Entropy, Behavioral Genetics, and Teen Stereotypes
Last week on Psychology Today I released an article on how entropy connects to psychology.
Today I released an article on how negative stereotypes influence teens’ behavior and brain development.
This week on The Nature & Nurture Podcast I spoke with Dr. Ilan Dar-Nimrod about genetic essentialism, the belief that our genes define our “essence” and can be used to predict someone's personality and behavior.
We talk about how genetic essentialism is associated with more sympathy for wrongdoers, due to lower beliefs in free will. We also talk about how essentialism is associated with divisive groupthink, as in the case of gender and sexuality. Lastly, we talk about the relationship between essentialism and existentialism, noting that people who are more essentialist are more likely to believe in an inherent order to the world, while people who are more secular must grapple with finding their own meaning.