A psychologist delves into the genetics of bad behaviour in a book littered with fascinating scientific findings
I
n 2021, the psychologist and writer Kathryn Paige Harden co-authored a paper outlining her research into the genetic patterns linked to a higher risk of developing substance abuse problems or engaging in risk-taking behaviour, such as having unprotected sex or committing crime. The paper referred to the genetics of “traits related to self-regulation and addiction”, but Harden thought of herself as studying the genetics of sin.
Harden is a professor at the University of Texas and the author of a previous book, The Genetic Lottery, on how our knowledge of genetics should shape our views on meritocracy. She once received a letter from a man who has been in prison since he was 16 for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman. “What would drive a boy to do such a thing?” he asked her. Her new book is a heartfelt, subtly argued response to his question, an attempt to outline how our expanding knowledge of what makes people do bad things – the interplay of our inherited tendencies and our life circumstances – should influence how we assign moral responsibility and blame.
Harden was raised in a southern, evangelical “praise God and pass the ammunition” church, and although she left it, she writes that Christianity has lingered with her like childhood chicken pox: “You might recover but you are never free. The virus will live in your nerves until you die.” She retains a deep interest in theology, and while sin might seem to some readers an old-fashioned way of thinking about human behaviour she explores how Christian ideas about sin and forgiveness influence moral conversations today, and have helped shape the US’s extraordinarily punitive criminal justice system. Only in the US can a juvenile offender, such as the man who wrote to Harden, be imprisoned for life with no hope of parole – a policy that suggests an ongoing commitment to the doctrine of original sin, the notion that some people are born bad.
