What do you think?
Rate this book
The Social Genome: The New Science of Nature and Nurture
A pioneering scientist presents a mind-expanding account of the sociogenomics revolution, which promises to upend everything we know about human development.
For decades, Dalton Conley tried to answer the big social questions—about why groups hold together, about inequality, and more—through the traditional tools of his first field, sociology. He eventually found that those tools could take him only so far. So he went back to school and got another PhD—in biology. Now, in The Social Genome, Conley explains how the new field he has helped to pioneer, sociogenomics, will upend our world. The key is the polygenic index, which allows us to analyze DNA to broadly predict a child’s future—not just their height or their weight, but how they may be expected to fare in school, and much more. He argues that we should no longer think of nature versus nurture, but of how our genes need nurture to work and how, in turn, our environments are made partly from the genes of other people. The implications of this new science—for our sense of self, for our social policies—are vast.
For decades, Dalton Conley tried to answer the big social questions—about why groups hold together, about inequality, and more—through the traditional tools of his first field, sociology. He eventually found that those tools could take him only so far. So he went back to school and got another PhD—in biology. Now, in The Social Genome, Conley explains how the new field he has helped to pioneer, sociogenomics, will upend our world. The key is the polygenic index, which allows us to analyze DNA to broadly predict a child’s future—not just their height or their weight, but how they may be expected to fare in school, and much more. He argues that we should no longer think of nature versus nurture, but of how our genes need nurture to work and how, in turn, our environments are made partly from the genes of other people. The implications of this new science—for our sense of self, for our social policies—are vast.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published March 18, 2025
32 people are currently reading
291 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 10, 2025
‘Our bodies, following the instructions of our genes, modify the environment around us, seek out specific inputs, and evolve social responses’.
What can I say? I have more notes than space to fill here! Sociogenomics is an evolving science that combines genetics with human behaviour, in the hope that through better understanding, some social and health related problems might be prevented or mitigated. What is inherently clear is that there is no nature vs nurture, only a dynamic symbiosis of the two.
Our unique genetic code drives us to live life in a certain way. The environment responds to our endeavours and thereby affects our future endeavours accordingly (essentially positive or negative feedback) and thus this malleable life of ours begins, and certain genetic traits of ours become more or less important.
What for me was most interesting, though perhaps not surprising, is that it turns out that indeed ‘birds of a feather do flock together’, with our chosen friends on average sharing enough genetic material to be counted as fourth cousins (not family tree specifically, just commonalities), and your chosen partner often shares even more!
Gosh, overlay this type of science with the quantum theory of entanglement and you really do realise that at some level we truly are all related to all people and things. They are us, we are them.
‘Whether or not we are the same person over the course of our lives is an interesting philosophical question’.
What can I say? I have more notes than space to fill here! Sociogenomics is an evolving science that combines genetics with human behaviour, in the hope that through better understanding, some social and health related problems might be prevented or mitigated. What is inherently clear is that there is no nature vs nurture, only a dynamic symbiosis of the two.
Our unique genetic code drives us to live life in a certain way. The environment responds to our endeavours and thereby affects our future endeavours accordingly (essentially positive or negative feedback) and thus this malleable life of ours begins, and certain genetic traits of ours become more or less important.
What for me was most interesting, though perhaps not surprising, is that it turns out that indeed ‘birds of a feather do flock together’, with our chosen friends on average sharing enough genetic material to be counted as fourth cousins (not family tree specifically, just commonalities), and your chosen partner often shares even more!
Gosh, overlay this type of science with the quantum theory of entanglement and you really do realise that at some level we truly are all related to all people and things. They are us, we are them.
‘Whether or not we are the same person over the course of our lives is an interesting philosophical question’.
