However, behavior genetics research over the last several decades has shown show that most human values that differ across people, and that can be measured reliably – including some quite abstract values associated with political, religious, and moral ideology – are moderately heritable. Moreover, many of these values show relatively little influence from ‘shared family environment’, which includes all of the opportunities and experiences shared by children growing up in the same household and culture.
This is wrong, shared family environment doesn’t count culturally-determined experiences, as these kinds of studies are pretty much always done within a culture. Culture affects the mean values, not the individual differences in values within a culture, and so studies that focus on individual differences in values cannot straightforwardly access this.
This means that genetic variants influence the formation of human values, and genetic differences between people explain a significant proportion of the differences in their adult values, and family environment explains a lot less about differences in human values than we might have thought.
Note that this doesn’t necessarily contradict Shard Theory. Everything is heritable, and that presumably includes all the environmental factors that Shard Theory asserts influences values. Since heritability is transitive, is the environment is heritable and the Shard Theory asserts that the environment influences values, then Shard Theory asserts that values are heritable.
Hm, do you have any genomic studies of values to share?
I guess it might be hard since values tend to have strong assortative mating. Idk, you’re saying it’s based on convergent findings, so what are those findings?
Heritability for behavioral traits tends to increase, not decrease, during lifespan development
I mean this makes sense theoretically, but has it really been sufficiently thoroughly established that we can declare it as a thing in general? Yes, it applies to intelligence, and I think also BMI, and maybe you’re right about it also applying to personality (I’m not sure as I think I saw a study saying the opposite, but at the same time there’s probably big problems with studies assessing the heritability of personality, so whatever).
These are just a few illustrative examples. The rate of research and publication for GWAS research is very high, and is accelerated by the existence of large, fully genotyped samples such as UK BioBank; to do genome-wide association studies on particular human values, it’s often sufficient just to add a few new questions to the surveys that are regularly sent out to genotyped research participants.
Oh I guess I should say, I do agree that Shard Theory seems like it could get too blank slatist. I just don’t agree with all of the arguments you presented. Though some of your arguments seem reasonable enough.
Ah, I was already aware of those, I was more thinking of the “political, religious, and moral ideology” values; those are the ones I hadn’t seen a genomic study of.
I also have some concerns with the notion that the studies you listed here are good examples, but that might be getting a bit too tangential? Idk, up to you if you feel like you want to discuss them.
tailcalled—I agree that we don’t yet have very good GWAS studies of political, religious, and moral ideology values; I was just illustrating that we already have ways of studying those (in principal), we have big genotyped samples in several international samples, and it’s just a matter of time before researchers start asking people in those samples about their more abstract kinds of values, and then publishing GWAS studies on those values.
So, I think we’re probably in agreement about that issue.
This is wrong, shared family environment doesn’t count culturally-determined experiences, as these kinds of studies are pretty much always done within a culture. Culture affects the mean values, not the individual differences in values within a culture, and so studies that focus on individual differences in values cannot straightforwardly access this.
Note that this doesn’t necessarily contradict Shard Theory. Everything is heritable, and that presumably includes all the environmental factors that Shard Theory asserts influences values. Since heritability is transitive, is the environment is heritable and the Shard Theory asserts that the environment influences values, then Shard Theory asserts that values are heritable.
Hm, do you have any genomic studies of values to share?
I guess it might be hard since values tend to have strong assortative mating. Idk, you’re saying it’s based on convergent findings, so what are those findings?
I mean this makes sense theoretically, but has it really been sufficiently thoroughly established that we can declare it as a thing in general? Yes, it applies to intelligence, and I think also BMI, and maybe you’re right about it also applying to personality (I’m not sure as I think I saw a study saying the opposite, but at the same time there’s probably big problems with studies assessing the heritability of personality, so whatever).
Also potentially of interest: If everything is genetic, then nothing is genetic—Understanding the phenotypic null hypothesis.
tailcalled—thanks for your comments.
As a preliminary reply: here are links to a few genome-wide association studies concerning human values and value-like traits of various sorts:
risk tolerance
delay discounting
anti-social behavior
extraversion
neuroticism
cannabis use
sexual orientation
These are just a few illustrative examples. The rate of research and publication for GWAS research is very high, and is accelerated by the existence of large, fully genotyped samples such as UK BioBank; to do genome-wide association studies on particular human values, it’s often sufficient just to add a few new questions to the surveys that are regularly sent out to genotyped research participants.
Oh I guess I should say, I do agree that Shard Theory seems like it could get too blank slatist. I just don’t agree with all of the arguments you presented. Though some of your arguments seem reasonable enough.
Ah, I was already aware of those, I was more thinking of the “political, religious, and moral ideology” values; those are the ones I hadn’t seen a genomic study of.
I also have some concerns with the notion that the studies you listed here are good examples, but that might be getting a bit too tangential? Idk, up to you if you feel like you want to discuss them.
tailcalled—I agree that we don’t yet have very good GWAS studies of political, religious, and moral ideology values; I was just illustrating that we already have ways of studying those (in principal), we have big genotyped samples in several international samples, and it’s just a matter of time before researchers start asking people in those samples about their more abstract kinds of values, and then publishing GWAS studies on those values.
So, I think we’re probably in agreement about that issue.