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Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness
A daring and intimate exploration of how genetics complicates our ideas about blame, punishment, and moral responsibility, from acclaimed psychologist and author of The Genetic Lottery Kathryn Paige Harden.
“An extraordinary book, the very best of science writing, because it is about not just science—it is memoir, history, bleeding-edge genetics, and a completely original take on original sin.”—Adam Rutherford, author of A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
As one of the world’s leading scientists examining how our DNA shapes differences in temperament, temptation, and behavior, Kathryn Paige Harden has seen firsthand how we continue to struggle—in public and in our most private relationships—with the ancient tensions between nature and nurture, freedom and constraint, the desire to punish and the longing to forgive.
In Original Sin, she weaves together insights from her own experience as a daughter, mother, wife, and scientist with cutting-edge research in genetics and psychology to grapple with some of the most important questions in modern How do we take responsibility for the people we become, knowing how we are shaped by both biology and experience? How should we respond when people hurt each other—or themselves? And has science made guilt obsolete?
Navigating the psychological and biological terrain of addiction, antisocial behavior, and violence, Harden confronts the disorienting ways science unsettles our understanding of wrongdoing and choice. In doing so, she asks us not to absolve but to reckon differently with notions of fairness and blame. A revelatory inquiry into the uneasy space where human behavior meets inherited biology, Original Sin challenges us to imagine a more humane vision of accountability—for ourselves and for one another.
“An extraordinary book, the very best of science writing, because it is about not just science—it is memoir, history, bleeding-edge genetics, and a completely original take on original sin.”—Adam Rutherford, author of A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
As one of the world’s leading scientists examining how our DNA shapes differences in temperament, temptation, and behavior, Kathryn Paige Harden has seen firsthand how we continue to struggle—in public and in our most private relationships—with the ancient tensions between nature and nurture, freedom and constraint, the desire to punish and the longing to forgive.
In Original Sin, she weaves together insights from her own experience as a daughter, mother, wife, and scientist with cutting-edge research in genetics and psychology to grapple with some of the most important questions in modern How do we take responsibility for the people we become, knowing how we are shaped by both biology and experience? How should we respond when people hurt each other—or themselves? And has science made guilt obsolete?
Navigating the psychological and biological terrain of addiction, antisocial behavior, and violence, Harden confronts the disorienting ways science unsettles our understanding of wrongdoing and choice. In doing so, she asks us not to absolve but to reckon differently with notions of fairness and blame. A revelatory inquiry into the uneasy space where human behavior meets inherited biology, Original Sin challenges us to imagine a more humane vision of accountability—for ourselves and for one another.
308 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 3, 2026
About the author
Kathryn Paige Harden
4 books114 followersKathryn Paige Harden is a tenured professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Texas Austin, where she leads the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab and co-directs the Texas Twin Project.
She is the author of The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality (Princeton). Dr. Harden received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia and completed her clinical internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School before moving to Austin in 2009. She has published over 100 scientific articles on genetic influences on complex human behavior, including child cognitive development, academic achievement, risk-taking, mental health, sexual activity, and childbearing. Her research has been featured in popular media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Huffington Post.
In 2017, she was honored with a prestigious national award from the American Psychological Association for her distinguished scientific contributions to the study of genetics and human individual differences. In addition to research, Dr. Harden teaches Introduction to Psychology in a synchronous massive online class format.
She is the author of The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality (Princeton). Dr. Harden received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia and completed her clinical internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School before moving to Austin in 2009. She has published over 100 scientific articles on genetic influences on complex human behavior, including child cognitive development, academic achievement, risk-taking, mental health, sexual activity, and childbearing. Her research has been featured in popular media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Huffington Post.
In 2017, she was honored with a prestigious national award from the American Psychological Association for her distinguished scientific contributions to the study of genetics and human individual differences. In addition to research, Dr. Harden teaches Introduction to Psychology in a synchronous massive online class format.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 66 reviews
May 8, 2026
Original Sin integrates personal memoir with scientific research, philosophical inquiry, and broader cultural critique. It is a discursive follow-up to Harden's 2021 book, The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality, asking why people do harm to themselves and others and what should be done about it. Harden's commitments to egalitarianism remains but her stridency about the sociopolitical import of her behavioral genetics research has subsided some.
The book is more of an essay collection than a coherent whole, but it's a compelling collection that will engage readers of all backgrounds on deep human questions concerning our natures, fairness, and forgiveness. Harden is remarkably candid about her personal life, which will probably be of most interest to those who pick up the book, but I really appreciated when Harden discussed her research and other genetic inputs on behavior. For instance, the details on Brunner syndrome were deeply appreciated, especially because it is an example that many left-of-center geneticists have played down or overlooked. The book can be construed as a very strong re-assertion of the first law of behavioral genetics, the idea that all human traits vary in populations because of variation in genomes. She extends this acceptance of genetic effects to how these shape and interact with environments. They aren't independent of each other.
Harden's research program is most interested in risk-taking phenotypes and related behavioral patterns like addiction, antisocial conduct, and violence. These are sensitive subjects to many, but Harden maintains her candidness on these subjects as well despite staking out a clear normative position to left of most people. She then traces how our normative processes for regulating these behaviors are perhaps founded on ideas that aren't true and even when they are, things may still be unfair and unjust, but it is unclear how we can remedy these issues or even if these questions can or should be resolved. She's is comfortable with this dissonance and committed to continual reflection and revision. Personally, I'm for pragmatic, empirical solutions to these questions as it is clear people respond to incentives and sometime understanding material causes clearly enables effective remediation.
All in all, Original Sin is a provocative, interdisciplinary exploration of human behavior that pushes readers to reconsider their reflexive ideas about blame and moral responsibility by integrating genetics, psychology, and lived experience. It invites a more nuanced and compassionate framework for understanding why people behave as they do and how we might respond more justly.
I have a longer review of Original Sin at Substack
*I'd like to than Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in return for an honest review.
The book is more of an essay collection than a coherent whole, but it's a compelling collection that will engage readers of all backgrounds on deep human questions concerning our natures, fairness, and forgiveness. Harden is remarkably candid about her personal life, which will probably be of most interest to those who pick up the book, but I really appreciated when Harden discussed her research and other genetic inputs on behavior. For instance, the details on Brunner syndrome were deeply appreciated, especially because it is an example that many left-of-center geneticists have played down or overlooked. The book can be construed as a very strong re-assertion of the first law of behavioral genetics, the idea that all human traits vary in populations because of variation in genomes. She extends this acceptance of genetic effects to how these shape and interact with environments. They aren't independent of each other.
Harden's research program is most interested in risk-taking phenotypes and related behavioral patterns like addiction, antisocial conduct, and violence. These are sensitive subjects to many, but Harden maintains her candidness on these subjects as well despite staking out a clear normative position to left of most people. She then traces how our normative processes for regulating these behaviors are perhaps founded on ideas that aren't true and even when they are, things may still be unfair and unjust, but it is unclear how we can remedy these issues or even if these questions can or should be resolved. She's is comfortable with this dissonance and committed to continual reflection and revision. Personally, I'm for pragmatic, empirical solutions to these questions as it is clear people respond to incentives and sometime understanding material causes clearly enables effective remediation.
All in all, Original Sin is a provocative, interdisciplinary exploration of human behavior that pushes readers to reconsider their reflexive ideas about blame and moral responsibility by integrating genetics, psychology, and lived experience. It invites a more nuanced and compassionate framework for understanding why people behave as they do and how we might respond more justly.
I have a longer review of Original Sin at Substack
*I'd like to than Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in return for an honest review.
June 9, 2026
I have two principal objections to this book.
First, it often reads less like a work of scholarship and more like a diary. As with any diary, the narrative oscillates between moments of cool insight and lengthy passages of limited relevance to anyone outside the author’s immediate experience. The scientific content is surprisingly sparse, while the theological discussions are too frequent and, in my view, very limited to her upbringing as a Protestant. Paige appears deeply invested in recounting the minutiae of her personal life, a feature that I found neither illuminating nor particularly germane to why I bought this book.
Second, I came away with the impression that Paige is fundamentally a psychologist and geneticist in interesting ways. The book often exhibits the confidence and certitude associated with the natural sciences, yet applies that same intellectual posture to some of the most complex problems in the world using the tools of psychology - free will. It’s like showing up to the crusades with plastic spoons. Silly
There is little in the book that I liked. However, the chapter on incarceration deserves special mention, if only because it fits into the long tradition of well-intentioned but profoundly detached and thoughtless social theorizing. It is an exercise in abstract moral reflection that is insulated from the realities of crime.
