Author: Jaime Derringer (she/they), Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

This repository contains open educational resources (OER) for PSYC 408 Human Behavior Genetics. The last major update of content was for the Fall 2023 semester.

Table of Contents

0. Preface

• Course Description
• Ethics Statement
• A Note on Pedagogy
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments

Introduction to Concepts and Methods

1. What We Know and What We Don’t

• What is Behavior Genetics?
• Twenty Themes in Behavior Genetics
• Additional Readings and Sources
• Activity: Identify Scholarly Sources

2. We’ve Been Wrong Before

• Candidate Genes
• Additional Readings and Sources

3. A Very Brief History of Eugenics

• Additional Readings and Sources
• Activity: Eugenics Journal Response

4. Reading Behavior Genetics Research

• How To Read a Classical Twin Study
• How To Read a GWAS
• Additional Readings
• Activity: Play with Statistics
• Activity: Estimate Heritability from Twin Data using Two Methods in R
• Activity: Interpret a Manhattan Plot

5. Height: A Model Phenotype

• Additional Readings
• Activity: Summarize an Empirical Source

6. Ancestry: What It Is and Isn’t

• Population Genetics
• Scientific Racism
• Additional Readings
• Activity: Summarize a Review Source
• Activity: Plot Ancestry Principle Components in R

Phenotypes and Processes

7. Schizophrenia: Phenotyping & Process

8. Autism: Heterogeneity & Disability Perspectives

9. Cognitive Ability, Educational Attainment, & Gene-Environment Correlation

10. Internalizing, Stress, & Gene-Environment Interaction

11. Causal Reasoning

Applications and Ethics

12. Science Communication

13. Data Privacy

14. Genetic Engineering

15. At the Individual Level

16. Genetics as a Social Construct

Additional Materials

• Syllabus
• Course Project
• Template to summarize an Empirical scholarly source
• Template to summarize a Review scholarly source
• Template to write a journal-style Peer Review of a paper
• Glossary