i would like to know just because i'm a little curious of knowing my family's history and if there's any way to prevent things from happening so a big thing would be to prevent right um and you know with preventing carmen's um then tagging on saying um you can be proactive get tested get treated so there's so many different things and a lot of y'all are are focusing on kind of the good here but there's typically some people that don't want to have this knowledge because they're worried about the knowledge causing them anxiety and you know the test 23andme is going to stop towards the end and ask you do you want to know like do you give them permission to tell you if you have a genetic predisposition to alzheimer's things the reason they're asking about those specific things parkinson's and alzheimer's is because right now there's really nothing we can do to cure those things right there's no real treatment available for them and so basically you just live with this knowledge without the ability to really medically treat it or cure it and so a lot of people are afraid that is this going to kind of be something that's always going to be kind of lingering over them this idea and is it going to cause them to live in anxiety and it's something that they can't do anything about um or there's people that have a if they're real honest they say they have a fear of you know self-fulfilling prophecy that they're gonna somehow bring it about themselves um or they're going to change their life in some major way because of this knowledge uh maybe you know just living in fear kind of thing being scared of coming across different triggers that could activate this kind of genetic predisposition so there's a lot of kind of oh the negatives but we are seeing that the society as a whole we're moving towards this idea knowledge knowledge knowledge we want to know because we want to see if we can control anything as human beings we love control you all know this from our past talks we love control and this is another place where we want control why are we trying to figure out so much when it comes to genetics so that we can control it all but then we get to the question of should we be controlling it we're getting to the point that okay we can create designer babies and all that kind of stuff and we can select and you know our uh children's genes you know before they're born um if they you know can remove something or change something or pick a specific embryo that doesn't have something if that makes any sense some people say oh well that's so far in the future no it's not in the future it is kind of where we are at already we are figuring this stuff out and so you've got to make a decision where you stand on would you participate in genetic manipulation um and i think that that is a realm of psychology and if we start messing with that we are going to mess with development and we are going to mess with development on a generational level and an evolutionary level and once we start picking what what is what are things going to turn into right as we get more and more control and essentially in a lot of ways the ability to play god i know that's a controversial statement but we are kind of developing a little bit of that ability where is the line kind of thing so um you know whether we're talking about designer babies or we're talking about something that's a little bit more real right now um i was reading a story and i may have mentioned this before about a couple that found out that um one of them had suffered with a like muscular degenerative disease or something like that um and they found that it was linked strongly to genetics that this was was kind of really caused by your genetics and so um they were worried to bring children into a world to live a life of pain and so they did in vitro fertilization and all of that and they had the different embryos analyzed to see which one which ones have that muscular degenerative disease like genetic component and which ones don't and they selected the embryo that didn't have it and that's the baby that they ended up having so that is something that's you know definitely definitely kind of a real world situation right now that we have that kind of ability to decide would you make that decision is this something that you're okay with where do you kind of draw the line and okay see yeah thomas exactly this is this is real world this is what's going on right now all of this is so touchy it's so touchy and it's in touch it's controversial it's super controversial and i hope you all know me well enough by now to know that i think psychology is all about understanding and it's under understanding the individual and every in respecting every individual's kind of place um and people arrive at different conclusions and different beliefs and different thoughts because of so many different things what we're talking about right now genetics environment and all the experiences they've been through and also this possible third spark that we haven't really addressed too much the idea of a free will um you know all somebody's who they are the decisions they make the opinions they have it's all so much a complex um result of all those things that we can't really kind of judge it you know we're instead trying to just understand it so i hope you all know that in here in in all of this discussion even when it comes to genetics and these controversial topics i'm really just trying to understand um and so we have to look at where is the where are we at kind of when it comes to all this and what are the decisions we're faced with and i always pose some controversial questions right now and let's see if i can remember how i normally do this i don't remember if i did this before with nature versus nurture i don't have this written down in front of me so we're talking about genetic manipulation the first question is if you found out that your child is going to the child that's in your womb you haven't had the child yet is going to have a 60 just think of a number 60 70 percent chance of