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Heritability is a poor, if not unhelpful, measure of complex human behavioral processes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 September 2022

Agustín Fuentes Open the ORCID record for Agustín Fuentes [Opens in a new window]  and
Kevin Bird
Agustín Fuentes
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA afuentes2@princeton.edu https://anthropology.princeton.edu/people/faculty/agustin-fuentes
Kevin Bird
Affiliation:
Department of Horticulture, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. birdkevi@msu.edu https://www.canr.msu.edu/people/kevin_bird
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Abstract

Heritability is not a measure of the relative contribution of nature vis-à-vis nurture, nor is it the phenotypic variance explained by or because of genetic variance. Heritability is a correlative value. The evolutionary and developmental processes associated with human culture challenge the use of “heritability” for understanding human behavior.

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Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 45 , 2022 , e162
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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