April 12, 2025
Dalton Conley’s The Social Genome is peace offering in the ongoing and raging sociobiology wars, i.e. the proverbial nature versus nurture debate. The offering of peace is an attempt to obliterate the distinction between nature and nurture altogether. Conley says both genes and the environment matter and there is a dynamic relationship between both forces. Scientifically, these claims are very defensible and supported by the best available research (not necessarily every claim in the book but this reciprocal dynamic between nature and nurture), but it is also some misdirection when it comes to why the nature versus nurture debate has such high stakes. The real interest in the debate stems from a concern about the origins of inequality and whether they're modifiable. Conley largely concedes the point that stratification (i.e. inequality) is inevitable, especially given our sophisticated modern environments and the event of the recent past, but still leaves space for egalitarian hopes and dreams. He keeps these egalitarian hopes and dreams on life support by arguing that sociogenomic science will be a useful too for studying inequality, especially in terms of teasing out gene-by-environment interactions, and eventually we'll be able to offer more to those who are not served by their current environments nor blessed by the genetic lottery.
After some brief throat clearing about the dangers of ideology in sociogenomic research - here, I mean he offers a scientific and quasi-moral critique of The Bell Curve and the strong form of hereditarianism - he provides a brief history the field of sociogenomics, which he asserts is distinct from behavioral genetics (BG). He sees BG as a valuable though somewhat flawed field. He briefly covers the BG's ACE model which leverages the difference in trait similarity between monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs. He doesn't recap BG research in great detail but rather focuses on the weaknesses the ACE model. This includes an inability to directly measure genotypes and some shaky assumption such as the architecture of a trait being entirely additive or the environment of MZ and DZ being roughly equal. He focuses on the ACE model weakness not to dismiss genetic effect, which is the usual tact that hard social constructionist take, but rather as a rationale for using more modern genomic approaches to tackle nature versus nurture questions. This boils down to using something called a polygenic index (PGI), which is derived from genome-wide association studies performed on large biobanks, to assess the effects of genes on traits, genes on the environment, environment on genes, or genetic effects that depend on certain environments.
There is a lot of complexity here as we're taking about tons and tons of research studies, but I'll attempt to summarize some important insights from Conley below:
1. Genes Likely Act Through Environments, especially for Social and Behavioral Phenotypes
Conley demonstrates that genetic tendencies (e.g., potential educational attainment) appear mediated by social contexts. For example, children with higher PGIs for education tend to receive more parental engagement, amplifying their genetic advantages. This describes a feedforward mechanism between genes and environments, which can may account for the large delta between the heritability estimates from twin studies and the heritability estimates of from molecular estimates (GWAS), i.e. the missing heritability question. Similarly, environmental stressors like discrimination may suppress genetic potential. As evidence for this claim, Conley presents the results of a study where the relative pigmentation of African American siblings predicted worse social outcomes (blood pressure) when controlling for PGI. With any research approach there are weakness, so I caution taking them as is. These are provisional findings, which may be revised as the genotyping methods become more comprehensive and the PGIs become
2. There is a Nature to Nurture: Social-Genetic Effects
Conley highlights recent research that suggests a "genetic nurture" effect. This includes showing that the genes a person does NOT inherit from their parents still predict life outcomes, such as educational attainment. He walks through other ways similar effects have been shown for peer groups too. refers to situations where the average PGI of a peer group is more predictive of individual outcomes than any individual's PGI. These effect can also be shown to be independent from an individual genetic predisposition too.
Conley also highlights just how genetically stratified many of our social environment already are. Despite the seeming randomness of how we fall into friends groups, he shows that there are significant correlations between the PGIs of friends, making them look more like cousinages than friend groups (this language is a bit misleading as friends are not actually this closely related, but the magnitude of the PGI correlation is on the order one would expect for people of said genetic relation).
3. Assortative Mating and Inequality
In a related way, Conley shows that the sorting we see in friend group is even more significant for in mate choice. There is significant sorting by similar PGIs among partners, which is a meaningful contributor to material inequality. He quote demographer Christine Schwartz who has estimated that assortative mating (matching with a partner based on certain similarities) is responsible for 40% of the increase in income inequality in recent decades. Conley calls this "genomic compounding," and it seems inarguable that this make differences among segments of the population starker and more rigid.