For centuries, academics have proposed pretty solutions to social problems from positions of comfort and distance, often shielded from the consequences of their own prescriptions. This chapter, regrettably, felt like another contribution to that tradition. It speaks with a kind of confidence disproportionate to the evidentiary foundations available in psychology or human genetics.
First, it often reads less like a work of scholarship and more like a diary. As with any diary, the narrative oscillates between moments of cool insight and lengthy passages of limited relevance to anyone outside the author’s immediate experience. The scientific content is surprisingly sparse, while the theological discussions are too frequent and, in my view, very limited to her upbringing as a Protestant. Paige appears deeply invested in recounting the minutiae of her personal life, a feature that I found neither illuminating nor particularly germane to why I bought this book.
Second, I came away with the impression that Paige is fundamentally a psychologist and geneticist in interesting ways. The book often exhibits the confidence and certitude associated with the natural sciences, yet applies that same intellectual posture to some of the most complex problems in the world using the tools of psychology - free will. It’s like showing up to the crusades with plastic spoons. Silly
There is little in the book that I liked. However, the chapter on incarceration deserves special mention, if only because it fits into the long tradition of well-intentioned but profoundly detached and thoughtless social theorizing. It is an exercise in abstract moral reflection that is insulated from the realities of crime.
For centuries, academics have proposed pretty solutions to social problems from positions of comfort and distance, often shielded from the consequences of their own prescriptions. This chapter, regrettably, felt like another contribution to that tradition. It speaks with a kind of confidence disproportionate to the evidentiary foundations available in psychology or human genetics.
April 1, 2026
This book slotted beautifully into one of my personal obsessions: Why do people do the terrible things they do, why do some people do so many very terrible things, and what do we (individually and collectively) do about it?
Harden is a psychologist and academic genetics scientist, and she writes Original Sin from the perspective of a former evangelical Christian trying to make sense of the genetic basis of anti-social behaviour and what this means for blame, accountability, punishment, and rehabilitation. It's fascinating (I suppose, if you share any part of my personal obsession).
Harden proposes that the impulse to blame and punishment, no matter how ineffective they may be, is as human as sex and misbehaviour, an argument I appreciated for its originality (at least to me). So we will continue to blame and punish because that's what we do. I'm not sure all of her evidence supports this, however; for instance, she discusses a wasp species where the queen's sisters will bite her if she gets too greedy, and the queen backs down and changes her behaviour. Clearly punishment is doing something. It's not ineffective. It's possible that the forms of punishment we use in our culture aren't effective or that the effects don't show up in our studies, but it's hard for me to believe that something so common throughout the animal kingdom is uniquely ineffective just for humans.
Getting to that point is genuinely pleasurable and fascinating. There are indeed genetic conditions that result in terrible behaviour. The most striking is Brunner syndrome, the result of a mutation on the X chromosome that leads to impulse problems and violence. It is almost all men, who end up assaulting, killing, and raping people.
Other combinations of genes increase the risk for antisocial behaviour but less impressively. Harden argues that these can be mediated by positive parenting and good social supports; direct citations were not available in the audiobook version, so I had to do some digging.
One study she cites is by Luke Hyde et al in 2016, looking at the children of highly antisocial birth mothers raised by pro-social adoptive mothers using positive reinforcement and rewards rather than harsh or punitive reactions, which concludes that positive parenting "buffers" against the influence of the inherited genes of an antisocial biological mother. It's an accurate summation but perhaps overstated in the book. Here's a diagram showing the results of the study:
Brief summary: child callous/unemotional behaviour is on the vertical axis, biological mother antisocial behaviour on the horizontal, with intersections marked with a solid dot for adoptive mothers using harsh/punitive tactics and an x for positive reinforcement instead. The solid line shows the heredity of antisocial behaviour when harsh or punitive responses are used, and the dashed line for when positive parenting is used.
OK, so: yes, positive parenting "buffers" against the effects of the antisocial genes, in that there is less antisocial behaviour noted among the children raised in positive environments. But it does not appear to be dramatic. There are plenty of x's above the dashed and even solid lines, demonstrating that these children continued to behave with callous and unemotional behaviours (a predictor of conduct disorder and ASPD) even in the positive environments, and you really need those lines to even see the differences because the observations are just a big cloud of dots and x's.
You can read the whole study for free here if you want to: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles...
Basically, yes, a more positive early environment helps, but does not solve, antisocial behaviour. And Harden argues that maybe we don't even really want to get rid of it, since her own work links antisocial behaviour with pleasure-seeking and, as she says, do we want to get rid of pleasure seeking? Probably not.
If you're interested in reading about why people do terrible things, why some people do a lot of terrible things and won't stop, and what can be done about it, this is an interesting and enjoyable exploration of just how monumentally complicated and perhaps insoluble the question is.
Harden is a psychologist and academic genetics scientist, and she writes Original Sin from the perspective of a former evangelical Christian trying to make sense of the genetic basis of anti-social behaviour and what this means for blame, accountability, punishment, and rehabilitation. It's fascinating (I suppose, if you share any part of my personal obsession).
Harden proposes that the impulse to blame and punishment, no matter how ineffective they may be, is as human as sex and misbehaviour, an argument I appreciated for its originality (at least to me). So we will continue to blame and punish because that's what we do. I'm not sure all of her evidence supports this, however; for instance, she discusses a wasp species where the queen's sisters will bite her if she gets too greedy, and the queen backs down and changes her behaviour. Clearly punishment is doing something. It's not ineffective. It's possible that the forms of punishment we use in our culture aren't effective or that the effects don't show up in our studies, but it's hard for me to believe that something so common throughout the animal kingdom is uniquely ineffective just for humans.
Getting to that point is genuinely pleasurable and fascinating. There are indeed genetic conditions that result in terrible behaviour. The most striking is Brunner syndrome, the result of a mutation on the X chromosome that leads to impulse problems and violence. It is almost all men, who end up assaulting, killing, and raping people.
Other combinations of genes increase the risk for antisocial behaviour but less impressively. Harden argues that these can be mediated by positive parenting and good social supports; direct citations were not available in the audiobook version, so I had to do some digging.
One study she cites is by Luke Hyde et al in 2016, looking at the children of highly antisocial birth mothers raised by pro-social adoptive mothers using positive reinforcement and rewards rather than harsh or punitive reactions, which concludes that positive parenting "buffers" against the influence of the inherited genes of an antisocial biological mother. It's an accurate summation but perhaps overstated in the book. Here's a diagram showing the results of the study:
Brief summary: child callous/unemotional behaviour is on the vertical axis, biological mother antisocial behaviour on the horizontal, with intersections marked with a solid dot for adoptive mothers using harsh/punitive tactics and an x for positive reinforcement instead. The solid line shows the heredity of antisocial behaviour when harsh or punitive responses are used, and the dashed line for when positive parenting is used.
OK, so: yes, positive parenting "buffers" against the effects of the antisocial genes, in that there is less antisocial behaviour noted among the children raised in positive environments. But it does not appear to be dramatic. There are plenty of x's above the dashed and even solid lines, demonstrating that these children continued to behave with callous and unemotional behaviours (a predictor of conduct disorder and ASPD) even in the positive environments, and you really need those lines to even see the differences because the observations are just a big cloud of dots and x's.
You can read the whole study for free here if you want to: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles...
Basically, yes, a more positive early environment helps, but does not solve, antisocial behaviour. And Harden argues that maybe we don't even really want to get rid of it, since her own work links antisocial behaviour with pleasure-seeking and, as she says, do we want to get rid of pleasure seeking? Probably not.
If you're interested in reading about why people do terrible things, why some people do a lot of terrible things and won't stop, and what can be done about it, this is an interesting and enjoyable exploration of just how monumentally complicated and perhaps insoluble the question is.
June 4, 2026
A lot to wrap my head around. But it’s a complicated explanation of the “nature (&) nurture” theory, and how genetically there are recognizable parts of DNA linked to an inclination towards violence, guilt, ambivalence, etc. and how that paired with a harmful environment can manifest a likely prophesied outcome. However, it’s not a cut and dry rule. But we find that humans and animals experience blame, correction/punishment and guilt in similar ways to strive for a communal form of cooperation which is of course paired with survival. But the existence of both must be present for a continual evolution politically, genetically, etc. it’s quite an amorphous and ambiguous topic but I feel like I am understanding the roots of upsetting behaviors through a more scientific lens.
