Skip to main content

Intelligence: Nature or Nurture? Both, together!

Image credit: sciencedaily.com
Lately, I've become obsessed with understanding a fundamental problem in astronomy. We're all familiar with this problem, yet I've found very few good answers among my conversations with astronomers. I've found many clues, plenty of leads, but no fundamental understanding. For better answers, I have decided that I need to turn to psychology. But I digress. What's the question?! I'm interested in the nature of intelligence, and the role intelligence plays in success, particularly in the realm of astrophysics. More specifically: why do some students excel while others struggle, when all of them look about the same when we admit them? (And: is this even a well-posed question?!)

I'm currently reading Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined by Scott Barry Kaufman. The book is absolutely fascinating. I'm very much looking forward to meeting him in person during an upcoming trip to NYC (he's a prof at NYU).

I'm on chapter 3, but today I felt compelled to reread chapter 1, where I found my head spinning with what psychology has to say about the question of nature vs. nurture in the development of intelligence in people. It turns out that nature (genetics) and nurture (environment) work hand-in-hand to shape intelligence, talent and academic achievement at the highest levels.

Most people sense, properly, that there is a strong genetic component to talent. After all, many human traits are inherited. My quiet, soft-spoken friends often had quiet, soft-spoken parents. Athletic people often have athletic parents. Since mental abilities are traits just like speaking style or athleticism, shouldn't they, too, be heritable? My sons both show interest in many of the things I was interested in growing up, such as ninjas, fighter jets, math, Legos, cards and board games. So it seems pretty obvious that they'll succeed in academia just like their dad, right? (what do you mean that you don't see the connection between ninjas and astronomy?!)


Image credit: biocomicals.blogspot.com
Indeed, psychological studies show that mental traits are heritable, passed from parents down to subsequent generations. But as Kaufman points out, "Just because a trait is heritable (and virtually all of our psychological traits are heritable) doesn't necessarily mean that the trait is fixed or can't be developed." After all, my father is a musician and my mother is an artist, and I've never been particularly talented at singing or drawing. (In fact, one of my strongest, unreasonable fears is that my car is bugged. I comfort myself in knowing that no one could stay on the line very long listening to me singing along with Kimbra.)

Psychology research has also shown that genes only form the raw materials for the development of traits, and that specific traits such as intelligence, and even height, cannot be reliably traced to a single gene. Saying that traits are the result of genetics is like saying that babies are the result of mating. Both statements are true, but they're also too simplistic to be useful. There's a long path between the genes present in a person and the development of psychological traits.

The genes responsible for intelligence and talent are manifold, and the mechanisms by which these genes are expressed are intimately tied to environment. Environment broadly refers to external factors such as parenting and schooling, but also internal factors such as nerve impulses, hormones and even other genes. When we go through our lives, we have experiences related to our environment. The responses we have to environmental factors feed back on our genes, causing them to change the way that they are expressed, in real time!

We don't grow up to become who we are, never to change. Kaufman quotes science writer Matt Ridley who states very eloquently, "[Genes] are devices for extracting information from the environment. Every minute, every second, the pattern of genes being expressed in your brain changes, often in direct or indirect response to events outside [and inside] the body. Genes are the mechanisms of experience." (emphasis mine)

HFS! This is not the picture I started with. I think I carried around the implicit belief that, sure, kids develop while they're growing up. But once they reach adulthood, things are pretty much cemented in place. Right? We are who we are, we do what we do. But all I had to do was examine my own academic trajectory to disprove this notion. I started off interested in aerospace engineering. But after a year of classes, I switched my major to mechanical engineering. My grades dropped along with my interest in the subject. Then a charismatic physics teacher took me under his wing and I became a physicist. But upon graduation, I switched fields again to astronomy.

Environment shaping genetic expression. 
I was responding to the environment around me, but more precisely, my genes were expressing themselves in response to my experiences. Once expressed, new neural pathways were forged in my brain. Quoth Prof. Kaufman:
Genes are like the players in the Philadelphia Orchestra. There are many different sections responsible for contributing to the development of different traits. For the symphony to sound beautiful, lots of syncing is required...Not only that, but if the orchestra plays in a totally unresponsive environment...the players will be discouraged from reaching higher and higher levels of achievement. What's the role of the conductor in the gene symphony orchestra? The conductor is analogous to all of the environmental influences that can guide the various sections and help them sync up and sound beautiful.
I'm the son of a musician/theologian father and an artist mother. I never looked through a telescope until he was 21 years old, yet I grew up to be a professor of astrophysics at Harvard. Sure, I was born with the genes that predisposed me to enjoy math, science, and experimentation. I inherited my mother's keen eye for detail and my father's wit and communication skills. But only through the shaping forces in the environment around me were the myriad genes able to sync up, express in just the right pattern, and result in a symphony of astrophysical nerdom!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

back-talk begins

me: "owen, come here. it's time to get a new diaper" him, sprinting down the hall with no pants on: "forget about it!" he's quoting benny the rabbit, a short-lived sesame street character who happens to be in his favorite "count with me" video. i'm turning my head, trying not to let him see me laugh, because his use and tone with the phrase are so spot-on.

The Long Con

Hiding in Plain Sight ESPN has a series of sports documentaries called 30 For 30. One of my favorites is called Broke  which is about how professional athletes often make tens of millions of dollars in their careers yet retire with nothing. One of the major "leaks" turns out to be con artists, who lure athletes into elaborate real estate schemes or business ventures. This naturally raises the question: In a tightly-knit social structure that is a sports team, how can con artists operate so effectively and extensively? The answer is quite simple: very few people taken in by con artists ever tell anyone what happened. Thus, con artists can operate out in the open with little fear of consequences because they are shielded by the collective silence of their victims. I can empathize with this. I've lost money in two different con schemes. One was when I was in college, and I received a phone call that I had won an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas. All I needed to d

Reader Feedback: Whither Kanake in (white) Astronomy?

Watching the way that the debate about the TMT has come into our field has angered and saddened me so much. Outward blatant racism and then deflecting and defending. I don't want to post this because I am a chicken and fairly vulnerable given my status as a postdoc (Editor's note: How sad is it that our young astronomers feel afraid to speak out on this issue? This should make clear the power dynamics at play in this debate) .  But I thought the number crunching I did might be useful for those on the fence. I wanted to see how badly astronomy itself is failing Native Hawaiians. I'm not trying to get into all of the racist infrastructure that has created an underclass on Hawaii, but if we are going to argue about "well it wasn't astronomers who did it," we should be able to back that assertion with numbers. Having tried to do so, well I think the argument has no standing. At all.  Based on my research, it looks like there are about 1400 jobs in Hawaii r