13 Constraints and Potentials
“The First Premise Is Wrong for Some Important Outcomes”
The shared environment, which includes influences from family, school, and neighborhood, significantly impacts important personal outcomes, such as social interactions, upbringing issues, drug use, and educational success. A study found that the shared environment explained a considerable part of these issues. This means that if we could effectively address these shared environmental factors, we could see meaningful improvements.
However, typical outside interventions, like counseling or tutoring, only take a few hours each week and often do not have enough impact. A teenager who receives support from a drug counselor will still return to the same home and neighborhood that contribute to their drug use. If the shared environment is only responsible for a small part of the issue, then we need much larger interventions—like moving to a new home or changing schools—to see real differences.
Additionally, trying to change how parents raise their children can be too late if the child is already having trouble with social interactions. Even successful parenting programs won't quickly fix long-standing issues because changing behavior takes time and early intervention is more effective.
Interventions often assume that changing the environment will lead to better outcomes. For example, teaching parents to use consistent discipline is expected to improve children’s behavior. But genetic factors also affect behavior, meaning that a child’s behavior might be influenced by their genetics, too. This interaction between genetics and environment includes three types: passive, evocative, and active.
Research shows that many traits that impact school achievement are largely influenced by genetics. While good parenting can help adopted children, simply trying to improve parenting practices may not result in significant changes, especially when genetics play a strong role. Overall, changing behaviors through interventions can be challenging, particularly because of these genetic influences.
“The First Premise Is Wrong for the Early Stages of Life”
Humans are most adaptable during their early years, as their brains are still developing and their habits are not fully formed. While there is a strong belief that early interventions can be beneficial, there are significant challenges and limitations observed in numerous attempts to make a real impact over the last fifty years.
Research shows that the environment plays a crucial role in IQ development, especially in early childhood, with the influence of shared family environment decreasing by adolescence. Notably, studies indicate that disadvantaged children might have lower heritability for IQ than those from more typical backgrounds, suggesting that the environment affects their cognitive development more significantly.
In particular, research by Eric Turkheimer demonstrated that gene-environment interactions vary with socioeconomic status (SES). For children from impoverished backgrounds, heritability for IQ is very low, while for wealthier families, it is much higher. The significance of the shared environment also varies greatly based on family wealth, showing that it has a much larger impact on children in lower SES families than in higher ones.
Various studies have tried to understand these gene-environment interactions. While some studies did not find significant effects, others confirmed the relationship, showing a clear interaction especially in the U.S., where factors like educational quality and social mobility may come into play.
The effectiveness of early childhood interventions, such as preschool programs, has been extensively studied. While these programs do show some positive effects on children's readiness for school, especially in language and literacy, the impact tends to diminish over time. Meta-analysis indicates that the effect sizes from preschool programs have declined, particularly for programs initiated after 1980.
Specifically, evaluations of programs like Head Start have shown initial improvements in language and literacy skills, but these effects fade during the first few years of schooling. Long-term benefits, such as better graduation rates, have been noted, but they do not directly correlate with academic performance during earlier schooling.
While some researchers acknowledged the modest successes of early childhood programs, others cautioned against overestimating their effectiveness due to limitations in study designs. For instance, rigorous studies often show little to no long-term benefits.
A consensus among scholars highlighted that while children in pre-K programs are generally better prepared for school, the long-term academic gains from these programs are not strongly supported by evidence. This points to a need for better quality and more effective teaching methods in early childhood education. The conclusion is that without significant changes in early childhood education practices, the potential benefits for children may remain unrealized.
Overall, early childhood interventions are valuable, especially for those experiencing difficult home environments, but achieving lasting positive outcomes requires new and more effective approaches to teaching and support.
“The First Premise Is Wrong When It Comes to Self-Concept”
Over the past fifty years, psychologists and educators have tried to improve how people think about their abilities and potential, known as self-concept. They have focused mainly on three areas: self-esteem, stereotype threat, and growth mindset.