4. A Brave New World is Coming but Hopefully It Isn't Dehumanizing
Conley cautions against implementing PGI in educational and social decision-making. PGI can provide a lot of interesting research insights at the population level but are often far too noisy as individual predictors. Additionally, even when a PGI is capturing an accurate effect, it tells us little about the causal chain of event from genotype to phenotype. The mechanism of a genetic effect may be due to irrational or unfair social attitudes and actions, which may be further entrenched by relying on PGIs to set policy. Ideally, PGIs are a tool that can be leveraged to make all people thrive and match them to optimal environments rather than a doubling down on advantages for the advantaged and disadvantages for the disadvantaged. Personally, I'm not sanguine about the use of PGIs for egalitarian social effects. I think intervention that are useful or amplify genetic gifts are likely to do so universally and thus the most gifted will glean the most benefit. However, I do think there may be public health benefits that can be gleaned from PGIs that are likely to be more broadly shared, e.g. early interventions for preventing obesity and drug addiction.
Conley's research and the research he cites often draws from large datasets like the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the United Kingdom Biobank (UKBB). I am fairly persuaded on the point made about gene-environment interactions, and I'm curious to what extent these can be resolved in ways, by which I mean I'm eager to find specific GxE for socially relevant phenotypes that we can reliable modify. I think in many cases these interactions will be so idiosyncratic yet still come out the same for similar genotypes that it will simply be more useful to regard these as actual genetic effects because this will be the only reliable way to identify them (there will also just remain some noise due to this reality).
In some ways I was disappointed that the book wasn't a bit more detailed about walking through more research findings, especially from quantitative genomics, and laying out all the methodological details. But at the end of the day, it is really great to see a book from a mainstream sociologist acknowledge the importance of inherited genetic variation on behavioral traits. For a very long time, this was a Rubicon no sociologist would cross. There is no longer a taboo (or at least the strength of the taboo has abated some). It crumbled under the onslaught of the genomic revolution. Much remains to be learned and debated.
After some brief throat clearing about the dangers of ideology in sociogenomic research - here, I mean he offers a scientific and quasi-moral critique of The Bell Curve and the strong form of hereditarianism - he provides a brief history the field of sociogenomics, which he asserts is distinct from behavioral genetics (BG). He sees BG as a valuable though somewhat flawed field. He briefly covers the BG's ACE model which leverages the difference in trait similarity between monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs. He doesn't recap BG research in great detail but rather focuses on the weaknesses the ACE model. This includes an inability to directly measure genotypes and some shaky assumption such as the architecture of a trait being entirely additive or the environment of MZ and DZ being roughly equal. He focuses on the ACE model weakness not to dismiss genetic effect, which is the usual tact that hard social constructionist take, but rather as a rationale for using more modern genomic approaches to tackle nature versus nurture questions. This boils down to using something called a polygenic index (PGI), which is derived from genome-wide association studies performed on large biobanks, to assess the effects of genes on traits, genes on the environment, environment on genes, or genetic effects that depend on certain environments.
There is a lot of complexity here as we're taking about tons and tons of research studies, but I'll attempt to summarize some important insights from Conley below:
1. Genes Likely Act Through Environments, especially for Social and Behavioral Phenotypes
Conley demonstrates that genetic tendencies (e.g., potential educational attainment) appear mediated by social contexts. For example, children with higher PGIs for education tend to receive more parental engagement, amplifying their genetic advantages. This describes a feedforward mechanism between genes and environments, which can may account for the large delta between the heritability estimates from twin studies and the heritability estimates of from molecular estimates (GWAS), i.e. the missing heritability question. Similarly, environmental stressors like discrimination may suppress genetic potential. As evidence for this claim, Conley presents the results of a study where the relative pigmentation of African American siblings predicted worse social outcomes (blood pressure) when controlling for PGI. With any research approach there are weakness, so I caution taking them as is. These are provisional findings, which may be revised as the genotyping methods become more comprehensive and the PGIs become
2. There is a Nature to Nurture: Social-Genetic Effects
Conley highlights recent research that suggests a "genetic nurture" effect. This includes showing that the genes a person does NOT inherit from their parents still predict life outcomes, such as educational attainment. He walks through other ways similar effects have been shown for peer groups too. refers to situations where the average PGI of a peer group is more predictive of individual outcomes than any individual's PGI. These effect can also be shown to be independent from an individual genetic predisposition too.