April 7, 2026
This is a hard book to rate. It really consists of two different books layered together: First, Information about the latest science on how dna affects anti-social behaviors and how most people view those with such genetic tendencies; and, Second, an memoir about Harden's relationship with religion.
I liked the science - not the memoir. Harden was raised in a religious tradition and in a family that were hostile toward religion and social liberalism, so I guess she's giving it back. Her title comes from the idea that genetic tendencies toward violence, etc. are similar to the idea of "Original Sin". She does not like this because she doesn't want anything she was told as a child by religious people to be true. People who don't see dna as an excuse for judicial leniency are the same people who can't wait to see sinners burning in the afterlife, apparently. Harden lumps Christians together ("Christians believe..."), although there are countless variations in what Christians believe about blame, punishment, and everything else.
I did learn some things, but just couldn't get past the tone of most of the book, which I found to be offputting. I'm sure some people will like this, but it wasn't for me.
I liked the science - not the memoir. Harden was raised in a religious tradition and in a family that were hostile toward religion and social liberalism, so I guess she's giving it back. Her title comes from the idea that genetic tendencies toward violence, etc. are similar to the idea of "Original Sin". She does not like this because she doesn't want anything she was told as a child by religious people to be true. People who don't see dna as an excuse for judicial leniency are the same people who can't wait to see sinners burning in the afterlife, apparently. Harden lumps Christians together ("Christians believe..."), although there are countless variations in what Christians believe about blame, punishment, and everything else.
I did learn some things, but just couldn't get past the tone of most of the book, which I found to be offputting. I'm sure some people will like this, but it wasn't for me.
June 15, 2026
Harden is a respected psychologist and behavioral geneticist, and has clearly been putting in a lot of thinking about philosophy and Christianity as well. (She grew up in a strict Christian household, she is an atheist now, but has clearly thought a lot about the meaning of church teachings over the centuries.) The mixture of all those things, with a strong dose of personal memoir, makes for a persuasive and moving book. I definitely had some quibbles here and there, my main one is that she seems to consider that incarceration is purely equivalent to punishment. That’s obviously a huge (and ugly) part of it, but not the total. Simply keeping antisocial people away from society is part of it as well. But all in all, there was a ton to think about, and I liked her treatment of various debates, like nature/nurture and determinism/free will. And the personal parts made it all more immediate.
I listened to the audiobook, narrated very nicely by someone named Kristen DiMercurio.
I listened to the audiobook, narrated very nicely by someone named Kristen DiMercurio.
April 7, 2026
This compelling nonfiction work explores the complex role genetics may play in shaping criminal behavior. The author examines how our DNA influences tendencies toward violence while also grappling with enduring questions of blame, accountability, and free will. By weaving together scientific insight, personal stories, and philosophical inquiry, the book challenges readers to reconsider the foundations of our punitive justice system and invites thoughtful reflection on how responsibility should be understood.
June 1, 2026
4.5 this was really fantastic! the interwoven memoir in the prose added so much story to the research and made it very accessible. the comparisons and analysis between christian theology and writings, and case studies that underpin the book were a very unique and interesting quality to it. overall GREAT!
June 22, 2026
The author looks at genetics, psychology and nature/nurture and explores what impact, if any, this has on a person's inclination to wrongdoing. Some of the science went over my head but it's a thought-provoking read.
April 12, 2026
This is an unusually thought-provoking book. It focuses on how genetics can contribute to behavioral expression, & explores what genetic explanations mean for moral judgment and personal responsibility.
She does a good job asking what kind of accountability we can pursue when causes are layered and not fully legible.
She does a good job asking what kind of accountability we can pursue when causes are layered and not fully legible.
May 12, 2026
Realllllllly thought provoking read. Super interesting! Sometimes hard to read. (or listen to)
May 30, 2026
This book raises a lot of questions that seem unanswerable but they’re fascinating nonetheless. What does responsibility and guilt mean when our genetics and the environment we’re born into (things out of our control) can seemingly be associated with or even cause antisocial and harmful behavior.
May 16, 2026
The ancient question of whether our biological inheritance diminishes our human blameworthiness and struggle to find certainty
February 7, 2026
“I have spent much of my adult life studying how our genes cause us to behave in ways that are praised or punished, and I am still trying to make sense of what this work means for how we should treat each other.
In this book, I think through that question. As you will see, I offer few definitive answers. I will not neatly resolve enduring mysteries about the human condition in a single book.”
Dr. Harden gets extra credit for her honesty in those four sentences. Authors with THE answers? extra demerits. I received a digital Advance Reader’s Copy of an uncorrected ebook of this from the publisher, Penguin Random House, through NetGalley. In it, Dr. Harden talks about her research, as well as from other scientists, without being overly academic on a complicated scientific subject. She tempers it with personal stories. “Watching him [her then boyfriend, now second husband] earn their [her children from her first marriage] trust, I realize how close you can get to a wild animal simply by being very still.
But stillness is taxing. Our lives have become a hot and dreary cycle of Sisyphean sameness. We want to escape, not just our routines but ourselves.
We want life to be different, and life cannot be different. Trump is still president; the virus still spreads.“
That was during the pandemic, and now he's back. And I like her writing. She also weaves in quotes and observations from literature, poetry, philosophy, other sciences, and in case the title didn’t give it away, religion. While the originally Catholic passed down to its offshoots assertion of “original sin” is dogma [and as with all of the dogma, keyed on control - my words, not hers], we learn that there is strong evidence of genetic influence on violent and/o antisocial behaviors, pulling the nature vs nurture debate back into discussion. (It can be both - and often, both exacerbate the behaviors.) There is still free will, but despite knowing something shouldn’t be done, some still do it. And that is something she studies. And you will learn about here. Lots to think about. Highly recommended.
I was a little disappointed that Dr. Harden used unkeyed endnotes. I dislike stumbling across them after I’ve finished*, with only a label connection to what I read. I do not always want to go back after I’m done., but I often do want to follow a note, find the cited work, mark for further reading (or I have been know to go read that book/paper and then come back to the original book.) I understand the purpose of not interrupting a flow (but really, do callouts actually interrupt?), but I feel it does a disservice to anyone actually thinking about what the author is writing. *TBF Because I don’t like finding out afterwards, I turn to the notes first to see if I’ll be frustrated or not.
A few curated notes:
[This brought back a memory:]
“In this book, I invite you to circumnavigate with me. I want to show you how if you travel east far enough you end up west.”
{In 1979, my physics advisor/professor was Dr. V. V. Raman. In response to something I said along the lines of physics being an exact science and not fuzzy like biology, and had actual use unlike philosophy. He gently gave the naive 18 year old me something to think about, drawing a line and making on it the traditional views of hard sciences on one end (physics, then chemistry), moving to less exact (biology, psychology) to broader , less specific studies (sociology, philosophy). That young me agreed enthusiastically until he wrapped the philosophy end around to the physics and said it’s not a line, but a circle. Obviously, that made enough of an impression on me to stick with me all these decades.}
[On religion, this reflection/insight caught my attention:]
“At least, I don't think I believe in God anymore. I'm a scientist. But being raised Evangelical is like getting chicken pox as a child: You might recover, but you are never free. The virus will live in your nerves until you die.”
[on unconscious brains dictating actions before conscious brains think they are making them happen]
“One of the reasons the famous finger-moving study is contested is because the ‘decision’ that participants were asked to make was so trifling. They were asked to do an inconsequential act for no reason at all. A later study used a similar experimental setup, but people's decision to move was, on some trials, more consequential, determining which charity of two would get a one thousand dollar donation. In consequential decisions, brain activity in the motor planning area was no longer apparent prior to people's conscious awareness of the intention to act. This newer result can be interpreted as a reassurance: For big decisions, at least, we need not worry that we are ‘being done,’ rather than doing. This study suggests that, for important decisions, the imperious ‘I’ is still firmly in charge.”
{I have seen/read enough in serious studies and cringey pop science teasers on the deep reptile brain causing actions before the prefrontal cortex decides to do said actions. This was refreshing.}
[parenting wisdom]
“More recently, my colleague Danielle Dick, also a behavior geneticist, wrote a parenting book encouraging parents to avoid blaming themselves and to avoid blaming their children by pointing at the role genetics plays in child development. ‘Just because your child is throwing huge fits doesn't mean you are doing anything wrong,’ she writes. ‘It just means your child inherited a temperament toward big feelings, feelings they are still learning to manage.’"
{This is something that should be mandatory reading in the parenting manuals…that don’t come with the children}
[on sympathy and empathy]
“What if I had had your childhood?" is a question that invites my sympathy for your behavior. But "What if I had had your genome?" is a question that makes sympathy difficult, maybe impossible, because the self who would be doing the sympathizing is threatened with dissolution.