The self-esteem movement started in the late 1960s, with Nathaniel Branden's ideas playing a key role. He thought self-esteem meant accepting personal responsibility and being self-sufficient. However, the movement changed direction and began to emphasize having a positive self-view without needing proof for it. This meant children were often praised just for being themselves, criticism was avoided, and competitions were seen as harmful to self-esteem. By the 1970s through the 1990s, low self-esteem was blamed for many social issues, and high self-esteem was seen as a cure-all. But in the early 2000s, a large review of research indicated that boosting self-esteem did not help improve grades, careers, or other outcomes. Despite some lingering support for self-esteem in schools, overall belief in it as a solution declined significantly.
Stereotype threat refers to the idea that being judged by negative stereotypes can hurt performance. This concept was introduced in 1995 when researchers found that African American students performed worse on tests when they were told it was an IQ test, as this activated a stereotype about their intelligence. Stereotype threat became popular, also affecting how women performed in math. However, the media often misunderstood the research, suggesting that eliminating stereotype threat would close performance gaps. Various studies showed that while stereotype threat could lower scores, its overall impact seemed small and was affected by research flaws, like only publishing positive results. By 2019, a thorough study found that the actual effect of stereotype threat was minimal, which suggests that it may not be as powerful as some once thought.
The growth mindset movement developed as a response to the issues within the self-esteem movement. Psychologists Carol Dweck and Claudia Mueller conducted experiments that demonstrated praising children for being smart can decrease their motivation by making them fear failure and not wanting to risk their "smart" image. They showed that believing intelligence can grow through effort, called a growth mindset, is important. This idea has influenced many educational practices, leading to programs focused on helping students see failures as opportunities to improve.
A 2018 meta-analysis examined the relationship between growth mindset and academic success, finding it was weak. Furthermore, research on growth mindset interventions showed very little impact on students’ achievement. Many of these studies did not have strong, high-quality evidence. A recent significant study did find some benefits to a growth mindset intervention, helping some lower-performing students improve their grades. However, overall effects remained small.
In summary, efforts to change self-concept through self-esteem, stereotype threat, and growth mindset show that the expected benefits may not be as strong or effective as previously believed. More studies are needed to understand these concepts and their impacts on education clearly.
“Some Aspects of the Nonshared Environment Can Be Affected by Outside Interventions”
The nonshared environment has a big effect on traits in individuals, sometimes more than genes do. Researchers have looked into how nonshared environments work, which include things like family setup, how siblings interact, and friendships. Studies show that parents often treat their kids differently and that siblings can react in unique ways to the same situations. However, a review of many studies found that these factors explained only small amounts of the differences in traits, showing that it's still unclear how nonshared environments really work. A long-term study found that negative behavior from parents often comes from how the child acts rather than causing problems like depression. Also, identical twins, who have the same genetics, can still differ in personality and traits due to nonshared environments, but these differences change over time. Overall, finding consistent reasons for nonshared environmental influences has been difficult, hinting that many are random and don't have lasting effects.
“But You’re Ignoring Epigenetics!”
Epigenetics is an area of science that studies how our environment can change the way our genes work, which challenges the traditional idea that our genes alone determine who we are. Many people believe that epigenetics shows that our choices and surroundings can influence not just our own genes but also those of our children. This idea has been shared widely in the media, often discussing how events like war or poverty can impact future generations.
At the core of epigenetics is gene regulation, which is how genes are turned on or off to create specific proteins needed for different types of cells. DNA, located in the nucleus of the cell, is responsible for providing the instructions to make these proteins. Gene regulation involves various chemical changes to DNA that do not alter the DNA sequence itself, allowing it to control how much or how little a gene is expressed.
One important mechanism of epigenetics is DNA methylation. This process involves adding a small chemical group (methyl group) to the DNA, usually leading to a decrease in gene activity. While the DNA sequence itself remains unchanged, these methylation marks can permanently alter whether a gene is active, impacting everything from health to behavior.
There is a lot of interest in whether these changes can be passed down to future generations. Some studies suggest that experiences in early life can create lasting changes in gene expression that affect descendants. For instance, research involving rats showed that nurturing behaviors from mothers influenced certain stress-related genes in their offspring. However, while these findings are compelling, linking them directly to humans is more complicated, and many studies are mainly based on correlations rather than clear cause-and-effect relationships.
