#124 Robert Plomin: Blueprint, Genetics, Environment, Clinical Psychology, and Gene Editing

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Dr. Robert Plomin is Professor of Behavioural Genetics at the Social Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Center at King’s College London, and Research Professor at the Medical Research Council (MRC). He’s one of the leading figures in the entire field of Behavioral Genetics. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Dr. Plomin as the 71st most cited psychologist of the 20th century. And he’s also the author of many books, including Behavioral Genetics: A Primer (1989), Separate Lives: Why Siblings Are So Different (1992), Nature And Nurture: An Introduction To Human Behavioral Genetics (2004), Nature and Nurture During Infancy and Early Childhood (2006), G Is for Genes (2013), and, the most recent one, Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are (2018).

In this episode, we start off by talking about the history and development of the field of Behavioral Genetics. We also address the issue of environmentalism in Psychology and the behavioral sciences. We also go through some of the basic concepts in Behavioral Genetics, like heritability, gene-environment correlations, and twin and adoptee studies. We also tackle the problems with environmental factors in human behavior. We also deal with GWAS (Genome-Wide Association Studies), polygenic scores and the type of information we can obtain from them and what we can do with it. We also talk about how clinical psychology and psychiatry should revise the way they classify mental conditions, moving from a qualitative to a quantitative approach, and some of the current limitations in these fields. Toward the end, we also briefly discuss the potential of gene editing technologies.

Time Links:

01:07 The history of Behavioral Genetics

09:13 Environmentalism in the history of Psychology            

14:22 Normative vs individual differences        

19:32 Twin studies    

26:12 The effects of the environment are mediated by genetics; gene-environment correlations  

33:17 Uncontrolled accidents and unique life events   

40:02 Actively seeking environments    

42:47 All behavioral traits are heritable 

50:00 Genome-wide association studies and identifying genes

1:00:29 Making good use of polygenic scores, and issues regarding society and equality of opportunity

1:17:28 Science does not dictate moral nor social values

1:22:14 About clinical psychology, and the classification of mental conditions

1:37:50 Certain biases in clinical psychology, and what happens when children develop in deprived environments

1:44:43 Is gene editing around the corner for complex psychological traits?

1:48:30 How pleiotropy complicates gene editing

1:50:44 Follow Dr. Plomin’s work!

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Follow Dr. Plomin’s work:

Faculty page: https://tinyurl.com/y8awombm

Reviews of Blueprint: https://tinyurl.com/yadhys6m

Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are: https://tinyurl.com/y8tva7ok

Other books: https://tinyurl.com/y92gb3rt

Twitter handle: @RobertPlomin  

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