Parent-offspring resemblance for educational attainment reduces with increased social class in a global sample: evidence for the compensatory advantage hypothesis.

Introduction: The degree to which (self-reported) social class predicts parent-offspring resemblance for educational attainment (EA) is examined in a globally representative dataset of 69,116 individuals sourced from 56 countries. Methods: A hierarchical general linear model is used to predict participant EA with the two-way interaction between class and parental EA, after controlling for regional effects, the main effects of age, class, parental EA, and interactions among these. Results: Social class-by-parental EA interaction negatively predicts participant EA (semipartial r = -0.04, 95% CI = -0.05 to -0.03), meaning that among those who report belonging to a "higher" social class, the degree of parent-offspring resemblance for EA is reduced, contrary to the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis, which holds that genetic influences on cognitive ability and related phenotypes (captured here in part by parent-offspring resemblance) should be greater among those from higher socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. These results replicate using a quantile regression model, where it was found that among those with lower social class ordinals, the strength of the parent-participant EA association is significantly stronger relative to those in the highest ordinal. No significant sex differences are present. Discussion: These findings are consistent with the compensatory advantage hypothesis, which predicts decreased heritability of EA and related phenotypes among affluent families, as increased access to educational resources should enhance opportunities for cognitive growth in a way that compensates for intrinsic disadvantages.

Social Adversity Reduces Polygenic Score Expressivity for General Cognitive Ability, but Not Height.

It has been hypothesized that even 'perfect' polygenic scores (PGSs) composed of only causal variants may not be fully portable between different social groups owing to gene-by-environment interactions modifying the expression of relevant variants. The impacts of such interactions involving two forms of social adversity (low socioeconomic status [SES] and discrimination) are examined in relation to the expressivity of a PGS for educational attainment composed of putatively causal variants in a large, representatively sampled and genotyped cohort of US children. A relatively small-magnitude Scarr-Rowe effect is present (SES × PGSEDU predicting General Cognitive Ability [GCA]; sR = .02, 95% CI [.00, .04]), as is a distinct discrimination × PGSEDU interaction predicting GCA (sR = -.02, 95% CI [-.05, 00]). Both are independent of the confounding main effects of 10 ancestral principal components, PGSEDU, SES, discrimination and interactions among these factors. No sex differences were found. These interactions were examined in relation to phenotypic and genotypic data on height, a prospectively more socially neutral trait. They were absent in both cases. The discrimination × PGSEDU interaction is a co-moderator of the differences posited in modern versions of Spearman's hypothesis (along with shared environmentality), lending support to certain environmental explanations of those differences. Behavior-genetic analysis of self-reported discrimination indicates that it is nonsignificantly heritable (h2 = .027, 95% CI [-.05, .10]), meaning that it is not merely proxying some underlying source of heritable phenotypic variability. This suggests that experiences of discrimination might stem instead from the action of purely social forces.

Genetics of psychic ability - A pilot case-control exome sequencing study.

INTRODUCTION: It is commonly believed that psychic ability, like many mental and physical traits, runs in families. This suggests the presence of a genetic component. If such a component were found, it would constitute a biological marker of psychic ability and inform environmental or pharmacologic means of enhancing or suppressing this ability. METHODS: A case-control study design was used to evaluate differences between psychic cases and non-psychic controls. Over 3,000 candidates globally were screened through two online surveys to locate people who claimed they and other family members were psychic. Measures of relevance to the claimed abilities (e.g., absorption, empathy, schizotypy) were collected and based on those responses, individuals with indications of psychotic or delusional tendencies were excluded from further consideration. Eligible candidates were then interviewed and completed additional screening tests. Thirteen individuals were selected as the final "psychic cases," and ten age-, sex-, and ethnicity-matched individuals with no claims of psychic ability were selected as controls. DNA from the saliva of these 23 participants was subjected to whole-exome sequencing. Two independent bioinformatics analyses were blindly applied to the sequenced data, one focusing exclusively on protein-coding sequences and another that also included some adjacent noncoding sequences. RESULTS: Sequencing data were obtained for all samples, except for one in the control group that did not pass the quality controls and was not included in further analyses. After unblinding the datasets, none of the protein-coding sequences (i.e., exons) showed any variation that discriminated between cases and controls. However, a difference was observed in the intron (i.e., non-protein-coding region) adjacent to an exon in the TNRC18 gene (Trinucleotide Repeat-Containing Gene 18 Protein) on chromosome 7. This variation, an alteration of GG to GA, was found in 7 of 9 controls and was absent from all psychic cases. DISCUSSION: The most conservative interpretation of these results is that they result from random population sampling. However, when the results are considered in relation to other lines of evidence, the results are more provocative. Further research is justified to replicate and extend these findings.

Estimating the Additive Heritability of Historiometric Eminence in a Super-Pedigree Comprised of Four Prominent Families.