dying from cancer in their teens but you could change the genes would you change it i'm scared to take answers i think we i don't know if i should take answers maybe don't say it i love y'all's responses maybe we should just leave it oh okay carmen says yes then carmen you're a mom right yes i feel bad for it don't don't feel bad okay thomas says no i appreciate y'all's honesty i it is a controversial question and we're in an online format so i appreciate i appreciate y'all even more in class i'll typically get everyone to kind of show hands for this um this question and honestly we typically see that most people here will say yes they will change the genes because they want to save their child and it's just kind of normal reaction and i want to emphasize y'all this is all a thought experiment right now what would you actually do in the situation that's a whole other thing with the amount of imagine i mean we're just imagining a child a child that you actually already love even though they haven't been born you already love them and you have so many ideas for their future and and everything that they're going to go through um and you want to protect them and you want to love them so i think most people the majority kind of say yes i would do something about it and y'all this is kind of why science is trying to advance right in terms of this so that they can do things like stop cancer so this is kind of that answer that most people say yes um that's the first question the second question that i ask and it gets a little bit more controversial so probably don't respond to this one definitely don't respond to the last one the second question is if you found out that your child was going to or had a like 80 chance of suffering with major depression starting in their pre-teen years and that they were going to struggle their entire life with um depression and suicidal ideation oh your sister's due next month and she said yes that's more real world that's more real world carmen that's cool that you got that response so the second question is you know that 80 chance they're going to suffer with major depression and live a life of contemplating suicide possibly attempting possibly committing suicide but you can change the genes and remove the likelihood of major depression i'm not saying this is possible yeah y'all i'm just saying would y'all do it y'all don't have to respond it does get more controversial a lot of people would say yes i would save my child from a lifetime of sadness i want them to live a happy life the third question and this is extremely controversial definitely nobody responds what if you found out that your baby was going to have down syndrome and you could change the genetics so that they didn't would you change it i was extremely controversial because there's so much more to a person you know and a lot of people have people in their lives that have down syndrome and their wonderful sparks in the world wonderful people and maybe this isn't some kind of flaw that needs to be taken out of our genetic you know construction right um maybe depression isn't a flaw that needs to be taken out of our genetic construction but maybe it it you know it's all controversial and i mean whether it harms them in some way or not it's changing them right it's changing kind of something about them um you know with the depression we're talking about personality with down syndrome we're talking about uh so much but at the same time you know there's a lot of parents out there who say well someone who has down syndrome doesn't have as long of life expectancy so then you start thinking well i want them to live a long life all of this stuff is so controversial but my my point here is to say let's come up with really difficult questions because i think the future is going to challenge us in that way it's going to be really difficult to answer and when we're put in the position it's going to be really difficult to answer so we need to already be thinking about where are the lines here and where are we headed and is this a good idea is this a bad idea most people that and most people answer yes to the very first question would you save them from cancer but if you answer yes to that question you have dipped your toe into genetic manipulation you have crossed that line and then the question becomes well where do you stop you've got it every individual person has to figure out for themselves where that line is what do they believe is right what do they believe is wrong and you know for me this has been a really interesting journey because i think i've mentioned to y'all before i used to think i want all the freaking knowledge i want to learn it all so the more knowledge and the more control i can get the better like tell me about all of it and i had one student i may have mentioned her before that one day got really upset that i brought up the idea of how big the universe is and how there's galaxies on galaxies on galaxies and you know someone threw out the idea of oh do you believe in aliens and she got really upset that we were even talking about that and she said maybe sometimes too much there's such thing as too much knowledge maybe we don't need to know all this and i was just like mind blown because i was like really but we do want to know like that's so cool like why don't we want to know this is the first place that i've started to think maybe too much knowledge maybe there is a such thing as too much knowledge and maybe there is such a thing as too much control if we knew what depression really like looked at looked like when it came to genetics or um anxiety what it looked like and if somehow we could alter genetics and destroy those things we've talked about y'all the two drives when it comes to freud would we not then be tempted to destroy that whole destructive death drive all the depression all the anxiety all those negative kind of things all those destructive kind of things would we not want to just kind of get rid of that and a student who wouldn't stop laughing me and laughing at me