How Our Genes Influence Our Choices

Genetics are bound to play at least some role in who we become and the decisions we make.

Hiya!

Everyone wonders about themselves — who we are, why we are the way we are — but it’s been a long time since we’ve openly discussed these questions. Perhaps not since the last Enlightenment, and even then, it was mostly philosophers pondering amongst themselves. Now, all these years later, we’re still largely asking the same questions — what is a thought? And how much control do we actually have over the paths our lives take?

This time, though, it’s not just you or I, or philosophers asking these questions, but scientists. Thanks to advancing technology, a growing number of scientist philosophers are slowly finding answers to these once unanswerable questions — and, so far, it all has to go with our genes.

Genetics and Disease

Back in 1996, an Icelandic scientist named Kári Stefánsson founded a company called deCODE genetics. Since then, the company has sequenced over 400,000 human genomes and counting. Stefánsson’s vision when he opened the company was to learn more about the roots of common diseases, and Iceland’s population is the perfect place to study it thanks to the country’s distinct genetic makeup.

Iceland’s population has been relatively isolated for centuries. While other societies worldwide spread and mixed, Iceland’s communities have far less genetic variation. This is great for genetic scientists because it makes it easier to pinpoint meaningful gene variants.

So Stefánsson set deCODE genetics up on the outskirts of Iceland’s capital and largest city, Reykjavik. There, DNA is extracted from collected samples and loaded into sequencing machines, which combine the unique lines of DNA bases that compose the foundations of a person’s identity.

Afterward, algorithms take the genetic code (genome) and link it with relevant information held in their biobanks about the person’s life — including their relationship choices, diet, personality traits, hobbies, and the diseases that ultimately ended their lives. In the process, the algorithms look for statistically significant connections for the scientists to study further.

The experts at deCODE have already used this process to better understand people’s genetic risks of Alzheimer’s, cancer, coronary artery disease, and schizophrenia, along with many chronic illnesses.

As incredible as deCODE’s research results are so far, humans are humans. So it naturally hasn’t taken long for some scientists to see what deCODE is doing and wonder how it might be applied to better understand other parts of humanity, like our psyche.