Your Genes Are in My Environment: Sociogenomics and the End of Nature vs. Nurture

Wednesday, October 14, 4pm, Kansas Union, Big 12 Room

Join the Department of Sociology for their 2026 Clark Lecture. Held by Dalton Conley, a Henry Putnam University Professor in Sociology at Princeton University.

Genomics is coming for the social sciences, and the important part isn't CRISPR gene editing — it's genetic prediction. The polygenic index (PGI), a
single number summing thousands of small genetic differences, is now a standard research instrument. It is fixed at conception and shuffled at
random from parent to child — the ultimate natural experiment, running inside every family. That gives social scientists leverage on questions they have struggled with for decades: how much peers actually influence each other, how children shape the parenting they receive, how strongly we sort by genotype in marriage and neighborhood. Drawing on The Social Genome, Dalton will cover what these scores can and can't do, and their policy and pragmatic applications — embryo screening, insurance, schools — already being deployed without much public discussion.