By merging analytical approaches from the fields of historiometrics and behavior genetics, a social pedigree-based estimate of the heritability of eminence is generated. Eminent individuals are identified using the Pantheon dataset. A single super-pedigree, comprised of four prominent and interrelated families (including the Wedgwood-Darwin, Arnold-Huxley, Keynes-Baha'u'lláh, and Benn-Rutherford pedigrees) is assembled, containing 30 eminent individuals out of 301 in total. Each eminent individual in the super-pedigree is assigned a relative measure of historical eminence (scaled from 1 to 100) with noneminent individuals assigned a score of 0. Utilizing a Bayesian pedigree-based heritability estimation procedure employing an informed prior, an additive heritability of eminence of .507 (95% CI [.434, .578]) was found. The finding that eminence is additively heritable is consistent with expectations from behavior-genetic studies of factors that are thought to underlie extraordinary accomplishment, which indicate that they are substantially additively heritable. Owing to the limited types of intermarriage present in the data, it was not possible to estimate the impact of nonadditive genetic contributions to heritability. Gene-by-environment interactions could not be estimated in the present analysis either; therefore, the finding that eminence is simply a function of additive genetic and nonshared environmental variance should be interpreted cautiously.

Evidence for the Scarr-Rowe Effect on Genetic Expressivity in the Health and Retirement Study.

The Scarr-Rowe effect is a gene × environment interaction, which is characterized by a negative association between exposure to low socioeconomic status (SES) environments and the additive heritability of cognitive ability. Utilizing a polygenic score for educational attainment (EA3), it was found that the two-way interaction between EA3 and parental educational attainment (EA; used as a proxy for parental SES) was a significant positive predictor of participants' composite cognitive ability (IQ) score (ß = .018, SE = .008, p = .028) after controlling hierarchically for the direct effects of (population-stratification-controlled) EA3, parental EA, and 20 distinct interaction terms (10 involving the interactions between the principal components [PCs] and EA3, and 10 involving the interaction between the PCs and parental EA). The presence of this interaction is consistent with the Scarr-Rowe effect, as the expressivity of EA3 on cognitive ability increases with increasing parental EA. No statistically significant sex differences in the effect magnitudes were found, although the effect was significantly present in the female but not male sample.

Anomalous information reception by mediums: A meta-analysis of the scientific evidence.

Background and purpose Mediumship is the ostensible phenomenon of human-mediated communication between deceased and living persons. In this paper, we perform a meta-analysis of all available modern experimental evidence, specifically from 2001 to December 2019, investigating the accuracy of apparently anomalously received information provided by mediums about deceased individuals. Methods 14 papers passed our selection criteria, for a total of 18 experiments. Both Bayesian and frequentist random effects models were used to estimate the aggregate effect size across studies. Results The overall standardized effect size (proportion index), estimated with a frequentist and a Bayesian random effects model, yielded a value of .18 (95% C.I. = .12 - .25) above the chance level. Furthermore, these estimates passed the control of two publication bias tests. Conclusions The results of this meta-analysis support the hypothesis that some mediums can retrieve information about deceased persons through unknown means.

A Meta-Analysis of the "Erasing Race" Effect in the United States and Some Theoretical Considerations.

The "erasing race" effect is the reduction of the salience of "race" as an alliance cue when recalling coalition membership, once more accurate information about coalition structure is presented. We conducted a random-effects model meta-analysis of this effect using five United States studies (containing nine independent effect sizes). The effect was found (ρ = 0.137, K = 9, 95% CI = 0.085 to 0.188). However, no decline effect or moderation effects were found (a "decline effect" in this context would be a decrease in the effect size over time). Furthermore, we found little evidence of publication bias. Synthetically correcting the effect size for bias stemming from the use of an older method for calculating error base rates reduced the magnitude of the effect, but the it remained significant. Taken together, these findings indicate that the "erasing race" effect generalizes quite well across experimental contexts and would, therefore, appear to be quite robust. We reinterpret the theoretical basis for these effects in line with Brunswikian evolutionary-developmental theory and present a series of predictions to guide future research in this area.

Paternal Age is Negatively Associated with Religious Behavior in a Post-60s But Not a Pre-60s US Birth Cohort: Testing a Prediction from the Social Epistasis Amplification Model.

Participation in social behaviors that enhance group-level fitness may be influenced by mutations that affect patterns of social epistasis in human populations. Mutations that cause individuals to not participate in these behaviors may weaken the ability of members of a group to coordinate and regulate behavior, which may in turn negatively affect fitness. To investigate the possibility that de novo mutations degrade these adaptive social behaviors, we examine the effect of paternal age (as a well-established proxy for de novo mutation load) on one such social behavior, namely religious observance, since religiosity may be a group-level cultural adaptation facilitating enhanced social coordination. Using two large samples (Wisconsin Longitudinal Study and AddHealth), each of a different US birth cohort, paternal age was used to hierarchically predict respondent's level of church attendance after controlling for multiple covariates. The effect is absent in WLS (ß = .007, ns, N = 4560); however, it is present in AddHealth (ß = - .046, p < .05, N = 4873) increasing the adjusted model R2 by .005. The WLS respondents were (mostly) born in the 1930s, whereas the AddHealth respondents were (mostly) born in the 1970s. This may indicate that social-epistatic regulation of behavior has weakened historically in the USA, which might stem from and enhance the ability for de novo mutations to influence behavior among more recently born cohorts-paralleling the secular rise in the heritability of age at sexual debut after the sexual revolution.