Instead of sympathy, answering such a question requires empathy-feeling as another, instead of feeling with another.”
{I admit that I sometimes need something intuitively obvious to the most casual observer as that explained in terms that make sense to me.}
[of interest only to me, another memory triggered]
“My office at the University of Virginia was a janitorial closet. Gilmer Hall had none of the Rotunda's elegance, symmetry, or proportion. It was a dim warren of windowless rooms and narrow corridors, clad in concrete. I don't know which grad student first thought to cram a small desk into a corner closet containing buckets and mops, but I'm sure they were drawn to its tiny, improbable window, a rarity in a department that seemed to consider natural light unnecessary for mood and productivity.”
{I was in the Navy and one time, two Captains (Colonels, for reference to other services) told me a story about how one of them had a tiny office in the Pentagon that had a six inch by eighteen inch window that he hated every day because it looked out at a brick wall. One day, the other came in excitedly talking about something, paused, and blurted out, “Oh my god! You have a window!” The first told me that changed his perspective and he stopped hating “that damned window.”}
[on the adverse sociological effects of everyone thinking the same]
“A crimeless society, in [Émile] Durkheim's view, would happen only if everyone were exactly alike in what they value as good and bad and in how they live out their values. Such uniformity was impossible, in Durkheim's view, given that people differed in their social and physical environments and their ‘hereditary antecedents.’ Deviation from any norm is inevitable.
But even if such uniformity were possible, Durkheim argued that it would be undesirable, because without diversity, without difference, systems of morality could never progress. A social system that succeeded in stamping out all variety in ‘good’ or ‘bad’ behavior would petrify. A monoculture without the possibility of mutation is an evolutionary dead end; deviation is the grist for evolution.”
In this book, I think through that question. As you will see, I offer few definitive answers. I will not neatly resolve enduring mysteries about the human condition in a single book.”
Dr. Harden gets extra credit for her honesty in those four sentences. Authors with THE answers? extra demerits. I received a digital Advance Reader’s Copy of an uncorrected ebook of this from the publisher, Penguin Random House, through NetGalley. In it, Dr. Harden talks about her research, as well as from other scientists, without being overly academic on a complicated scientific subject. She tempers it with personal stories. “Watching him [her then boyfriend, now second husband] earn their [her children from her first marriage] trust, I realize how close you can get to a wild animal simply by being very still.
But stillness is taxing. Our lives have become a hot and dreary cycle of Sisyphean sameness. We want to escape, not just our routines but ourselves.
We want life to be different, and life cannot be different. Trump is still president; the virus still spreads.“
That was during the pandemic, and now he's back. And I like her writing. She also weaves in quotes and observations from literature, poetry, philosophy, other sciences, and in case the title didn’t give it away, religion. While the originally Catholic passed down to its offshoots assertion of “original sin” is dogma [and as with all of the dogma, keyed on control - my words, not hers], we learn that there is strong evidence of genetic influence on violent and/o antisocial behaviors, pulling the nature vs nurture debate back into discussion. (It can be both - and often, both exacerbate the behaviors.) There is still free will, but despite knowing something shouldn’t be done, some still do it. And that is something she studies. And you will learn about here. Lots to think about. Highly recommended.
I was a little disappointed that Dr. Harden used unkeyed endnotes. I dislike stumbling across them after I’ve finished*, with only a label connection to what I read. I do not always want to go back after I’m done., but I often do want to follow a note, find the cited work, mark for further reading (or I have been know to go read that book/paper and then come back to the original book.) I understand the purpose of not interrupting a flow (but really, do callouts actually interrupt?), but I feel it does a disservice to anyone actually thinking about what the author is writing. *TBF Because I don’t like finding out afterwards, I turn to the notes first to see if I’ll be frustrated or not.
A few curated notes:
[This brought back a memory:]
“In this book, I invite you to circumnavigate with me. I want to show you how if you travel east far enough you end up west.”
{In 1979, my physics advisor/professor was Dr. V. V. Raman. In response to something I said along the lines of physics being an exact science and not fuzzy like biology, and had actual use unlike philosophy. He gently gave the naive 18 year old me something to think about, drawing a line and making on it the traditional views of hard sciences on one end (physics, then chemistry), moving to less exact (biology, psychology) to broader , less specific studies (sociology, philosophy). That young me agreed enthusiastically until he wrapped the philosophy end around to the physics and said it’s not a line, but a circle. Obviously, that made enough of an impression on me to stick with me all these decades.}
[On religion, this reflection/insight caught my attention:]
“At least, I don't think I believe in God anymore. I'm a scientist. But being raised Evangelical is like getting chicken pox as a child: You might recover, but you are never free. The virus will live in your nerves until you die.”
[on unconscious brains dictating actions before conscious brains think they are making them happen]
“One of the reasons the famous finger-moving study is contested is because the ‘decision’ that participants were asked to make was so trifling. They were asked to do an inconsequential act for no reason at all. A later study used a similar experimental setup, but people's decision to move was, on some trials, more consequential, determining which charity of two would get a one thousand dollar donation. In consequential decisions, brain activity in the motor planning area was no longer apparent prior to people's conscious awareness of the intention to act. This newer result can be interpreted as a reassurance: For big decisions, at least, we need not worry that we are ‘being done,’ rather than doing. This study suggests that, for important decisions, the imperious ‘I’ is still firmly in charge.”
{I have seen/read enough in serious studies and cringey pop science teasers on the deep reptile brain causing actions before the prefrontal cortex decides to do said actions. This was refreshing.}
[parenting wisdom]
“More recently, my colleague Danielle Dick, also a behavior geneticist, wrote a parenting book encouraging parents to avoid blaming themselves and to avoid blaming their children by pointing at the role genetics plays in child development. ‘Just because your child is throwing huge fits doesn't mean you are doing anything wrong,’ she writes. ‘It just means your child inherited a temperament toward big feelings, feelings they are still learning to manage.’"
{This is something that should be mandatory reading in the parenting manuals…that don’t come with the children}
[on sympathy and empathy]
“What if I had had your childhood?" is a question that invites my sympathy for your behavior. But "What if I had had your genome?" is a question that makes sympathy difficult, maybe impossible, because the self who would be doing the sympathizing is threatened with dissolution.
Instead of sympathy, answering such a question requires empathy-feeling as another, instead of feeling with another.”
{I admit that I sometimes need something intuitively obvious to the most casual observer as that explained in terms that make sense to me.}
[of interest only to me, another memory triggered]
“My office at the University of Virginia was a janitorial closet. Gilmer Hall had none of the Rotunda's elegance, symmetry, or proportion. It was a dim warren of windowless rooms and narrow corridors, clad in concrete. I don't know which grad student first thought to cram a small desk into a corner closet containing buckets and mops, but I'm sure they were drawn to its tiny, improbable window, a rarity in a department that seemed to consider natural light unnecessary for mood and productivity.”
{I was in the Navy and one time, two Captains (Colonels, for reference to other services) told me a story about how one of them had a tiny office in the Pentagon that had a six inch by eighteen inch window that he hated every day because it looked out at a brick wall. One day, the other came in excitedly talking about something, paused, and blurted out, “Oh my god! You have a window!” The first told me that changed his perspective and he stopped hating “that damned window.”}
[on the adverse sociological effects of everyone thinking the same]
“A crimeless society, in [Émile] Durkheim's view, would happen only if everyone were exactly alike in what they value as good and bad and in how they live out their values. Such uniformity was impossible, in Durkheim's view, given that people differed in their social and physical environments and their ‘hereditary antecedents.’ Deviation from any norm is inevitable.
But even if such uniformity were possible, Durkheim argued that it would be undesirable, because without diversity, without difference, systems of morality could never progress. A social system that succeeded in stamping out all variety in ‘good’ or ‘bad’ behavior would petrify. A monoculture without the possibility of mutation is an evolutionary dead end; deviation is the grist for evolution.”
