Cover of ‘Original Sin’ by Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden. Courtesy/LAF&S
LAF&S News:
The Los Alamos Faith and Science (LAF&S) Forum 2026 Summer Series continues Wednesday, July 22, with a presentation on “The Genetics of Vice” by Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden from the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Harden will present her talk via Zoom beginning at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 22. The community is invited to gather at 6 p.m. for a light meal followed by the talk at Trinity on the Hill Episcopal Church, 3900 Trinity Drive. For those unable to attend in person, the presentation will be recorded and streamed here.
“Genetic insights can powerfully reshape people’s intuitions about whether a behavior is a matter of right or wrong,” Dr. Harden said. “From body weight to autism, sexual orientation to substance use, scientific results about how genes influence human phenotypes have been used to combat stigma and blame. But moral intuitions don’t just respond to science; they can also shape what science gets done.”
Dr. Harden continued, “In this talk, I describe how ancient ideas about the relationship between nature and morality still influence which human psychological differences are prioritized in genetic research. Using externalizing spectrum disorders, including ADHD, substance use disorders, and antisocial personality disorder, as illustrative examples, I show how transcending the false binary between ‘moral’ and ‘biological’ phenotypes might open up new opportunities for scientific discovery and psychological treatment.”
Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden
Dr. Harden is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a graduate of Furman University and the University of Virginia and has been profiled in The New Yorker, has spoken at MIT, Princeton, the Max Planck Institute, and the Royal Institution while publishing more than 150 scientific papers on the nature and nurture of human behavior. Her books have been translated into 10 languages and her research has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Economist, Science, and more. Dr. Harden’s most recent book, Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness, has been praised as “an extraordinary book, the very best of science writing.”