Slowing life history (K) can account for increasing micro-innovation rates and GDP growth, but not macro-innovation rates, which declined following the end of the Industrial Revolution.

Baumard proposes that life history slowing in populations over time is the principal driver of innovation rates. We show that this is only true of micro-innovation rates, which reflect cognitive and economic specialization as an adaptation to high population density, and not macro-innovation rates, which relate more to a population's level of general intelligence.

How Intelligence Affects Fertility 30 Years On: Retherford and Sewell Revisited - With Polygenic Scores and Numbers of Grandchildren.

Using newly available polygenic scores for educational attainment and cognitive ability, this paper investigates the possible presence and causes of a negative association between IQ and fertility in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study sample, an issue that Retherford and Sewell first addressed 30 years ago. The effect of the polygenic score on the sample's reproductive characteristics was indirect: a latent cognitive ability measure, comprised of both educational attainment and IQ, wholly mediated the relationship. Age at first birth mediated the negative effect of cognitive ability on sample fertility, which had a direct (positive) effect on the number of grandchildren. Significantly greater impacts of cognitive ability on the sample's fertility characteristics were found among the female subsample. This indicates that, in this sample, having a genetic disposition toward higher cognitive ability does not directly reduce number of offspring; instead, higher cognitive ability is a risk factor for prolonging reproductive debut, which, especially for women, reduces the fertility window and, thus, the number of children and grandchildren that can be produced. By estimating the effect of the sample's reproductive characteristics on the strength of polygenic selection, it was found that the genetic variance component of IQ should be declining at a rate between -.208 (95% CI [-.020, -.383]) and -.424 (95% CI [-.041, -.766]) points per decade, depending on whether GCTA-GREML or classical behavior genetic estimates of IQ heritability are used to correct for 'missing' heritability.

The ecology of empire The dynamics of strategic differentiation-integration in two competing Western European biocultural groups.

We tracked the relative integration and differentiation among life history traits over the period spanning AD 1800-1999 in the Britannic and Gallic biocultural groups. We found that Britannic populations tended toward greater strategic differentiation, while Gallic populations tended toward greater strategic integration. The dynamics of between-group competition between these two erstwhile rival biocultural groups were hypothesized as driving these processes. We constructed a latent factor that specifically sought to measure between-group competition and residualized it for the logarithmic effects of time. We found a significantly asymmetrical impact of between-group competition, where the between-group competition factor appeared to be driving the diachronic integration in Gallic populations but had no significantly corresponding influence on the parallel process of diachronic differentiation in Britannic populations. This suggests that the latter process was attributable to some alternative and unmeasured causes, such as the resource abundance consequent to territorial expansion rather than contraction.

Evidence for the Scarr-Rowe Effect on Genetic Expressivity in a Large U.S. Sample.

Using the continuous parameter estimation model (CPEM), a large genotyped adult sample of the population of Wisconsin, USA (the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study) is examined for evidence of the Scarr-Rowe effect, a gene × environment (G×E) interaction that reduces the heritability of IQ among those with low socioeconomic status (SES). This method allows the differential expressivity of polygenic scores predictive of both educational attainment and IQ (EA3) on the phenotype of IQ to be directly operationalized throughout the full range of these variables. Utilizing a parental SES factor-weighted composite as a measure of childhood SES, evidence for the Scarr-Rowe effect was found, that is, the genetic expressivity of EA3 on IQ increased with increasing parental SES (ß = 0.08, p = 4.71×10-10, df = 6,255). The effect was found for both the male and female samples separately, ß(males) = 0.08, p = 5.27×10-5, df = 3,018; ß(females) = 0.08, p = 1.93×10-6, df = 3,236. The effects were furthermore robust to removing outlying values of parental SES and to log-transforming the SES variable. The results are similar to those produced using a more conventional two-way interaction model, with IQ predicting the EA3 × log of parental SES interaction after the main effects; however, CPEM allows for greater model degrees of freedom, thus is better powered to detect the effect when it is small in magnitude (CPEM ß = 0.05, p = 6.69×10-5 vs. two-way interaction ß = 0.02, pone-tailed = .045, in both models log parental SES is used).

Of Mice and Men: Empirical Support for the Population-Based Social Epistasis Amplification Model (a Comment on ).

This commentary article offers new perspective on recent research investigating the behavioral and social ecological effects of a mutation related to autism spectrum disorders in mice. The authors explain the consistency of this research on mice with predictions advanced by a theory of the role of mutations in altering interorganismal gene-gene interactions (social epistasis) in social species including humans, known as the social epistasis amplification model. The potential significance of the mouse research for understanding contemporary human behavioral trends is explored.