March 9, 2026
Essential reading
June 19, 2026
oh my god. okay. okay. sorry for the ensuing lack of capitalisation and the lengthy, verbose sentences - i am a very tired law student fresh out of my last exam and have been vibrating with thoughts about this read that even my current exhaustion can't contain.
big month for narrative/memoir type non-fiction for me, a by and large non-fiction hater (because so much of it is just far too dry and academic for my fiction-loving sensibilities). i came to this book still feeling very emotionally raw off the back of 'one day, everyone will have always been against this' by omar el-akkad, which doesn't have much relevance to what i'm about to say other than the fact that reading these two back-to-back has thoroughly rewired my brain in ways it'll take me far more literature and many more years of life experience to fully synthesize (on top of two or three more rereads of this particular book).
my gut reaction, while and immediately after reading it: i loved it! i think many people would find this very interesting.
my more considered thoughts two days after finishing it starts with this: i think i can empathise with opinions desirous of a more evidence-based, academic style of scientific prose, especially from a book that fancies itself in the science category.
this book is a far cry from a tightly structured factual account of
the way harden has structured this book feels deeply intentional to me. i tried, many times throughout the read, to try and set out in the simplest possible terms the kind of ground i found harden to actually be treading in this book. the back of the book describes it as "the uneasy space where human behaviour meets inherited biology", and while that description isn't wrong per se, it's more the case that i don't think any combination of however many, however specific words can touch the essence of what she's looking into.
viewing this through the lens of a philosophy graduate, my mind often settled on the mind-body problem as i read. the metaphysical and ontological question of whether consciousness exists independently or in indistinguishable conjunction with the body predates the advent of what we now recognise as discrete science of psychology by several millennia. from the cartesian account of the mind as a substance; a thing-in-itself distinct from the physical matter of the body to the famous contemporary account of david chalmers (won't someone please think of the philosophical zombie!!), it is evident that the advent of psychology and psychiatry has not subverted questions on the philosophy of mind.
neuroscience has no answer for /why/ the sweet, delicious apple i peeled, cored and sliced to share with my ostensibly equally apple-loving friend tastes different between the two of us. likewise, (and noting that the following thought experiment is deeply flawed because i thought it up in about three minutes,) neither genetic science nor psychology are capable of producing a definitive answer for the question of whether two (hypothetical) separately raised persons who are identical in every way including their genetic predispositions to violence and dysfunctional upbringings are likely to criminally offend in the same, or even similar, manner.
what gets left out can then only be subjective experience. a deeply unsatisfying notion to be forced to sit with in a book advertised in the science category, i know! harden acknowledges this very tension in the third-to-last paragraph of the final chapter. but as the book's subtitle suggests, the hard science really is just the beginning. the big picture questions relating to blame and especially so for forgiveness beg at the end because harden alone cannot answer it. the question is mine and yours; it is everyone's question forever.
big month for narrative/memoir type non-fiction for me, a by and large non-fiction hater (because so much of it is just far too dry and academic for my fiction-loving sensibilities). i came to this book still feeling very emotionally raw off the back of 'one day, everyone will have always been against this' by omar el-akkad, which doesn't have much relevance to what i'm about to say other than the fact that reading these two back-to-back has thoroughly rewired my brain in ways it'll take me far more literature and many more years of life experience to fully synthesize (on top of two or three more rereads of this particular book).
my gut reaction, while and immediately after reading it: i loved it! i think many people would find this very interesting.
my more considered thoughts two days after finishing it starts with this: i think i can empathise with opinions desirous of a more evidence-based, academic style of scientific prose, especially from a book that fancies itself in the science category.
this book is a far cry from a tightly structured factual account of
the way harden has structured this book feels deeply intentional to me. i tried, many times throughout the read, to try and set out in the simplest possible terms the kind of ground i found harden to actually be treading in this book. the back of the book describes it as "the uneasy space where human behaviour meets inherited biology", and while that description isn't wrong per se, it's more the case that i don't think any combination of however many, however specific words can touch the essence of what she's looking into.
viewing this through the lens of a philosophy graduate, my mind often settled on the mind-body problem as i read. the metaphysical and ontological question of whether consciousness exists independently or in indistinguishable conjunction with the body predates the advent of what we now recognise as discrete science of psychology by several millennia. from the cartesian account of the mind as a substance; a thing-in-itself distinct from the physical matter of the body to the famous contemporary account of david chalmers (won't someone please think of the philosophical zombie!!), it is evident that the advent of psychology and psychiatry has not subverted questions on the philosophy of mind.
neuroscience has no answer for /why/ the sweet, delicious apple i peeled, cored and sliced to share with my ostensibly equally apple-loving friend tastes different between the two of us. likewise, (and noting that the following thought experiment is deeply flawed because i thought it up in about three minutes,) neither genetic science nor psychology are capable of producing a definitive answer for the question of whether two (hypothetical) separately raised persons who are identical in every way including their genetic predispositions to violence and dysfunctional upbringings are likely to criminally offend in the same, or even similar, manner.
what gets left out can then only be subjective experience. a deeply unsatisfying notion to be forced to sit with in a book advertised in the science category, i know! harden acknowledges this very tension in the third-to-last paragraph of the final chapter. but as the book's subtitle suggests, the hard science really is just the beginning. the big picture questions relating to blame and especially so for forgiveness beg at the end because harden alone cannot answer it. the question is mine and yours; it is everyone's question forever.
May 2, 2026
very compelling non-fiction re , well what the title says. DNA markers or aberrant behavior; environmental impact causing physical changes in DNA, wrongdoing, punishment, etc
los of interesting info and insights.
"Asking whether an individual’s behavior is due to his genes or his environment is as meaningless as asking if the area of a rectangle is more due to its length or its width."
and here is the epigraph followed by a few other passages:
Let the reader, where we are equally confident, stride with me. Where we are equally puzzled, investigate with me. Where he finds himself in error, come to my side. Where he finds me in error, call me to his side.
St Augustine
The best creative acts feel transcendent. Awareness of space and time recedes, and with them, your sense of boundedness. Self-consciousness abates, as does distraction, and you find yourself instinctively doing without much thinking.
Children are not our copies. There is no such thing as reproduction. When two people decide to have a baby they engage in an act of production. Reproduction is at best a euphemism to comfort prospective parents before they get in over their heads. As a result of the combinatory explosion there are trillions upon trillions of possible genetic combinations that can be produced. If they were a stack of dollar bills it would reach to the moon and back 12 times.
Be sure of this. You are being done at every moment. Mankind has at all times mistaken the active for the passive. Infants often seem surprise by their actions, as if they are being done instead of doing. As we grow, the observing I, the self aware ego, increasingly sees itself as intending to act before the action happens.
Augustine considered his imperfect command over his own behavior one of the chief miseries of being human.
CHildren genetically predisposed to faster development in toddlerhood elicit more cognitive stimulation from their parents which in turn predicts faster language development.
Augustine’s doctrine of original sin helped solve the Church’s theodicy problem. If there were no inherited sin then infants would be innocent and if infants who are innocent suffer as they do then how could God be good.
Zeus law is first in all the world. No wisdom without pain.
79 studies showed stat sig outcomes between spanking and child outcomes. 78 were negative. Worse relationships with their parent , worse anxiety and depression in childhood, greater aggression and antisocial behavior in adolescence and adulthood.
Retribution in this account appropriately aims to affirm the equality of the wrong wrongdoer and the victim. Not to use the deservingness of the wrongdoer as an excuse to rob them of human dignity.
I entertained doubt that my perceptual experience of rationally choosing what to do, as always telling me something true about the wellspring of my behavior.
Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him.
los of interesting info and insights.
"Asking whether an individual’s behavior is due to his genes or his environment is as meaningless as asking if the area of a rectangle is more due to its length or its width."
and here is the epigraph followed by a few other passages:
Let the reader, where we are equally confident, stride with me. Where we are equally puzzled, investigate with me. Where he finds himself in error, come to my side. Where he finds me in error, call me to his side.
St Augustine
The best creative acts feel transcendent. Awareness of space and time recedes, and with them, your sense of boundedness. Self-consciousness abates, as does distraction, and you find yourself instinctively doing without much thinking.
Children are not our copies. There is no such thing as reproduction. When two people decide to have a baby they engage in an act of production. Reproduction is at best a euphemism to comfort prospective parents before they get in over their heads. As a result of the combinatory explosion there are trillions upon trillions of possible genetic combinations that can be produced. If they were a stack of dollar bills it would reach to the moon and back 12 times.
Be sure of this. You are being done at every moment. Mankind has at all times mistaken the active for the passive. Infants often seem surprise by their actions, as if they are being done instead of doing. As we grow, the observing I, the self aware ego, increasingly sees itself as intending to act before the action happens.
Augustine considered his imperfect command over his own behavior one of the chief miseries of being human.
CHildren genetically predisposed to faster development in toddlerhood elicit more cognitive stimulation from their parents which in turn predicts faster language development.
Augustine’s doctrine of original sin helped solve the Church’s theodicy problem. If there were no inherited sin then infants would be innocent and if infants who are innocent suffer as they do then how could God be good.