Conley also highlights just how genetically stratified many of our social environment already are. Despite the seeming randomness of how we fall into friends groups, he shows that there are significant correlations between the PGIs of friends, making them look more like cousinages than friend groups (this language is a bit misleading as friends are not actually this closely related, but the magnitude of the PGI correlation is on the order one would expect for people of said genetic relation).
3. Assortative Mating and Inequality
In a related way, Conley shows that the sorting we see in friend group is even more significant for in mate choice. There is significant sorting by similar PGIs among partners, which is a meaningful contributor to material inequality. He quote demographer Christine Schwartz who has estimated that assortative mating (matching with a partner based on certain similarities) is responsible for 40% of the increase in income inequality in recent decades. Conley calls this "genomic compounding," and it seems inarguable that this make differences among segments of the population starker and more rigid.
4. A Brave New World is Coming but Hopefully It Isn't Dehumanizing
Conley cautions against implementing PGI in educational and social decision-making. PGI can provide a lot of interesting research insights at the population level but are often far too noisy as individual predictors. Additionally, even when a PGI is capturing an accurate effect, it tells us little about the causal chain of event from genotype to phenotype. The mechanism of a genetic effect may be due to irrational or unfair social attitudes and actions, which may be further entrenched by relying on PGIs to set policy. Ideally, PGIs are a tool that can be leveraged to make all people thrive and match them to optimal environments rather than a doubling down on advantages for the advantaged and disadvantages for the disadvantaged. Personally, I'm not sanguine about the use of PGIs for egalitarian social effects. I think intervention that are useful or amplify genetic gifts are likely to do so universally and thus the most gifted will glean the most benefit. However, I do think there may be public health benefits that can be gleaned from PGIs that are likely to be more broadly shared, e.g. early interventions for preventing obesity and drug addiction.
Conley's research and the research he cites often draws from large datasets like the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the United Kingdom Biobank (UKBB). I am fairly persuaded on the point made about gene-environment interactions, and I'm curious to what extent these can be resolved in ways, by which I mean I'm eager to find specific GxE for socially relevant phenotypes that we can reliable modify. I think in many cases these interactions will be so idiosyncratic yet still come out the same for similar genotypes that it will simply be more useful to regard these as actual genetic effects because this will be the only reliable way to identify them (there will also just remain some noise due to this reality).
In some ways I was disappointed that the book wasn't a bit more detailed about walking through more research findings, especially from quantitative genomics, and laying out all the methodological details. But at the end of the day, it is really great to see a book from a mainstream sociologist acknowledge the importance of inherited genetic variation on behavioral traits. For a very long time, this was a Rubicon no sociologist would cross. There is no longer a taboo (or at least the strength of the taboo has abated some). It crumbled under the onslaught of the genomic revolution. Much remains to be learned and debated.
April 6, 2025
Dalton Conley is a professor of sociology at Princeton University who holds both a PhD in sociology from Columbia and a later-in-life PhD in biology from NYU; his research focuses on the interaction between genes (particularly polygenic indices, PGIs, which are constructed based on combinations of inherited gene variants obtained from genome-wide association studies) and behavior (both on an individual level and a society-wide level). In his 2025 book The Social Genome, he opens with the story of how he and his second wife decided to have a child, and how he, in all seriousness, sought to eugenically engineer this child by selecting for embryos with favorable PGIs for traits he was selecting for -- thankfully, however, it appears these requests were not entertained. (This is the same man who named his first two children from his first marriage "E" and "Yo Xing Heyno Augustus Eisner Alexander Weiser Knuckles," respectively, and as much as I hoped this was satire, it appears to be true).
The rest of the book is very "out there." And I say this as an MD and PhD who clinically practices in the diagnostic genomics space and envisions a mid-term future where whole genome sequencing is more widely adopted by the general public (for better of worse). In 2025, genomic medicine is at the level of defining and characterizing single gene alterations that lead to disease, as well as pathway-level alterations that lead to disease phenotypes, and in some cases, providing gene therapy and gene-targeted chemotherapy. Things get blurry and veer far away from evidence-based practice the more you move from single gene variants to polygenic risk scores (particularly if the variants composing such scores are not well-characterized on an individual level) as a way of risk stratification. Conley proposes a lot more than that in this book, and many of these propositions made me deeply uncomfortable. I would advise fellow readers, particularly laypeople, to treat this book as more of a work of science fiction than science fact.