Some findings in the past, such as those related to historical events like famines or trauma from wars, have been interpreted as evidence of changes in gene activity that could be seen in later generations. Research proposed that children born during stressful times might show health issues as adults. However, critics argue that it's challenging to determine exactly what caused these genetic changes and whether they stemmed from the parent's environment or other factors.
There are claims about transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, which means that changes in gene expression due to environmental factors could be passed from parents to children. Studies about Holocaust survivors, for instance, suggested that their experiences might have affected their children's genes. Such claims have gained media attention but are met with skepticism from other scientists who believe more evidence is needed to back these ideas.
In the scientific community, there is ongoing debate about the interpretation of epigenetic studies. Some researchers express concern that too many broad conclusions are being made without sufficient evidence. They stress the importance of being careful when discussing the implications of epigenetics, suggesting that while this field is promising, the science is still developing.
Overall, epigenetics raises exciting possibilities about how genes can be influenced by our environment. It offers a new way to understand the connection between our experiences and genetic makeup. Still, the science needs careful examination, and currently, it is too early to say that we can simply change gene expression to create better outcomes for people.
Recapitulation
Conservative and liberal analysts have long debated the effectiveness of interventions aimed at helping the poor. Conservatives highlight the failures of job training and education programs, while liberals promote the advantages of income transfers. Despite numerous strategies tried over 50 years, there is no backlog of new ideas to improve outcomes. The role of genetics in behavior is significant, suggesting that efforts to change purely environmental factors may not succeed. While current interventions face limitations, future developments in pharmaceuticals and gene editing could eventually lead to more effective solutions.
A Personal Interpretation of the Material in Part III
Some abilities in our world lead to wealth and respect, and these abilities often come from our genes, which we don't choose. This genetic part makes social class more stable because successful parents usually pass on their money and talents to their kids. While children of very smart or skilled parents might not be as talented, they still have better chances of success. Society has changed from one unfairness, where talented people faced barriers, to another, where talent is often just a matter of luck based on family background. Most people can have good lives, but extreme success is harder for everyone to reach.
“The First Premise Is Wrong for Some Important Outcomes”
The shared environment, which includes influences from family, school, and neighborhood, significantly impacts important personal outcomes, such as social interactions, upbringing issues, drug use, and educational success. A study found that the shared environment explained a considerable part of these issues. This means that if we could effectively address these shared environmental factors, we could see meaningful improvements.
However, typical outside interventions, like counseling or tutoring, only take a few hours each week and often do not have enough impact. A teenager who receives support from a drug counselor will still return to the same home and neighborhood that contribute to their drug use. If the shared environment is only responsible for a small part of the issue, then we need much larger interventions—like moving to a new home or changing schools—to see real differences.
Additionally, trying to change how parents raise their children can be too late if the child is already having trouble with social interactions. Even successful parenting programs won't quickly fix long-standing issues because changing behavior takes time and early intervention is more effective.
Interventions often assume that changing the environment will lead to better outcomes. For example, teaching parents to use consistent discipline is expected to improve children’s behavior. But genetic factors also affect behavior, meaning that a child’s behavior might be influenced by their genetics, too. This interaction between genetics and environment includes three types: passive, evocative, and active.
Research shows that many traits that impact school achievement are largely influenced by genetics. While good parenting can help adopted children, simply trying to improve parenting practices may not result in significant changes, especially when genetics play a strong role. Overall, changing behaviors through interventions can be challenging, particularly because of these genetic influences.
“The First Premise Is Wrong for the Early Stages of Life”
Humans are most adaptable during their early years, as their brains are still developing and their habits are not fully formed. While there is a strong belief that early interventions can be beneficial, there are significant challenges and limitations observed in numerous attempts to make a real impact over the last fifty years.
Research shows that the environment plays a crucial role in IQ development, especially in early childhood, with the influence of shared family environment decreasing by adolescence. Notably, studies indicate that disadvantaged children might have lower heritability for IQ than those from more typical backgrounds, suggesting that the environment affects their cognitive development more significantly.
