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Believing in both genetic determinism and behavioral action: a materialist framework and implications

¹ Celeste Condit is a Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia.
² Marita Gronnvoll is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Eastern Illinois University.
³ Jamie Landau is a doctoral student in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia.
⁴ Lijiang Shen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia.
⁵ Lanelle Wright is a master's student in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia.
⁶ Tina M. Harris is an Associate Professor in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia.

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

	Abstract

A disparity exists between studies reporting that genetics discourse produces deterministic or fatalistic responses and studies reporting that the majority of laypeople do not hold or adopt genetically deterministic views. This article reports data from an interview study (n = 50), and an interpretation of those data grounded in materialist understandings of discourse, that explains at least part of the disparity. The article employs a detailed reading of an illustrative transcript embedded in a quantitative content analysis to suggest that laypeople have incorporated two sets of public discourses—one that describes genetic causation and another that describes behavioral causation. These different discourse tracks are presumed to be encoded in different sets of neural networks in people's minds. Consequently, each track can be articulated upon proper cueing, but the tracks are not related to each other to produce a discourse for speaking about gene–behavior interactions. Implications for the effects of this mode of instantiation of discourse in human individuals with regard to genes and behavior are discussed, as well as implications for message design.

Key Words: genetic determinism, materialism, neural networks, public understanding of genetics

First published on January 16, 2009, doi:10.1177/0963662508094098

Public Understanding of Science 2009;18:730.

A more recent version of this article appeared on November 1, 2009


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