My statistics:
Book 106 for 2025
Book 2032 cumulatively
The rest of the book is very "out there." And I say this as an MD and PhD who clinically practices in the diagnostic genomics space and envisions a mid-term future where whole genome sequencing is more widely adopted by the general public (for better of worse). In 2025, genomic medicine is at the level of defining and characterizing single gene alterations that lead to disease, as well as pathway-level alterations that lead to disease phenotypes, and in some cases, providing gene therapy and gene-targeted chemotherapy. Things get blurry and veer far away from evidence-based practice the more you move from single gene variants to polygenic risk scores (particularly if the variants composing such scores are not well-characterized on an individual level) as a way of risk stratification. Conley proposes a lot more than that in this book, and many of these propositions made me deeply uncomfortable. I would advise fellow readers, particularly laypeople, to treat this book as more of a work of science fiction than science fact.
My statistics:
Book 106 for 2025
Book 2032 cumulatively
February 2, 2025
Conley is a sociologist turned biologist and utilizes interdisciplinary techniques to investigate topics at the intersection of these two fields. This book focuses on nature and nurture and is heavily built on the polygenic index (PGI) which are individual based estimates that can predict someone's likelihood of having a trait/disease. For a person to have a specific trait there are genetic components involved, but also environmental components.
This book had an interesting premise and as a PhD in genetics I was curious to understand how a sociologist with a PhD in genetics would tackle the question of nature and nurture. Basically, both are important, but Conley argues that a lot of our potential is in our genes and he's seen in research that a parent's prior education influences the likelihood of their children's future education. Some of that could be due to a genetic factor of inherent drive and some of that could be due to environmental factors of how a child is raised.
The last chapter definitely focused on the creation of a better society but I still struggle to see how people knowing their PGIs and making decisions about their life based on that information could lead to equitable outcomes.
I didn't love this book. It was dense and hard to read through at some points and I think the science could have been explained better. Conley also made several comments about diseases and disabilities that I found to be in poor taste.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC.
This book had an interesting premise and as a PhD in genetics I was curious to understand how a sociologist with a PhD in genetics would tackle the question of nature and nurture. Basically, both are important, but Conley argues that a lot of our potential is in our genes and he's seen in research that a parent's prior education influences the likelihood of their children's future education. Some of that could be due to a genetic factor of inherent drive and some of that could be due to environmental factors of how a child is raised.
The last chapter definitely focused on the creation of a better society but I still struggle to see how people knowing their PGIs and making decisions about their life based on that information could lead to equitable outcomes.
I didn't love this book. It was dense and hard to read through at some points and I think the science could have been explained better. Conley also made several comments about diseases and disabilities that I found to be in poor taste.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC.
May 27, 2025
The title makes this sound groundbreaking, like something new has been learned in the question of “nature vs nurture”. At the end of it all, the same question still exists. We can define better what “nature” means, certain genes that may be involved. If someone wants greater understanding of what “nature” means, this book just might be for you. If you are looking for answers, however, you are better looking somewhere else…if the answer even exists.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
March 24, 2025Dnf, boring and I found mistakes
July 28, 2025
I’ve toyed with the idea of having my own genome mapped and try to stay informed on the latest gene-editing technology, like CRISPR. It’s not difficult to imagine a world soon that could look like the sci-fi movie Gattaca, where embryos are edited for certain “ideal” genes. Conley takes the concept of gene-editing beyond the biologic and applies the broader social picture to be considered. I appreciated Conley’s explanation of PGI (polygenic index) and his view that genes should not be thought of in only a “nature” viewpoint but also the environmental (nuture) viewpoint. Some of the strongest aspects of The Social Genome involved Conley’s use of economic “instrumental variables” to study his theories.
While the first “PGI-optimized” child, Aurea, was born in 2019, the idea that embryos could be edited through CRISPR before implantation still seems like sci-fi. I would love to see an updated version of this work as the technology further develops.