In particular, research by Eric Turkheimer demonstrated that gene-environment interactions vary with socioeconomic status (SES). For children from impoverished backgrounds, heritability for IQ is very low, while for wealthier families, it is much higher. The significance of the shared environment also varies greatly based on family wealth, showing that it has a much larger impact on children in lower SES families than in higher ones.
Various studies have tried to understand these gene-environment interactions. While some studies did not find significant effects, others confirmed the relationship, showing a clear interaction especially in the U.S., where factors like educational quality and social mobility may come into play.
The effectiveness of early childhood interventions, such as preschool programs, has been extensively studied. While these programs do show some positive effects on children's readiness for school, especially in language and literacy, the impact tends to diminish over time. Meta-analysis indicates that the effect sizes from preschool programs have declined, particularly for programs initiated after 1980.
Specifically, evaluations of programs like Head Start have shown initial improvements in language and literacy skills, but these effects fade during the first few years of schooling. Long-term benefits, such as better graduation rates, have been noted, but they do not directly correlate with academic performance during earlier schooling.
While some researchers acknowledged the modest successes of early childhood programs, others cautioned against overestimating their effectiveness due to limitations in study designs. For instance, rigorous studies often show little to no long-term benefits.
A consensus among scholars highlighted that while children in pre-K programs are generally better prepared for school, the long-term academic gains from these programs are not strongly supported by evidence. This points to a need for better quality and more effective teaching methods in early childhood education. The conclusion is that without significant changes in early childhood education practices, the potential benefits for children may remain unrealized.
Overall, early childhood interventions are valuable, especially for those experiencing difficult home environments, but achieving lasting positive outcomes requires new and more effective approaches to teaching and support.
“The First Premise Is Wrong When It Comes to Self-Concept”
Over the past fifty years, psychologists and educators have tried to improve how people think about their abilities and potential, known as self-concept. They have focused mainly on three areas: self-esteem, stereotype threat, and growth mindset.
The self-esteem movement started in the late 1960s, with Nathaniel Branden's ideas playing a key role. He thought self-esteem meant accepting personal responsibility and being self-sufficient. However, the movement changed direction and began to emphasize having a positive self-view without needing proof for it. This meant children were often praised just for being themselves, criticism was avoided, and competitions were seen as harmful to self-esteem. By the 1970s through the 1990s, low self-esteem was blamed for many social issues, and high self-esteem was seen as a cure-all. But in the early 2000s, a large review of research indicated that boosting self-esteem did not help improve grades, careers, or other outcomes. Despite some lingering support for self-esteem in schools, overall belief in it as a solution declined significantly.
Stereotype threat refers to the idea that being judged by negative stereotypes can hurt performance. This concept was introduced in 1995 when researchers found that African American students performed worse on tests when they were told it was an IQ test, as this activated a stereotype about their intelligence. Stereotype threat became popular, also affecting how women performed in math. However, the media often misunderstood the research, suggesting that eliminating stereotype threat would close performance gaps. Various studies showed that while stereotype threat could lower scores, its overall impact seemed small and was affected by research flaws, like only publishing positive results. By 2019, a thorough study found that the actual effect of stereotype threat was minimal, which suggests that it may not be as powerful as some once thought.
The growth mindset movement developed as a response to the issues within the self-esteem movement. Psychologists Carol Dweck and Claudia Mueller conducted experiments that demonstrated praising children for being smart can decrease their motivation by making them fear failure and not wanting to risk their "smart" image. They showed that believing intelligence can grow through effort, called a growth mindset, is important. This idea has influenced many educational practices, leading to programs focused on helping students see failures as opportunities to improve.
A 2018 meta-analysis examined the relationship between growth mindset and academic success, finding it was weak. Furthermore, research on growth mindset interventions showed very little impact on students’ achievement. Many of these studies did not have strong, high-quality evidence. A recent significant study did find some benefits to a growth mindset intervention, helping some lower-performing students improve their grades. However, overall effects remained small.
In summary, efforts to change self-concept through self-esteem, stereotype threat, and growth mindset show that the expected benefits may not be as strong or effective as previously believed. More studies are needed to understand these concepts and their impacts on education clearly.
