Buy Now, Pay Later
As low as
$3
/ mo
Learn more
- – 4-month term
- – No impact on credit
- – Instant approval decision
- – Secure and straightforward checkout
Ready to go? Add this product to your cart and select a plan during checkout.
Payment plans are offered through our trusted finance partners Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay, Apple Pay, and PayTomorrow. No-credit-needed leasing options through Acima may also be available at checkout.
Learn more about financing & leasing here.
Free shipping on this product
30-day returns
Learn more
This item is eligible for return within 30 days of receipt
To qualify for a full refund, items must be returned in their original, unused condition. If an item is returned in a used, damaged, or materially different state, you may be granted a partial refund.
To initiate a return, please visit our Returns Center.
View our full returns policy here.
Availability:
In Stock.
Arrives
Tuesday, Jan 27
Recently Viewed
Description
A top behavioral geneticist makes the case that DNA inherited from our parents at the moment of conception can predict our psychological strengths and weaknesses.In Blueprint, behavioral geneticist Robert Plomin describes how the DNA revolution has made DNA personal by giving us the power to predict our psychological strengths and weaknesses from birth. A century of genetic research shows that DNA differences inherited from our parents are the consistent lifelong sources of our psychological individuality―the blueprint that makes us who we are. Plomin reports that genetics explains more about the psychological differences among people than all other factors combined. Nature, not nurture, is what makes us who we are. Plomin explores the implications of these findings, drawing some provocative conclusions―among them that parenting styles don't really affect children's outcomes once genetics is taken into effect. This book offers readers a unique insider's view of the exciting synergies that came from combining genetics and psychology. The paperback edition has a new afterword by the author. Read more
Publisher : The MIT Press; Illustrated edition (July 2, 2019)
Language : English
Paperback : 296 pages
ISBN-10 : 0262537982
ISBN-13 : 88
Item Weight : 11.3 ounces
Dimensions : 5.38 x 0.75 x 8 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #228,972 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #41 in Developmental Biology (Books) #127 in Biochemistry (Books) #168 in Genetics (Books)
#41 in Developmental Biology (Books):
#127 in Biochemistry (Books):
Frequently asked questions
If you place your order now, the estimated arrival date for this product is:
Tuesday, Jan 27
Yes, absolutely! You may return this product for a full refund within 30 days of receiving it.
To initiate a return, please visit our Returns Center.
View our full returns policy here.
To initiate a return, please visit our Returns Center.
View our full returns policy here.
- Klarna Financing
- Affirm Pay in 4
- Affirm Financing
- Afterpay Financing
- PayTomorrow Financing
- Financing through Apple Pay
Learn more about financing & leasing here.
Top Amazon Reviews
The ageless argument on whether our behavior and intelligence is mostly shaped by environment or by heredity, often referred to as “Nature vs. Nurture”, may finally have an answer: “The Nature of Nurture”. Authored by perhaps the world’s leading behavioral geneticist, Dr. Robert Plomin, “Blueprint” represents the culmination of his 45 years of research into this very subject. To a layperson, the obvious question that comes to mind is how is it even possible to disentangle which behavioral traits are due to nature or nurture? There happens to be two very simple answers to this question: large longitudinal twin and adoption studies combined with the ongoing decoding of the human genome. With Blueprint, Plomin is leveraging the late stage of his distinguished career to publish the culmination of his life’s work on this controversial subject. He’s certainly cognizant of the ideological resistance in the social sciences to any form of genetic explanations, as the prevailing orthodoxy assumes that only environment, and particularly parenting, are causal in largely shaping who we are and our life outcomes. The Nature of Nurture Blueprint’s main thesis is what Plomin calls “the nature of nurture” which posits that our genes are nudging us to respond to, interact with, and even shape our environments to fit our individual genetic dispositions. Plomin states ‘Psychological environments are not “out there” imposed on us passively. They are “in here”, experienced by us as we actively perceive, interpret, select, modify, and even create environments correlated with our genetic propensities.” A simple example Plomin gives is that it’s widely assumed that children who are read to by their parents do better in reading in school and that this is a causal relationship. This is not the case, the relationship is actually correlational in that parents who enjoy reading and who appreciate the value of reading are more likely to be intelligent and want to read to their children too [who share 50% of the parent’s DNA] and that the children inherit some of these traits that make them more interested in and amenable to being read to. The parents may also be picking up on cues exhibited by the child to be read to or who enjoy the stimulation of being read to, while not reading to the child who is restless and would rather engage in rough and tumble play, or play with objects rather than being read to. The is the nature of nurture – subtle genetic cues from the child engage the environmental experience given to the child by the parent and vice versa. Blueprint is divided into two main parts: Part One: Why DNA Matters Chapters 1. Disentangling nature and nurture 2. How do we know that DNA makes us who we are? 3. The nature