in person because i kept saying destroy destruction but we would want to destroy destruction destroy all the bad and but we know that we have to have that in order to have the good and so we would completely change the distance and we would completely start i think to be messing with variability as well because wouldn't we all kind of become certain kind of robots and then there's different kinds of things like what if we can you know manipulate genetics who's going to have that power and can we trust even if you trust yourself to have that power and make the right decisions when it comes to ethics and all of that do you trust the person that's going to actually be in that position of power or that's going to get their hands on that knowledge or their hands on that ability imagine if hitler had this ability what would happen do we trust everyone or the average person out there whoever is going to be our leader in the future for whatever do we trust them with this kind of knowledge and this kind of power and this kind of control it's a really really scary idea it's a scary idea of what's going to happen as we expand in terms of our knowledge when it comes to genetics who's going to have access to the genetic manipulation ability is it just going to be the rich are the rich going to be making themselves smarter and the poor aren't there i know there's movies out there on this right also if we are born one day and wait prints out our genetic code who's gonna have access like you're you have a baby and with them the computer prints out their full genetic code and all their predispositions what is that gonna do to their life what doors are going to close to them what opportunities are they going to lose is a school going to invest in a child who has a 90 chance of dying from cancer before 30 i don't think so is a company going to invest in a child there's already you know these are kind of big ideas and they're fun to think about but i think they're actually important but there are already some issues out there when it comes to the 23andme tests and these different kind of um genetic testing kind of situations health insurance supposedly is protected that they can't take away our health insurance because of a genetic test because we find out oh we have this super high um likelihood of dying of cancer um supposedly we're protected from a law there but again a law is a creation from society so can that get uncreated can that change um all of that we decide as a group so will that change in the future um right now when it comes to life insurance there's already concerns the law doesn't protect us there if you know because genetic testing that you have a high likelihood of dying it's my my belief that or my understanding that you have to reveal this to life insurance companies that you're required to and so then you're not going to have as good of a policy if you take a genetic test and you find out this knowledge it's kind of crazy to think about at first i thought well that's ridiculous but then when i thought more into it it makes complete sense because life insurance is all about gambling and so we need to have equal again if you think about the two scales equal amounts of knowledge for us to kind of make a gamble the life insurance company and us if we have this like killer piece of information actually killer piece of information sorry if we have this piece of information that something is really hurting our health or our life expectancy we have to reveal it to them or else it's not fair we're kind of scamming the system you know if i know oh i'm really probably going to die at this age or die young then it's like you had double down on life insurance that's not fair we have to be playing with the same kind of information it's all gambling um and so it makes sense that legally we are supposed to be required to reveal this information so i i hope that y'all can see how complex this area of study is and how it relates to psychology and i hope that y'all see as we figure this stuff out we're gonna need to find out more and more where the line is for each of us as individuals where what should we be messing with what shouldn't we be messing with where is there possibility of too much knowledge where is the possibility of too much control the good information the good thing here is even though we're talking about oh yeah designer babies and all this stuff it's not like we can just choose oh i want my son to be just like michael jordan and create michael jordan because it's so complex i don't know if we'll ever get to that point because it's such a complex interaction of yes his genetics and his environment and the spark that's possibly um you know uh this part is possibly free will so there's so much more here and that kind of can provide us some kind of comfort now let's put a little bit more information um when it comes to our actual data all the data all our data this is called our genotype you all remember this now phenotype is something different our observable measurable characteristics everything you see reflect more than just genetic material is through the phenotype the actual expression of our genetic material so not everything is revealed in the same way and this is the it's think the expression so some of our genes aren't expressed you can think about recessive genes it's actually way more complicated than that but the ones that are expressed are our phenotype are observable and so all of this is kind of to say that the environment can like activate certain parts of our genotype and cause um certain things to be expressed um and so we have this range of phenotypes that that can be expressed that is possible and this is our second source of variability i don't know how to explain this variable variability became huge when i was studying this because of how i was saying about that picture like imagine for a second you're creating the world right and you want to make it as complex as possible because that's going to make it as rich as possible just to make it as exciting and as alive