“Some Aspects of the Nonshared Environment Can Be Affected by Outside Interventions”
The nonshared environment has a big effect on traits in individuals, sometimes more than genes do. Researchers have looked into how nonshared environments work, which include things like family setup, how siblings interact, and friendships. Studies show that parents often treat their kids differently and that siblings can react in unique ways to the same situations. However, a review of many studies found that these factors explained only small amounts of the differences in traits, showing that it's still unclear how nonshared environments really work. A long-term study found that negative behavior from parents often comes from how the child acts rather than causing problems like depression. Also, identical twins, who have the same genetics, can still differ in personality and traits due to nonshared environments, but these differences change over time. Overall, finding consistent reasons for nonshared environmental influences has been difficult, hinting that many are random and don't have lasting effects.
“But You’re Ignoring Epigenetics!”
Epigenetics is an area of science that studies how our environment can change the way our genes work, which challenges the traditional idea that our genes alone determine who we are. Many people believe that epigenetics shows that our choices and surroundings can influence not just our own genes but also those of our children. This idea has been shared widely in the media, often discussing how events like war or poverty can impact future generations.
At the core of epigenetics is gene regulation, which is how genes are turned on or off to create specific proteins needed for different types of cells. DNA, located in the nucleus of the cell, is responsible for providing the instructions to make these proteins. Gene regulation involves various chemical changes to DNA that do not alter the DNA sequence itself, allowing it to control how much or how little a gene is expressed.
One important mechanism of epigenetics is DNA methylation. This process involves adding a small chemical group (methyl group) to the DNA, usually leading to a decrease in gene activity. While the DNA sequence itself remains unchanged, these methylation marks can permanently alter whether a gene is active, impacting everything from health to behavior.
There is a lot of interest in whether these changes can be passed down to future generations. Some studies suggest that experiences in early life can create lasting changes in gene expression that affect descendants. For instance, research involving rats showed that nurturing behaviors from mothers influenced certain stress-related genes in their offspring. However, while these findings are compelling, linking them directly to humans is more complicated, and many studies are mainly based on correlations rather than clear cause-and-effect relationships.
Some findings in the past, such as those related to historical events like famines or trauma from wars, have been interpreted as evidence of changes in gene activity that could be seen in later generations. Research proposed that children born during stressful times might show health issues as adults. However, critics argue that it's challenging to determine exactly what caused these genetic changes and whether they stemmed from the parent's environment or other factors.
There are claims about transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, which means that changes in gene expression due to environmental factors could be passed from parents to children. Studies about Holocaust survivors, for instance, suggested that their experiences might have affected their children's genes. Such claims have gained media attention but are met with skepticism from other scientists who believe more evidence is needed to back these ideas.
In the scientific community, there is ongoing debate about the interpretation of epigenetic studies. Some researchers express concern that too many broad conclusions are being made without sufficient evidence. They stress the importance of being careful when discussing the implications of epigenetics, suggesting that while this field is promising, the science is still developing.
Overall, epigenetics raises exciting possibilities about how genes can be influenced by our environment. It offers a new way to understand the connection between our experiences and genetic makeup. Still, the science needs careful examination, and currently, it is too early to say that we can simply change gene expression to create better outcomes for people.
Recapitulation
Conservative and liberal analysts have long debated the effectiveness of interventions aimed at helping the poor. Conservatives highlight the failures of job training and education programs, while liberals promote the advantages of income transfers. Despite numerous strategies tried over 50 years, there is no backlog of new ideas to improve outcomes. The role of genetics in behavior is significant, suggesting that efforts to change purely environmental factors may not succeed. While current interventions face limitations, future developments in pharmaceuticals and gene editing could eventually lead to more effective solutions.
A Personal Interpretation of the Material in Part III
Some abilities in our world lead to wealth and respect, and these abilities often come from our genes, which we don't choose. This genetic part makes social class more stable because successful parents usually pass on their money and talents to their kids. While children of very smart or skilled parents might not be as talented, they still have better chances of success. Society has changed from one unfairness, where talented people faced barriers, to another, where talent is often just a matter of luck based on family background. Most people can have good lives, but extreme success is harder for everyone to reach.