#879 James Lee: Behavior Genetics, Educational Attainment, IQ, and Alcohol and Tobacco Use
RECORDED ON AUGUST 23rd 2023.
Dr. James Lee is Associate Professor of Psychology, and a member of the Graduate Faculty of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Minnesota. In 2012, Dr. Lee earned a Ph.D. from the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. The papers collected in his dissertation cover causal inference, genome-wide association studies, and cognitive-experimental approaches to the study of individual differences. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the Mathematical Biology Section of NIDDK/NIH from 2011 to 2013, working on problems in population and statistical genetics.
In this episode, we talk about behavior genetics. We discuss genome-wide association studies (GWAS), and what we can learn from them. We talk about the concept of heritability. We go through traits like educational attainment, IQ, and alcohol and tobacco use. We talk about laypeople’s beliefs about the heritability of behavior. Finally, Dr. Lee answers two questions from a patron of the show, about modern education, and causality in behavior genetics.
Time Links:
Intro
Genome-wide association studies
The concept of heritability
Educational attainment
The heritability of IQ
Alcohol and tobacco use
Laypeople’s beliefs about the heritability of behavior
Two questions from a patron
Follow Dr. Lee’s work!
Follow Dr. Lee’s work:
Faculty page: https://bit.ly/43LCfku
Works on ResearchGate: https://bit.ly/43MVVEH