as possible right so okay we've got to come up with every single just on the genetic kind of level that the genes in forming the single zygote we've got to make it as unique as possible every single start has to be possible i mean it has to be has to be different so each individual person has to be different then we've got to make the environment all different for every person we can't start every person on step like the same thing you know why why why is can the unfairness of life make sense because it's got to be unfair we've got to all have different genetics and we've all got to start in different places to make the most variability i know we're almost done with lecture if i have to go okay thanks gabby for joining hope you have a good night um so we have to make things as different as possible so genetics different then everyone's got to start different some people have to be born with a silver spoon in their mouth and other people not this is the only way that i can start to like rationalize in a logical way that why we need life to be unfair so that makes things different everyone starts with different environments every different every person goes through different experiences and maintains different environments that's going to create more variability but whether we're talking about just influencing the phenotype or beyond that and so okay the net the net step to make things even more complex is possibly adding that third spark of free will beyond nature beyond nurture adding that free will spark if we add free will it's just like even more variability because we don't know what the person is going to do yeah we've given them a certain set of cards when it comes to their genetics and their environment but then also they can decide in whatever given moment to do whatever or be whatever or deal with things in whatever way so if there is that third spark it's just another level of variability making life more and more rich i i don't know if this makes sense this is a rabbit hole that i went on last semester that i was thinking about to myself but just driving thinking well this is huge i understand the unfairness of life on a logical genetic level or genetic nature versus nurture kind of level i don't know if it made sense to anyone else to me it was a huge realization okay so another source of variability is the fact that we have a range of phenotypes that can be expressed um so let's move beyond this to some real simple stuff on dominant versus recessive genes okay so dominant is going to be and i explain this in gen psych like dominant is a bully gene and uh the recessive gene is kind of the victim whatever the bully jeans around it's going to be like telling the recessive gene be quiet you don't get to be expressed you don't have a voice i'm the only voice here right that to me is the bully gene um so if you have you know this is super simplistic genetics if you have um one bully gene one dominant gene and one recessive gene say it's eye color brown eyes is supposed to be the dominant gene blue eyes is supposed to be the recessive gene so if you have one brown and one blue dominant brown is gonna be expressed you're gonna have brown eyes but then say oh two people hook up two parents they get married they have a baby whatever it is um and they both have brown eyes but then all of a sudden their child has blue eyes are you the tallest one in the family not as tall how does that work i'm the tallest my father's about five ten my mother's about five five everyone else is about five six and a half five seven the milkman is about six seven no [Applause] no no no well what does it say they both were carrying a recessive gene and so now the child has both of the recessive gene two blues so you had one brown one blue one brown one blue they got together and they made a baby that is two blues um and so then the child has an express blue eye this was the real basic understanding of how genetics works and this says you may never know what recessive genes that you carry so i hope that somehow i have some recessive height genes or my kids are going to be somehow tall because i'm very short um most mutated genes are recessive genes okay so they found out that this is super simplistic it's actually way more complicated than this it's really really way more complicated and this is going to be polygenic we have polygenic traits or we can study polygenic inheritance and this is going to say genetic transmission is usually more complex and simple characteristic examples that we normally give most characteristics are determined by the interaction of many different genes so think height intelligence even eye color or hair color all this kind of stuff is way more complicated than we ever thought so tons of genes are at play um okay i said before with the phenotype and genotype um that environments can interact with genotypes to produce phenotypes an individual can inherit the genetic potential to grow very large for example but environmental influences involving good nutrition among other themes will be essential for achieving that potential you know you can think about a child that has the genetics to grow up and be really tall but they get into bodybuilding and adolescence bodybuilding is known to um uh to stunt growth um or power power lifting that kind of stuff and so the the environment kind of um influences the genes most diseases cancer diabetes all these things develop as a consequence of complex gene interactions and environmental factors we have a presence of a genetic defect maybe and that does not inevitably lead to the development of the disorder um if the individual develops in the right environment each individual carries dna variations that might predispose the person to serious physical or mental disorders but we've got to know that genes are not destiny they do not they can contribute but they are not our destiny genes are not destiny so you know for example you inherited a gene that means you're going to have a high chance of developing emphysema from smoking well just don't smoke smoking is an environmental factor and you have the ability to decide if you surround yourselves with smoke um and if you smoke um so think about this kind of idea how um that that uh the environment can trigger certain genetic predispositions to become kind of active um examples of more about how genes aren't destiny that our environment matters being around others changes us physically if you connect with others oxytocin is released and oxytocin is that kind of it's a stress hormone people don't realize that but it's that cuddle hormone and oxytocin heals the heart and has these kind of biological impacts so just being around people changes us physically you can look at the myelin sheath we're going to talk about myelin sheath formation and i may have mentioned it before it's at that covering on the axon of the neuron that speeds neural impulses well if you have care and affection when you're young you're going to develop that myelin sheath on your neurons if you don't have care and affection then the myelin sheath may not develop properly which means neural impulses are going to be slower so it shows how our environment is going to impact our actual biology and the formation of our neurons i have something here about the happy documentary there's a happy documentary on netflix it's really good and they study where the happiest and most oppressed places in the world and they talk about just happiness overall and supposedly happiness is 50 percent our genetics according to that documentary 10 circumstances so they're going to put that on kind of environmental kind of things and they say 40 what you do they're giving 40 left up to to the individual and kind of their own spark of their deciding and interpreting ability and so it shows that okay there's things that matter in the environment there's things that matter um when it comes to just our decisions that it's all not determined by genes okay let's look more at the heredity environment interaction let's look at these correlations all of this says these correlations are going to say that heredity or genetics determines the environment and it becomes hard to kind of parcel out well what is the role of the environment and what is the role of genetics because genetics determines the environment um okay hopefully this makes more sense as we go through it the first correlation this is easy test material y'all easy for me to test over passive genotype environment correlation these occur because the biological pairs provide the rearing environment for the child so one people that are genetically related are going to provide the environment so someone can say oh well a child became a really good singer because it was in their environment and so it's an environmental thing but then they can say well actually that environment was provided by the parents who had a genetic kind of predisposition or genetic ability to be really good singers they loved music so they created an environment that had tons of music and so they're saying that that environment was determined by the genetics if that makes sense so an example um their children both because of their own inherited predispositions and their book-filled environment will become skilled readers i think about music but the book talks about children become skilled readers and you can look at well it's because of their inherited predispositions and their book-filled environment but that environment got book-filled because the parents had the same genetics and they had these inherited predispositions and they loved to read so i also gave the example of music okay the second one does that one make sense y'all this one's going to be evocative genotype and i think you all are writing that's environment correlations so genes evoke environmental support or evoke different things a child's genetically influenced characteristics elicit certain types of environments so because of our genes we have these certain kind of personality traits or just abilities or whatever and the fact that we have those are going to cause the environment to respond in a certain way um it's going to create this certain environment an example um an active smiling child is going to receive more social stimulation than the passive quiet child it's like doubling down because they're more social they get a more social environment so they double down on this kind of social element so more social so double down the shy child imagine how i was when i was kid i'd hide behind my dad do you think anybody would approach me no they knew that i would hide or i would cry so i didn't get any of that kind of interaction but i kind of was just born shy and scared and quiet um and so my genetics kind of created this environment how people treated me was influenced by my genetics okay and then the third is going to be active niche picking correlation children seek out environments that they find compatible and stimulating you can think example that book loving child who just genetically just kind of that's you know what they're into they're going to go seek out a library or someone's going to seek out sports if that's what they're into and have the ability for they seek out what or you know um music the the band room the band hall whatever it is um they seek out what interests them um so all of these things though are showing that kind of like well genetics is creating our environments you know whether it's the parents genetics influencing the environment they provide the children's genetic traits moving and causing others to provide a certain environment or children's genetic traits guiding them themselves to picking certain environments it's all one way it isn't pointing out that bi-directional thing it's it's kind of saying it's one way but it is saying it's a mess and it's hard to kind of parcel out exactly what's going on um so the next thing is well that's all one directional let's go bi-directional and this is that epigenetic view and this is what erickson kind of hit on and he was using to talk about his own idea of development he