Zeus law is first in all the world. No wisdom without pain.
79 studies showed stat sig outcomes between spanking and child outcomes. 78 were negative. Worse relationships with their parent , worse anxiety and depression in childhood, greater aggression and antisocial behavior in adolescence and adulthood.
Retribution in this account appropriately aims to affirm the equality of the wrong wrongdoer and the victim. Not to use the deservingness of the wrongdoer as an excuse to rob them of human dignity.
I entertained doubt that my perceptual experience of rationally choosing what to do, as always telling me something true about the wellspring of my behavior.
Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Growing up in a family of scientists, I have often thought about the interplay of nature versus nurture - is our character and life path set at birth? How much of an impact does our environment and upbringing have? And, perhaps most important of all, how much direction do we each have in the type of person we ultimately become and the choices we make? In "Original Sin", behavioral geneticist and University of Texas at Austin professor Kathryn Paige Harden tackles these weighty questions (and many more!) in an truly unique work that combines her own personal experiences, her academic research, scientific studies and conclusions, and individual case studies.
While I struggled with the structure of this work at the beginning, "Original Sin" is loosely organized by different broad topics; in "Luck", she questions the randomness of each individual's life, including the family, time period, and locations that we're born into; in "Animal", she examines the underlying biological drives and urges that are instilled into us from birth; in "Retribution", she explores topics of justice, punishment, and remorse and how they factor into blame and guilt. Each section merges her own experiences as a child and mother with a number of secondary and tertiary sources; some, like case studies on twins, groups, and individuals were expected, but I was also surprised to see her draw on television and current media, poetry (Louise Gluck happens to be one of my favorite poets), Greek mythology, and the Bible - a deceptively broad and encompassing examination that I didn't expect in this type of work.
Perhaps what's most frustrating (yet also reassuring) is that there are no definitive answers in here - just as there are billions of people in the world, there are billions of potential factors and different ways of examining the how's and why's of what drives people to act and behave as they do. What she did underpin, however, was the growing evidence of how much genetics and biology explain so much of our character and our lives - not just in physical attributes like height, weight, and physical fitness, but also attributes like depression, mood, anger/irritability; work ethic and dutifulness; extroversion; and risk for alcohol and drug addiction. Especially when that propensity is tied to the type of households children are born into and the upbringing they are likely to have, makes it even more difficult to parse out what has an effect and to what extent. However, what everyone can take away from this is more understanding of how weighty of a decision it is to give birth to and raise a child, and just how difficult (miraculous?) it is for a child to escape the heredity and environment that they are born into.
Very much a recommended read when "Original Sin" is published in March 2026!
While I struggled with the structure of this work at the beginning, "Original Sin" is loosely organized by different broad topics; in "Luck", she questions the randomness of each individual's life, including the family, time period, and locations that we're born into; in "Animal", she examines the underlying biological drives and urges that are instilled into us from birth; in "Retribution", she explores topics of justice, punishment, and remorse and how they factor into blame and guilt. Each section merges her own experiences as a child and mother with a number of secondary and tertiary sources; some, like case studies on twins, groups, and individuals were expected, but I was also surprised to see her draw on television and current media, poetry (Louise Gluck happens to be one of my favorite poets), Greek mythology, and the Bible - a deceptively broad and encompassing examination that I didn't expect in this type of work.
Perhaps what's most frustrating (yet also reassuring) is that there are no definitive answers in here - just as there are billions of people in the world, there are billions of potential factors and different ways of examining the how's and why's of what drives people to act and behave as they do. What she did underpin, however, was the growing evidence of how much genetics and biology explain so much of our character and our lives - not just in physical attributes like height, weight, and physical fitness, but also attributes like depression, mood, anger/irritability; work ethic and dutifulness; extroversion; and risk for alcohol and drug addiction. Especially when that propensity is tied to the type of households children are born into and the upbringing they are likely to have, makes it even more difficult to parse out what has an effect and to what extent. However, what everyone can take away from this is more understanding of how weighty of a decision it is to give birth to and raise a child, and just how difficult (miraculous?) it is for a child to escape the heredity and environment that they are born into.
Very much a recommended read when "Original Sin" is published in March 2026!
June 20, 2026
The good: “Original Sin” has an interesting and, I think, fundamentally correct premise – that the way we think about genetics and moral responsibility bears a – dare I say genetic – relation to how Christian theologians have thought about problems of sin and punishment. Harden integrates genetics, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and even poetry in a wide-ranging inquiry into why we consider some people more blameworthy than others.
The bad: While Harden is up-front that her book will pose more questions than answers, it’s frustratingly scattered. Her conclusions tend to be half-hearted both-ands — we are formed by nature and nurture, we should hold people accountable and be merciful, life is cruel and potentially miraculous.
Worse yet, she has the bad habit of extrapolating the results of a single study to make broad, totalizing claims about complex phenomena. A great example is her citation of one anthropological study of an Indonesian tribe whose word for shame is the same as their word for embarrassment at speaking to a social superior. This, somehow, proves that shame is evolutionarily reducible to “the emotion that accompanies being downranked in a dominance hierarchy.”
The ugly: for some reason, the substance of the book is interlaced with a memoir of sorts. We learn about Harden’s sex life, her experience with psychedelic drugs, and most of all, her extreme dislike of religion. She is an ex-vangelical who has turned her religious zeal into an anti-religious zeal, as is not uncommon.
The problem with this is that it makes the thinking hopelessly compromised as it relates to religion. Somehow Christianity is to blame for everything that plagues modern culture. America, we are told, is more punitive than Norway because Americans believe in Hell in greater numbers. Again and again, Harden distorts, over-simplifies, and misrepresents Christian history and thought.
The irony is that, despite her extreme dislike of the doctrine of original sin, she ultimately agrees with the basic notion on which it is founded, i.e., that we can be held accountable despite inborn inclinations to act badly. One need not be a vindictive zealot to think “sin” is a perfectly good word to describe the darker aspects of the human condition Harden chronicles in this book.
The bad: While Harden is up-front that her book will pose more questions than answers, it’s frustratingly scattered. Her conclusions tend to be half-hearted both-ands — we are formed by nature and nurture, we should hold people accountable and be merciful, life is cruel and potentially miraculous.
Worse yet, she has the bad habit of extrapolating the results of a single study to make broad, totalizing claims about complex phenomena. A great example is her citation of one anthropological study of an Indonesian tribe whose word for shame is the same as their word for embarrassment at speaking to a social superior. This, somehow, proves that shame is evolutionarily reducible to “the emotion that accompanies being downranked in a dominance hierarchy.”
The ugly: for some reason, the substance of the book is interlaced with a memoir of sorts. We learn about Harden’s sex life, her experience with psychedelic drugs, and most of all, her extreme dislike of religion. She is an ex-vangelical who has turned her religious zeal into an anti-religious zeal, as is not uncommon.
The problem with this is that it makes the thinking hopelessly compromised as it relates to religion. Somehow Christianity is to blame for everything that plagues modern culture. America, we are told, is more punitive than Norway because Americans believe in Hell in greater numbers. Again and again, Harden distorts, over-simplifies, and misrepresents Christian history and thought.
The irony is that, despite her extreme dislike of the doctrine of original sin, she ultimately agrees with the basic notion on which it is founded, i.e., that we can be held accountable despite inborn inclinations to act badly. One need not be a vindictive zealot to think “sin” is a perfectly good word to describe the darker aspects of the human condition Harden chronicles in this book.
March 29, 2026
A lot of mixed feelings on this book. I first learned about this book from Harden’s guest appearance on a Huberman Lab podcast episode and I found the topic thrillingly intriguing. And Harden does bounce around the concept of original sin’s closely related concept of Nature vs Nurture.
Billed as science and data-based, Original Sin is as much philosophy and theory as it is conclusion based upon the application of any form of the Scientific Method. It opens up many more questions than it answers, and ultimately poses questions that cannot be resolved with science, namely questions that are ethical in nature. This is most notable when she herself calls out how close some of our currently available gene editing technology borders on eugenics. This section reminded me of the 1997 movie Gattaca (the letters of the movies name being composed of the four nucleotide bases that form DNA) that raises questions about the ethical limits of reproduction through genetic design or chance (i.e. the “old fashioned way”). Any reader of this book should watch that movie, despite it being a box office flop.
Nevertheless, Harden frustrates me with her repetitive references to her acid trips (and other examples of her breaking some former rule she held), which read more as a “look at me, I’m no longer bound by the rules of the church” message than they offer anything significantly meaning to the thesis of the book. However, I also understand her personal extrication from her theological bonds are now an important part of her life experience as she weaves that into the book.
Overall, I’m happy I read the book, but it was less enlightening than I had hoped. Possibly the golden nuggets were all captured by the podcast leaving only the lesser quality items as novel to me in reading the book itself.
Three stars.
Billed as science and data-based, Original Sin is as much philosophy and theory as it is conclusion based upon the application of any form of the Scientific Method. It opens up many more questions than it answers, and ultimately poses questions that cannot be resolved with science, namely questions that are ethical in nature. This is most notable when she herself calls out how close some of our currently available gene editing technology borders on eugenics. This section reminded me of the 1997 movie Gattaca (the letters of the movies name being composed of the four nucleotide bases that form DNA) that raises questions about the ethical limits of reproduction through genetic design or chance (i.e. the “old fashioned way”). Any reader of this book should watch that movie, despite it being a box office flop.
Nevertheless, Harden frustrates me with her repetitive references to her acid trips (and other examples of her breaking some former rule she held), which read more as a “look at me, I’m no longer bound by the rules of the church” message than they offer anything significantly meaning to the thesis of the book. However, I also understand her personal extrication from her theological bonds are now an important part of her life experience as she weaves that into the book.
Overall, I’m happy I read the book, but it was less enlightening than I had hoped. Possibly the golden nuggets were all captured by the podcast leaving only the lesser quality items as novel to me in reading the book itself.
Three stars.
April 2, 2026
From her field of behavioral genetics, Harden has provided us with a substantial, accessible and engaging treatment of nature, nurture, and morality. She includes rich context for humanity’s mixed record with these ideas. For example, you may not expect to associate Saint Augustine, at a theological crossroads, with modern behavioral genetics, but they are more closely linked than they seem. She also incorporates memoir elements that are refreshing to read in a science book. I’ve found that other scientists who are skilled writers generally don’t offer this degree of relatability in their general audience books.
Based on the science she has done in her lab and incorporated from the field into her analyses, she provides a framework for understanding genetic influences on behavior. As soon as we consider bad behavior, tension naturally arises, from the idea that wrongdoing could have a deterministic basis. But one cannot stop there and overreact, because our individual and collective responses to wrongdoing can be viewed through the same lens. She addresses both sides of this. Particularly, a part of her discussion that I felt a building desire for while reading, which then arrived as a satisfying full chapter, is titled “Retribution”.
Her book is a persuasive presentation of the evidence, and a guide for thinking about the convergence of nature and nurture, especially when it comes to “sin” behavior. She challenges us to consider what better applications and paths we may have for our natural reactions at the personal and societal levels. With research like hers, and with her empathetic approach that brings feelings of both relief and equanimity for a scientific handling of this subject matter, we can continue to discover and thoughtfully consider what this means for us and what we can do in response, and we should.
Based on the science she has done in her lab and incorporated from the field into her analyses, she provides a framework for understanding genetic influences on behavior. As soon as we consider bad behavior, tension naturally arises, from the idea that wrongdoing could have a deterministic basis. But one cannot stop there and overreact, because our individual and collective responses to wrongdoing can be viewed through the same lens. She addresses both sides of this. Particularly, a part of her discussion that I felt a building desire for while reading, which then arrived as a satisfying full chapter, is titled “Retribution”.
Her book is a persuasive presentation of the evidence, and a guide for thinking about the convergence of nature and nurture, especially when it comes to “sin” behavior. She challenges us to consider what better applications and paths we may have for our natural reactions at the personal and societal levels. With research like hers, and with her empathetic approach that brings feelings of both relief and equanimity for a scientific handling of this subject matter, we can continue to discover and thoughtfully consider what this means for us and what we can do in response, and we should.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
We rarely change our values. One reason we resist changing our values is that we might feel that if we change our values, we're admitting that we've been wrong all along. And most people loathe admitting they're wrong.
That's why few people change their religion or political affiliation.
Even if deep down inside we know we're wrong, we'd rather practice cognitive dissonance than
In the last few years, I've questioned these values that I held throughout my life:
We have free will
We control our fate
We must take personal responsibility for our condition & actions
We have the power to change ourselves & our lives
I loved believing this because it's an empowering and hopeful message.
However, just because it sounds good doesn't mean it's correct.
I brought up the issue in my podcast with Sym about free will.
Kathryn Paige Harden's 2026 book, Original Sin, adds fuel to the fiery idea that humans are more like robots than creatures who control their fate. She asserts our brains are meatcomputers. Her book convinced me that she's right.
If she's right, the implications are profound:
Should we forgive criminals more easily than we do?
Must we give preferences to people born with ADHD?
Do we stop blaming people for being obese?
Buy the book to dive deeply into this important topic.
Verdict: 9 out of 10 stars!
Sometimes I wish the prose flowed more smoothly, but the powerful ideas make this an outstanding book that everyone should read. It's humbling and profound.
That's why few people change their religion or political affiliation.
Even if deep down inside we know we're wrong, we'd rather practice cognitive dissonance than
In the last few years, I've questioned these values that I held throughout my life:
We have free will
We control our fate
We must take personal responsibility for our condition & actions
We have the power to change ourselves & our lives
I loved believing this because it's an empowering and hopeful message.
However, just because it sounds good doesn't mean it's correct.
I brought up the issue in my podcast with Sym about free will.
Kathryn Paige Harden's 2026 book, Original Sin, adds fuel to the fiery idea that humans are more like robots than creatures who control their fate. She asserts our brains are meatcomputers. Her book convinced me that she's right.
If she's right, the implications are profound:
Should we forgive criminals more easily than we do?
Must we give preferences to people born with ADHD?
Do we stop blaming people for being obese?
Buy the book to dive deeply into this important topic.
Verdict: 9 out of 10 stars!
Sometimes I wish the prose flowed more smoothly, but the powerful ideas make this an outstanding book that everyone should read. It's humbling and profound.
March 21, 2026
Original Sin, written by American Psycologist Kathryn Paige Harden, and combines memoir with look at the Christian concept of original sin, genetics, and whether the usual answer, nature versus nurture, to the question of human behaviour is the right one. She questions if, indeed, genes can have an effect on behaviours such as addiction, antisocial behaviour, and a tendency towards violence, then, should someone who is genetically predisposed to these behaviours be blamed or punished for them and, if so, in what form.
She uses examples of people and, in one case, a family who have committed heinous crimes and how the law has responded to the idea that their behaviour can be the result of their genes. She also looks at how much, if at all, upbringing can effect the outcome for good or bad. And along the way, she tells us about her own life and family.
Original Sin is a fascinating look at questions of how much of human behaviour is part of our genetic makeup as opposed to outside forces like upbringing or environment. In the end, Harden doesn’t give any definitive answers to these issues but, rather, gives the reader much to think about.
I received an eARC of this book from Netgalley and Random House in exchange for an honest review
She uses examples of people and, in one case, a family who have committed heinous crimes and how the law has responded to the idea that their behaviour can be the result of their genes. She also looks at how much, if at all, upbringing can effect the outcome for good or bad. And along the way, she tells us about her own life and family.
Original Sin is a fascinating look at questions of how much of human behaviour is part of our genetic makeup as opposed to outside forces like upbringing or environment. In the end, Harden doesn’t give any definitive answers to these issues but, rather, gives the reader much to think about.
I received an eARC of this book from Netgalley and Random House in exchange for an honest review
May 11, 2026
I wanted to love this. The topic is right up my alley: how much of our behavior is written in our DNA, and how much do we actually control? Also the blame and forgiveness part? Yes, please.
Dr. Harden knows her stuff. She is one of the leading scientists in behavioral genetics, and you can tell. The research is solid. The chapters on addiction and antisocial behavior made me think differently about people I have judged too quickly.
But here is my problem. The book reads like a very long lecture. It is dense. It circles around the same ideas without giving me enough real-life examples or practical takeaways. I kept waiting for her to say "here is what this means for how we raise kids, or how we treat someone who hurt us." That moment never fully came.
Also, for a book about forgiveness, there is very little about how to actually do it. The science of guilt is there. The how-to is missing.
That said, Dr. Harden, if you ever write a follow-up, something more practical, more workbook-like, for therapists, parents, or even people in recovery, I would love to help. I can beta read, proofread, or just give honest feedback before you publish. And when the book is out, I can help you get it in front of the right readers.
You can reach me at contact@hayleyhipps.com.
Dr. Harden knows her stuff. She is one of the leading scientists in behavioral genetics, and you can tell. The research is solid. The chapters on addiction and antisocial behavior made me think differently about people I have judged too quickly.
But here is my problem. The book reads like a very long lecture. It is dense. It circles around the same ideas without giving me enough real-life examples or practical takeaways. I kept waiting for her to say "here is what this means for how we raise kids, or how we treat someone who hurt us." That moment never fully came.
Also, for a book about forgiveness, there is very little about how to actually do it. The science of guilt is there. The how-to is missing.
That said, Dr. Harden, if you ever write a follow-up, something more practical, more workbook-like, for therapists, parents, or even people in recovery, I would love to help. I can beta read, proofread, or just give honest feedback before you publish. And when the book is out, I can help you get it in front of the right readers.
You can reach me at contact@hayleyhipps.com.
June 6, 2026
A very interesting and engaging book. The narrator did a fantastic job and made the audiobook experience even better.
The book covers chapters titled Desert, Sin, Letter, Luck, Animal, Choice, Essence, Variety, Consequences, Retribution, Eclipse and Puzzle. Sin, Luck and Choice stood out as particularly well-written chapters.
Let me tell you about my favourite chapter, Variety. It talks about the importance of deviants, whether criminals or those who think differently from others, and why they were, are and will continue to be important to society, even at the human cellular level in relation to immunity. The author also argues that some deviants of their time were simply ahead of it, and helped push the thinking of society in a different direction.
Consequences was an eye-opener. I knew little about the subject going in, but the way she argues her case is commendable and convincing. She has done a good job of researching and presenting it in a way that is simple and makes sense.
I disagree with several of the author's standpoints, though I will say this: the way she frames and argues her positions is convincing and logical, even when I find myself on the other side of them.
The author does cherry-pick examples to support her viewpoint, which was noticeable. I didn't walk away with any changed perspectives but picked up some interesting stories along the way.
My bigger concern is this: if we start viewing the justice system through a genetic lens, political correctness and over-justification will slowly erode law and order. We are already seeing that around the world.
That said, Harden clearly knows her subject and speaks with real conviction. I have a lot of respect and admiration for women who lead in STEM fields and she is a great example of that. We need more of them.
Worth reading? Absolutely. Just don't let it change how you think about accountability.
The book covers chapters titled Desert, Sin, Letter, Luck, Animal, Choice, Essence, Variety, Consequences, Retribution, Eclipse and Puzzle. Sin, Luck and Choice stood out as particularly well-written chapters.
Let me tell you about my favourite chapter, Variety. It talks about the importance of deviants, whether criminals or those who think differently from others, and why they were, are and will continue to be important to society, even at the human cellular level in relation to immunity. The author also argues that some deviants of their time were simply ahead of it, and helped push the thinking of society in a different direction.
Consequences was an eye-opener. I knew little about the subject going in, but the way she argues her case is commendable and convincing. She has done a good job of researching and presenting it in a way that is simple and makes sense.
I disagree with several of the author's standpoints, though I will say this: the way she frames and argues her positions is convincing and logical, even when I find myself on the other side of them.
The author does cherry-pick examples to support her viewpoint, which was noticeable. I didn't walk away with any changed perspectives but picked up some interesting stories along the way.
My bigger concern is this: if we start viewing the justice system through a genetic lens, political correctness and over-justification will slowly erode law and order. We are already seeing that around the world.
That said, Harden clearly knows her subject and speaks with real conviction. I have a lot of respect and admiration for women who lead in STEM fields and she is a great example of that. We need more of them.
Worth reading? Absolutely. Just don't let it change how you think about accountability.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
I loved this book! And I've never read anything like it. Paige Harden is the top scientist in her field, featured on Huberman Lab and other outlets, and she applies that rigorous lens--combined with a compassionate heart and breathtakingly beautiful prose--to analyze one of the biggest questions in human culture, which is how and when we should blame or judge others or ourselves for moral or ethical failures. She brings a fresh perspective rooted in the new genetic science of polygenic scores; this new science, based on data from millions of people, has changed what we thought we knew about genetic determinism and the environment. Like her previous book, Harden doesn't recommend sticking our fingers in our ears and pretending like the science doesn't exist; instead, she takes on the big questions, head-on, fearlessly. She also brings in deeply personal narratives, and a literary style that reminds me of some of my favorite authors, such as Andrew Solomon (Far from the tree) or Anne Lamott (Bird by bird), and more. The book will leave you smarter, but also asking big questions about yourself and about society.
March 3, 2026
In "Original Sin" behavioral geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden considers nature versus nurture through the lens of science and Christianity. The book is part academic treatise that details the current state of knowledge about the impact our genes have on our behavior and part memoir of Harden's choice to abandon the Christian church in which she was raised. I liked the structure in which each chapter approaches a topic and brings together science and personal experience as well as literature, pop culture, and relatively recent events.
The idea of blame runs throughout the book but separating nature (our gene pool) and nurture (environmental influences during our childhood) is nigh impossible. There are no answers here, easy, clearcut, or otherwise yet I found myself pausing often to consider the thought-provoking questions and research. I can see this book being a good choice for a fascinating book club discussion, and although it is a demanding read, if you like to be challenged, it's worth sticking with it to the end.
Thank you to Random House for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
#netgalley #originalsin
The idea of blame runs throughout the book but separating nature (our gene pool) and nurture (environmental influences during our childhood) is nigh impossible. There are no answers here, easy, clearcut, or otherwise yet I found myself pausing often to consider the thought-provoking questions and research. I can see this book being a good choice for a fascinating book club discussion, and although it is a demanding read, if you like to be challenged, it's worth sticking with it to the end.
Thank you to Random House for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
#netgalley #originalsin
May 9, 2026
This book was not what I expected, being more of a memoir "listing my dissatisfactions and disagreements with the Christian doctrine of my youth" rather than a discussion of current research on genetics, vice, and forgiveness. This book didn't feel finished to me and had an inconsistent tone at times feeling like a lecture, other times like listening to someone who took Intro to Psyche and now thinks they know everything about any topic related to psychology when they don't, and later feeling like woe is me memoir growing up with a fire and brimstone, pain and punishment view of Christianity rather than free will and grace through faith in God. I found some of the discussion of the current science on the genetics of behavior and nature vs. nurture interesting and this book highlights the complexity of people and their views on vice and punishment as well as different approaches to punishment and rehabilitation. It was frustrating to try and reconcile the different parts of this book into an enjoyable read. I received a free electronic ARC of this book from the publisher. I would rate this book 2.5 stars if Goodreads allowed half stars.
June 18, 2026
I really enjoyed Harden's first book about her research on the genetic factors of behavior. Who hasn't looked at their siblings and thought about all the random factors that shaped you into different people? It also taps into one of my pet interests—the "myth of meritocracy" and how our society over-ascribes agency to justify extreme inequality. I recognize there are real risks of eugenicists misinterpreting this sort of research, and I'm not a full-on determinist who's given up on free will. Instead, I feel like this research supports an even more liberal/Rawlsian view: that everyone deserves a good life, not despite but because of their differences.
This book deals a bit more with how Harden reconciles her research with the US justice system (poorly) and her Christian upbringing (even worse). I am both heartened by and a little sad that even one of the foremost experts in the field has trouble fully harmonizing her internal feelings with the evidence. This book doesn't have an easy answer for how we understand blame and forgiveness, but it definitely reinforces my commitment to ensuring everyone is treated with dignity.
This book deals a bit more with how Harden reconciles her research with the US justice system (poorly) and her Christian upbringing (even worse). I am both heartened by and a little sad that even one of the foremost experts in the field has trouble fully harmonizing her internal feelings with the evidence. This book doesn't have an easy answer for how we understand blame and forgiveness, but it definitely reinforces my commitment to ensuring everyone is treated with dignity.
May 21, 2026
Meh. As one reviewer said, this book is littered with interesting scientific facts. Littered indeed. It's a mash-up of memoir, escape from repressive religious tradition, public policy (in particular, but not exclusively, as to incarceration), genetics, psychology, philosophy, and religion or the lack of it. Add all of it up and what do you get? The book itself says it: "As you will see, I offer few definitive answers." I'll save you some time with a précis: Humans are complicated. Our genetic makeup is a significant part of who we are, but how we were parented and the environment we inhabit are also significant. We should punish people who do bad stuff, but should not punish them too harshly, and we should do so in a way that affirms their humanity and advances the interests of society at large. Finally, atheism really works for some people, especially because religious beliefs have led a lot of people to do a lot of bad things. There you go. Now you have time to read another book.
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