of nurture 4. DNA matters more as time goes by 5. Abnormal is normal 6. Generalist genes 7. Why children in the same family are so different 8. The DNA blueprint 9. Equal opportunity and meritocracy Part Two: The DNA Revolution Chapters 1. DNA: The basics 2. Gene-hunting 3. The DNA fortune teller 4. Predicting who we are 5. Our future is DNA In the first part of the book, Plomin walks the reader through his early research in behavioral genetics with the Colorado Adoption Project in the 1970s and how these early adoption and twin studies were designed. He explains the fundamentals on how the complex influences of heritability and of the environment can be disentangled and how they are controlled for in studies. And these are not just a few small, single-study samples of twins or adoptions – they encompass tens of thousands of individuals. For example: • Colorado Adoption Project • Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart • Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging • Louisville Twin Study Most significant of all is the ongoing study of 13,000 twins born in the UK in the mid-1990s, who Plomin has been tracking and studying longitudinally for over 20 years, including collecting over 55 million items of data from the twins, their parents, and their teachers during this time. In the second part of the book, Plomin walks the reader through the fundamentals of genetics and explains the terminologies of the science, and how genes are passed on from parent to child. He also explains how genes are identified and studied and how they are now thought to influence our behaviors. His objective here to make the reader literate in genetics as the DNA revolution that’s currently underway will surely advance and have a profound impact on how we understand ourselves. Some key takeaways for this reviewer are: • The nature of nurture • Inherited DNA differences are the major systematic force in making us who we are • Environment matters, but it’s effects are not systematic in nature, rather environment is a collection of random experiences and interactions • Longitudinal twin and adoption studies supply a mountain of evidence and are invaluable to disentangling the influence of genes from the environment • Parenting matters, but not near as much as commonly believed • Educational achievement is more strongly predicted by genes than by environment or SES • The DNA revolution is now identifying the specific bits of genes which correlate to behaviors and with cognitive functions/educational achievement • Very large numbers of genes each contribute a small influence on a given trait (polygenic), rather than a few genes exerting a strong influence as was first thought If there are any shortcomings with Blueprint, it’s that Plomin is careful not to infer extending his findings to group-level differences, such as between males and females or between ethnic groups. Valuable insights can be gained from such a logical extension in terms of better understanding group academic achievement differences, differences in gender behaviors, or group differences in developing criminal or anti-social behaviors with the objective being to identify and mitigate specific causal factors at the genetic level. Plomin has stated that this area is the “3rd Rail” in his field, suggesting that he’s well-aware of the career risks for researching these topics in this day and age of leftist “cancel culture” at universities and in the media - even if the science is on his side. The data presented in Blueprint is about as robust, comprehensive, and predictive that there is in all of the social sciences and Plomin’s findings are incrementally becoming more difficult to refute with the ongoing decoding of the genome. There’s indeed a DNA revolution underway that’s sweeping away old assumptions, dogmas, and ideologies about human nature, and the fight to stem this rising tide of scientific evidence will be fierce, even from within the academy, but the truth will ultimately prevail if history is any lesson. With Blueprint, Plomin is preparing us for this eventuality. So why should you read this book? Now is an exciting age when the scientific revolution of DNA and the decoding of the human genome is advancing at an exponential rate. It’s fundamentally changing our understandings of how DNA makes us who we are and it’s speeding towards head-on collision with old ideological dogmas. But how many of us really understand what the science of DNA is saying about what makes us who we are? How often is our news media sharing this information and objectively explaining what these new findings mean? What Plomin’s work is discovering about the nature of human behavior and genetics is analogous to what Pasteur’s work on germ theory did for understanding the microbial basis of disease transmission. When science can discover the unseen mechanics of nature, gone are the use of nebulous post hoc explanations and one’s ideologies to make sense of the observations. We all would prefer to believe that our behavior and intelligence is mostly shaped by our parenting and by our social and educational environments, because this infers that we can ideally gain control and regulate these factors top-down to produce a more equitable, prosperous, and safer society - but the evidence for holding such a faith in the limitless mold-ability of man is becoming ever more fleeting. The Lysenkoism of the New Soviet Man is a cautionary tale in pursuing such an ostensibly benevolent environmentalist ideology at the expense of obfuscating and silencing good data-driven science on human nature such as what is shared with us here in Blueprint.
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2019 by J. Wells
This book pretty much emphatically decides the nature versus nurture argument. Nature wins. With knowledge, we all win, and this helps us be winners.
Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2023 by styvwerx
Easy to understand and quite informative. I liked it so much I bought a copy for a friend.
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2023 by Lisa
Robert Plomin implies in this book that genetic studies, beyond just twin studies, have definitively established that much of who we are is related to genes and that this fact portends a “DNA revolution.” This is not an accurate representation of the literature to date. As even Plomin acknowledges, these genetic studies (genome-wide association studies) trying to tie genetic variants to specific traits like mental disorders, personality traits and IQ, despite a lot of fanfare, are rarely if ever reproduced in follow-up studies. This has led to a “replication crisis” in the field of Behavioral Genetics. He attempts to side-step this ongoing issue by asserting that “polygenic risk scores” are effectively a kind of replication. This involves finding hundreds or even thousands of genetic variants that are in slightly higher proportion for a trait (schizophrenia, autism, etc.) and looking at all those that a particular person possesses and “adding” them up. If the score is high, then the person would theoretically be more likely to have or get the trait in question. Plomin’s apparent obsession with polygenic risk scores is far in excess of its actual utility, and his timing for the book might be a bit off, as these polygenic risk scores are being called into question in numerous recent papers, noting both their inherent mathematical limitations and the possibility that they are largely skewed by population stratification (when your population is too homogenous, say all white European, then you might get false positive results). Without polygenic risk scores, the book offers nothing new, and is otherwise a rehash of twin studies from decades ago. In my view, he goes in a dangerous direction with this focus on polygenic scores, suggesting, for example, that such scores for I.Q. could be used as admission criteria for elite schools. Leaving aside their lack of validity, this borders on eugenics. Moreover, because polygenic risk scores tend to distribute in a “bell curve,” he concludes that a disorder like schizophrenia is a matter of degree, with only the highest scores receiving the diagnosis. Thus, it’s a matter of how many schizophrenic genetic variants someone has, with only those at the extreme end currently receiving the diagnosis. “Who has not sometimes experienced these symptoms [hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thoughts, etc.],” he asks? This would imply that, in addition to those we diagnose with schizophrenia, there is a larger population of somewhat schizophrenic individuals, an even larger population being a little bit schizophrenic and another half of the bell curve for those with gradations of “un-schizophrenia.” As a psychiatrist, I treated schizophrenia for many years and find this notion absurd. No psychiatric diagnosis is perfect, but schizophrenia is a relatively distinct diagnosis, as are most other psychiatric diagnoses. They do not tend to fall into a bell curve continuum. Thus, it appears that Plomin embraces his theory at the expense of reality. His claim that, “psychiatric diagnoses are not supported by genetic research,” does not lead him to question the validity of the genetic research. Instead, he proposes scrapping current diagnostic criteria, asserting that, “Genetics offers a causal basis for predicting disorders, rather than waiting for symptoms to appear.” This strikes me as science fiction. Plomin argues that most environmental factors such as parents, schooling and life experiences “don’t make a difference” in regards to the traits a person has when they reach adulthood. Because siblings and even identical twins often can be very different, he explains this by saying that it is related to unnamed, “non-shared environment,” guided by “...unsystematic, idiosyncratic, serendipitous events with lasting effects.” He is effectively saying that, say, which side of the crib a twin is on is potentially more important than parents, schools and life experience and such undefined experiences account for 50% of our phenotype. That’s hardly a “blueprint,” and really is absurd on its face. A telling portion of the book is Dr. Plomin’s attempt to evaluate his own polygenic scores. This starts out well, since his score for height is high and he is tall, however he also has a high score for body mass index and schizophrenia (he is relatively thin and, presumably, not schizophrenic). Rather than just admit the fallacy of these scores, he doubles down, stating “I came to accept that my high BMI polygenic score makes sense...[and] had a good effect on my attempts to persevere with my never-ending battle of the bulge...” Even more ridiculous, related to his high score for schizophrenia, he states “...I wonder if my need for a highly structured, scheduled working life may be an attempt to keep myself on an even keel.” This seems little different than my “New Age” friends trying to justify their horoscope. Plomin is old enough that he need not concern himself about suddenly becoming obese or schizophrenic, but I would ask him if he thinks his life would have been different if he had been told (erroneously) as a youth that he was likely to become fat and schizophrenic? What an irresponsible and reckless idea he is promoting. His motivation appears to be to promote his world view, rather than an interest in helping humanity. His book is speculative, utopian, meandering and, in some ways, frightening. This book is of little value, and reinforces views that are already being touted by some rather unsavory characters. Other than his unsupported proclamations, it presents no real evidence to his “blueprint” claim.
...
show more
Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2019 by Steve Pittelli