Heavier on the science than some non-fiction works. The footnotes were also more fascinating than I expected and not to be missed if you enjoy the rest of the book.
While the first “PGI-optimized” child, Aurea, was born in 2019, the idea that embryos could be edited through CRISPR before implantation still seems like sci-fi. I would love to see an updated version of this work as the technology further develops.
Heavier on the science than some non-fiction works. The footnotes were also more fascinating than I expected and not to be missed if you enjoy the rest of the book.
December 4, 2025
Really interesting ideas and worth pondering on. Sadly, the writing isn’t great. The author is repetitive and seems to have a very self-centered personality. I was getting annoyed at the constant use of the first person in a book that should be more scientific and objective. Even more, many of the personal stories are not anecdotes that are truly relevant to the points of the book, but more like “low-key flexes” of the author trying to talk about himself more than necessary. He does mention that from early age he was motivated to get out of his neighborhood and make money, so I guess that personal need to prove that he has made it shows in the pages of the book.
I think the field is very interesting and I’m glad to have read the book, but I hope the author revisits it upon improving his delivery in writing. After having read Sapolsky’s Determined, I wanted to experience something similar with updated science, but this is not it.
I think the field is very interesting and I’m glad to have read the book, but I hope the author revisits it upon improving his delivery in writing. After having read Sapolsky’s Determined, I wanted to experience something similar with updated science, but this is not it.
July 8, 2025
To put it bluntly, this is the Bell Curve carefully disguised.
It is like listening to David Icke ,you get a long, calm preamble of plausible sounding, evidence adjacent reasoning. There's data. There’s nuance. You’re nodding along. Then suddenly, the intellectual lizard moment drops:
“And of course, much of this social stratification can be explained by inherited genetic differences.”
Epigenetics???? Boom! House of cards all over the floor!
Just a warning, if you like science, don't waste your time. (as I did, for a while). Of course, if it confirms your bias, go for it. Wave it around at the next rally
It is like listening to David Icke ,you get a long, calm preamble of plausible sounding, evidence adjacent reasoning. There's data. There’s nuance. You’re nodding along. Then suddenly, the intellectual lizard moment drops:
“And of course, much of this social stratification can be explained by inherited genetic differences.”
Epigenetics???? Boom! House of cards all over the floor!
Just a warning, if you like science, don't waste your time. (as I did, for a while). Of course, if it confirms your bias, go for it. Wave it around at the next rally
March 8, 2025
The new science of sociogenomics challenges the nature vs. nurture debate, demonstrating how DNA and environment influence each other. This book explores the vast implications of this new science for self-understanding and social policy.
This book is intriguing but also concerning. I question the necessity of using genetics for the purposes mentioned in this book. It seems like an updated version of eugenics, even if it’s ostensibly value-neutral.
Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.
This book is intriguing but also concerning. I question the necessity of using genetics for the purposes mentioned in this book. It seems like an updated version of eugenics, even if it’s ostensibly value-neutral.
Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.
October 4, 2025
Really interesting topic. A bit over my head as a non-scientist, but explained well if a bit overly detailed. The middle chapters in particular got a bit too far into the weeds with so many examples. And I was glad in the last chapter Conley touched on the tricky moral and ethical questions provoked by our ever increasing knowledge of genetics.
July 10, 2025
Interesting ideas and explanation of relationships between genes, their expressions and observed traits. Too much family history, I really don't need to know how badly you fucked up your first marriage, I can tell from how bitter you are, I don't need the details.
September 3, 2025
This reads like a long form explanation that both genetics/nature and environment/nurture shape who we are and how we live. Potentially worthwhile if you feel like getting into the weeds about why/how, but nothing particularly revelatory if you don't.
May 16, 2025
Just thought it would be more ground breaking than it was.
May 17, 2025
Very interesting read! I like reading more fun science topics. Overall it was a “no shit” kinda thing. I like the writing style tho
July 1, 2025
Review to come
July 15, 2025
May well change how I think about big questions of humanity, so might merit a higher rating just on that basis.
August 12, 2025
Solid 3.5-4 stars, very interesting and worth reading!
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews