In 2021, psychologist and author Kathryn Paige Harden co-authored a paper detailing her research on genes associated with a greater risk of developing substance abuse problems or engaging in risky behavior, such as having unprotected sex or committing crime. The paper was about the genetics of “traits associated with self-control and addiction”, but Harden thought he was studying the genetics of sin.
Harden is a professor at the University of Texas and the author of a previous book, The Genetic Lottery, about how our knowledge of genetics should affect our views on meritocracy. He once received a letter from a man who had been in prison since he was 16 for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman. “What would motivate a boy to do such a thing?” he asked her. His new book is a heartfelt, subtly controversial answer to his question, an attempt to explain how our growing knowledge of what makes people do bad things — the combination of our inherited tendencies and our social circumstances — should influence how we assign moral responsibility and blame.
Harden grew up in a “praise God and pass the guns” southern evangelical church, and although he left it behind, he writes that Christianity has stuck with him like childhood chicken pox: “You may be cured but you’ll never be free. He still has a deep interest in theology, and while to some readers sin may seem like an old-fashioned way of thinking about human behavior, he examines how emotions Christianity about sin and forgiveness drives the moral debate today, and has helped shape the US criminal justice system in an incredibly punitive way. Only in the United States can a minor offender, like the man who wrote to Harden, be imprisoned for life without hope of parole – a policy that suggests a continuing commitment to the doctrine of original sin, the idea that some people are born evil.
It has become almost mandatory for popular science writers to make their work personal by writing about themselves, but Harden has a unique skill at weaving the personal and the scientific. She writes about the experiences of her life – leaving the church, separating from her parents, the struggles of being a first-time mother – with rare, dangerous honesty. These memorial pieces also explore the challenge, and the need, to build bridges between science – like what identical twin studies tell us about why some people find it hard to do the right thing – and our own, independent experiences of what it means to be a moral agent.
This book is full of amazing discoveries of science: who would have thought, for example, that religion depends so much on genetics, that siblings brought up in the same family are raised in the same family as adults, more than two strangers, when separated twins often reach remarkably similar spiritual conclusions? Or that having certain minor physical problems, such as low-set ears or webbed toes, is related to being more aggressive? Or that paper wasps seem to punish greedy behavior in the hive by attacking worker drones that don’t pull their weight and queens that eat too many eggs?
That paper wasp example points to the idea that moral emotions – such as gratitude, anger or guilt – are innate and enable social interaction. The desire for revenge is an ancient motivation, and even young children enjoy seeing the “bad” person punished. But if science can show how little choice people have about their behavior, should it make moral outrage obsolete? Some philosophers think so. Harden takes a slightly different stance. To take personal responsibility is to consider them fully human, he argues, but awareness of the genetic and social aspects of sin should change our thinking about punishment alone. The offender, in this example, should be humbled – but not humiliated, as many are in America’s brutal prison system. Harden writes about Marcia Powell, a 48-year-old woman who died of heatstroke after being held in an outdoor cage in an Arizona prison, arrested for impersonating a police officer. One hopes policymakers will read Harden’s book, but unfortunately the US carceral system has proven unresponsive to appeals for morality or reason.
Another thorny question that Harden asks is: as we learn more about the genetics of sin, would it be wise to select embryos for high morals? Harden doesn’t think so. First, society benefits from moral diversity – this is how moral development and change happens – and from having transgressors. For example, many entrepreneurs were risk-taking, misbehaving youths who were able to put their entrepreneurial skills to good use because they grew up with many advantages in society. Second, it is the eugenist hypothesis that “bad” biology can be identified and divided: people do not conform to the positive categories of good and bad. In this complex, thought-provoking book, Harden examines the stories of some of the worst people you’ve ever heard of – serial killers, child killers, terrorists – and asks his readers to ponder an uncomfortable question: these people are not so different from you and me. So how should a good society treat them?
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