Abstract

Research on the determinants of human health and behavior has long been dominated by the perspective that people are relatively stable biological entities. Underlying this view is the fact that we inherit the basic building blocks of human poten-tial, DNA, from our parents and that our DNA remains largely unchanged over our lifetimes. The implications of this per-spective have been profound. Because of such thinking, for example, we have framed years of scientific inquiry in terms of “genes by environment ” and “nature versus nurture, ” which imply that our genes are physiologically autonomous from the external social environment. These ideas have also shaped societal beliefs about the human body. Namely, although we are embedded in an ever-changing social world, we often experience ourselves as fundamentally separate from it: Genes influence behavior, we reckon, but not the other way around.