stole this from genetics but this is basically going to say that it's a bi-directional relationship that genetics and heredity are influencing the environment and the environment's influencing genetics and heredity it's going both ways that's what the epigenetic thing means um and so what we talked about before with like schizophrenia and both things mattering and then influencing each other and they're being this kind of synergism um that's kind of related here so development reflects an ongoing bi-directional interchange between heredity and environ environment and one of the best examples of this is during prenatal development okay because what we have to prove y'all we know that genetics influences environment we've got to improve we've got to prove that environment influences genetics and i mentioned some examples before but this is what you know this view is kind of saying okay that's what we have to prove so of course prenatal development proves that environmental experiences such as toxins nutrition stress all of these can influence some genes to stop functioning while others become more active or less active so the baby's actual genetic expression is influenced by what the mom exposes herself to while the baby's in her womb so do you know does she smoke or does she not smoke does she drink alcohol not drink alcohol and we'll talk about the experience of having a baby and all these things that matter like what what is good and what is bad for the development of the baby environmental experiences or experience such as toxins nutrition stress stress even matters can influence and what's crazy about stress y'all is stress is subjective we it's like all in our mind we make up stress and decide what is stressful and if stress is a good or a bad thing the body responds accordingly okay stress can influence some genes to stop functioning while others become more active or less active dream embassy environmental influences continue to modify genetic activity and influence activity of the nervous system that directly underlies behavior okay um heredity and environment all of this is to say that they operate together and they collaborate to produce a person's well-being their intelligence their temperament their health their ability to pitch a ball their ability to read and so on and so forth gene by or gene times environment these are studies that are looking into how how the interaction of heredity and environment influences development including and this is what this is about interactions that involve specific dna sequences so this says let's stop talking about these big general ideas and concerns and instead let's look at very specific sequences of the dna and how that impacts or interacts with the environment to form what what we what we see and what is revealed and so examples i'm going to read these to y'all individuals who have a short version of the gene labeled 5-htt lpr a gene involving the neurotransmitter serotonin this short version of that gene if you have that you have an elevated risk of developing depression only if you also lead a stressful life again that's crazy because stress is a subjective interpretation the gene does not cause the development of depression rather the gene interacted with a stressful environment in a way that allowed the researchers to predict whether the individuals would develop depression okay the next kind of example this one's crazier adults who experience parental loss as young children were more likely to have unresolved attachment issues as adults only when they had the short version of 5-htt lpr the longer version apparently provided some kind of protection or ability to cope with parental loss better that's kind of insane okay so those are just kind of examples they're looking at the specific um sequences of dna and the interaction with the environment there's tons of interest in this right now but the problem is the science is super young and they're having problems with replicating results they're saying that they're making inflated claims and that there's other weaknesses so we've got to be kind of careful with this these kind of claims and they sound really cool but they're saying hey kind of watch out that there's some possible weaknesses here now the last thing that i want to mention to sum this all up and i've mentioned it quite a few times is this third part this idea of free will and how this creates this added level of variability as to who we are maybe it's not all um our nature and our nurture and the heredity and the environment we have this individual and the free will portion we can author unique developmental paths by changing our environment and changing our situation mind matters is kind of what this says our hopes our goals our expectations influence our future the book actually says and this surprises me development is a co-construction of biology culture and the individual we are both create creatures and creators of our world we are the products of our genes and environments nevertheless the stream of causation that shapes the future runs through our present choices mind matters our hopes goals and expectations influence our future that's a pretty beautiful little write-up for a textbook and to recognize the possibility of this kind of third spark that we matter and that we can impact our future and our lives the book also says it's misleading to talk about genes genes for eye colors intelligence personality and other characteristics in retrospect we should not have expected to be able to make the giant leap from analyzing the molecules in dna to achieving complete understanding of human behavior any more than we should anticipate being able to make the leap from understanding how sound waves move molecules in a concert hall to attaining full-blown appreciation of a symphony's wondrous experience another beautiful write-up that says we're so much more than just this stuff that we're trying to break down and define us by okay y'all that's genetics we did it all right i'm gonna stop the recording see everybody later