candidates for genetic analysis.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 46 , 2023 , e224
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Demange, P. A., Malanchini, M., Mallard, T. T., Biroli, P., Cox, S. R., Grotzinger, A. D., … Nivard, M. G. (2021). Investigating the genetic architecture of noncognitive skills using GWAS-by-subtraction. Nature Genetics, 53(1), 35–44. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-020-00754-2CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ganna, A., Verweij, K. J. H., Nivard, M. G., Maier, R., Wedow, R., Busch, A. S., … Zietsch, B. P. (2019). Large-scale GWAS reveals insights into the genetic architecture of same-sex sexual behavior. Science (New York, N.Y.), 365(6456), eaat7693. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aat7693CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Okbay, A., Wu, Y., Wang, N., Jayashankar, H., Bennett, M., Nehzati, S. M., … Young, A. I. (2022). Polygenic prediction of educational attainment within and between families from genome-wide association analyses in 3 million individuals. Nature Genetics, 54(4), 437–449. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-022-01016-zCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ramus, F. (2017). General intelligence is an emerging property, not an evolutionary puzzle. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40, 43–44. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X1600176XCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ramus, F. (2022). Noncognitive nonsense. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/xzv4fCrossRefGoogle Scholar