Genetic Pygmalion Effect? Study Suggests Negative Impacts of Genetic Tests for Educational Purposes
By Editors,
Hastings Center Report
| 05. 10. 2021
Genetic tests claiming to predict people’s intellectual aptitudes or how much education they are likely to get are readily available via direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies. Some researchers are even proposing the use of such tests in educational settings for “precision education,” in which individualized student education plans would be tailored to scores generated from the genetic findings. But a new study – the first to look at the potential psychosocial impacts of these genetic scores for educational attainment – finds that they could have negative effects on students’ self-esteem and sense of their educational potential.
Lucas J. Matthews, a postdoctoral researcher at The Hastings Center and Columbia University’s Center for Research on Ethical, Legal & Social Implications of Psychiatric, Neurologic & Behavioral Genetics, is the lead author of the study, which was published in Social Psychology of Education. An abstract is available here.
Genetic tests for educational purposes are designed to detect hundreds of small genetic variants in a single sample of saliva. These tests produce “polygenic scores,” which permit modest genetic prediction of selected traits and...
Related Articles
By Sarojini Nadimpally and Gargi Mishra, The Wire | 12.15.2024
In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) as assisted reproductive technology (ART) has been in vogue for quite a few decades now. While IVF has been hailed as a significant scientific advancement, with many advantages, here are some limitations which bear keeping in mind...
Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
It is hard to make predictions, especially about the future, as Yogi Berra, Niels Bohr, and other luminaries have remarked. But there are already signs that the incoming Trump administration may have some difficulty establishing consistent policies about controversial issues concerning human reproduction.
On the one hand, consider “the conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration.”
The notorious Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership seeks to delete terms such as “reproductive rights” from “every federal...
By Susan Dominus, The New York Times | 11.30.2024
In the days after Daphna Cardinale delivered her second child, she experienced a rare sense of calm and wonder. The feeling was a relief after so much worrying: She and her husband, Alexander, had tried for three years to conceive...