How Genes Shape Your Risk Taking & Morals | Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden

**Kathryn Paige Harden** (0:00)
There is a reward that we can see in the brains of people when they see someone suffer, if that person is first portrayed as a wrongdoer. So, ordinarily, if you see someone be shocked, you have interior insula. It's like you're being shocked, too. Unless that person is first portrayed as violating some moral or social norm, in which case, dopamine, you get a reward out of seeing that person punished. I think that it is a lust just as much as lust for substances or lust for sexual partners. It is a desire people want to see people punished.

**Andrew Huberman** (0:42)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden. She is a psychologist and geneticist and a professor at the University of Texas Austin. Dr. Harden is an expert in how our genes shape our life trajectory, especially how they interact with life events during our adolescence and how they impact our long-term mental and physical health. Today, we discuss the interplay of nature and nurture in addiction, criminality, susceptibility to trauma, and the larger themes of sin, sociopathy, empathy, and forgiveness. As you'll soon see, Dr. Harden is unique in her ability to define how biology, psychology, and the sometimes randomness of life interact to drive people's choices. Today, we talk about known differences between males and females, the role of hormones and hormone-independent influences on male-female differences, and how people assume different roles in life, depending on the power structures they find themselves in. I want to be very clear that this is not a tap dance around the big issues episode. Today, you are going to hear a very direct conversation about what the best science says about the role of genes and environment on human choice, and how the biology, meaning genes and everything downstream of them, neurotransmitters, hormones, etc., drive what choices are available to people and which ones they tend to make. I have long been a fan of Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden's work because I know of no one else researching these topics with the level of rigor that she is, and as you will soon hear, she is an exceptional educator. She's clear, she's direct to the question, and her compassion and belief in people's ability to better themselves no matter what their genes are and to better the world is woven into everything she says, and it's all backed by data. I should also mention that I learned during today's episode that Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden has a new book coming out soon. It is entitled Original Sin on the Genetics of Vice, the Problems with Blame and the Future of Forgiveness. And you can find that anywhere books are sold. It's now available for presale. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden. Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden, welcome.

**Kathryn Paige Harden** (3:12)
Hi, thank you for having me.

**Andrew Huberman** (3:14)
Few things are as interesting to people as the relationship between genes and behavior or what we call genotype and phenotype, the expression of all the stuff downstream of genes. And few things are as interesting as adolescence and puberty and the home we grew up in and how our genes interact with our choices, etc. You work at the intersection of all of those, which is a very brave thing to do. Could you just frame for us why you selected to study the relationship between genes and outcomes using adolescence as the time point in which you jump off from those questions? Because it could have been from infancy or in old age. Why adolescence?

**Kathryn Paige Harden** (4:00)
Yeah, so I did my Ph.D. at the University of Virginia, and I was trained as a clinical psychologist. And if you're looking at when does mental illness emerge, when does this risk for mental illness really start to increase? It's in adolescence. So most cases of substance use disorders or addiction begin in adolescence. That's when people's risk for depression goes up. If you're going to have a first psychotic episode, that's going to be in late adolescence, early adulthood. So from a clinical perspective, adolescence is really interesting. And then I'm also was trained as a lifespan developmental psychologist. So thinking about how does what's happening early in the life reverberate really through the rest of your lifespan. And if you think about when in life do individual differences between people emerge, get canalized, get deeper. When are people's life trajectories really starting to be apparent? It's in adolescence. So I came into this field really interested in teenagers, late childhood in the teenage years. So thinking about puberty, sexual behavior. But then from there, what's happening in adolescence? It's also rule breaking or aggression or again risk for alcohol and drug use. So my research program was really based on, okay, well, what's happening in this period of life where the genes we're born with and the family environments we were raised with, how do they combine to shape people's lives? By the time people finish their teenage years, they begin adulthood, they're beginning adulthood on such different life trajectories.