Why Assortative Mating and Familial Backgrounds Matter

In this episode, Dr. Russell Warne talks with Yujing Lin from King’s College London about her new open-access study on polygenic scores and cognitive abilities. The conversation explains how polygenic scores work, why they predict IQ and education so well, and what changes when you compare unrelated individuals to siblings raised in the same family.

We explore how genetics and environment interact, why socioeconomic status matters at the family level, and why between-family effects are real signals rather than bias. The discussion also covers missing heritability, additive genetic effects, and why the same genetic variants influence intelligence across the full normal range.

If you’re curious about what modern behavioral genetics really shows about intelligence, this episode gives you a clear and data-driven explanation.

Read the full study here: https://icajournal.scholasticahq.com/article/140654-polygenic-score-prediction-within-and-between-sibling-pairs-for-intelligence-cognitive-abilities-and-educational-traits-from-childhood-to-early-adulthood

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