Social scientists have spent decades trying to predict things like how much education someone will get or how healthy they are, but their statistical models keep falling short—and they have been ignoring a key reason why. The problem is that standard social science treats people as if their genes don't matter. Meanwhile, geneticists faced a similar crisis 15 years ago when they could only explain a tiny fraction of why people differ in height. That "missing heritability" puzzle forced them to develop new methods that now account for 70% of height differences, largely by recognising how genes and environment interact. This project imports those genetic tools into sociology. It will build transparent statistical models that separate genetic influences from social ones, include complex interactions between factors, and compare results across different societies. If successful, FINDME will reveal whether current sociological theories are too simple, how much gene–environment interaction shapes life outcomes, and where genuine social interventions could make a difference. This is fundamental science—it will not immediately change a policy or a product. But just as solving the missing heritability puzzle transformed genetics, finding the "missing environmentality" could reshape how we understand social inequality and human development.
View original technical description
Evaluating the degree to which statistical models can explain or predict social outcomes such as educational attainment, fertility or well-being strongly contributes to theory building, the description of social stability, discovery and defines space for intervention. However, research relies on computational "black box" methodology, ignores confounding by non-social factors and is unsuccessful in their prediction. It has been overlooked that in the past 15 years, quantitative geneticists developed a transparent methodological pipeline to tackle this challenge. They expected to explain 80% of individual differences in height (heritability) using measured molecular data but failed. This 'missing heritability' puzzle has triggered massive advances theory, methodology, and the recognition of geneenvironment interaction. Today, geneticists explain 70% of individual differences in height using inference statistical models and measured genes. This provides a roadmap for game changing innovations in the social sciences. FINDME infuses social sciences with knowledge from genetic methods to find this "missing environmentality". Importantly, and in novel ways, FINDME will be able to disentangle genetic from social factors and take gene-environment interaction into account. FINDME will provide interpretable statistical model specifications which include higher order interactions to model social complexity as well as classic, parsimonious sociological explanations. FINDME will compare societies and evaluate the stability of sociological explanations. Finally, FINDME will quantify the relative contributions of various social and non-social domains to the distribution of traits in a population, spotlighting targets for subsequent causal analyses and space for interventions. I will quantitatively contribute to questions such as: Are our theories too simple? How relevant is gene-environment interaction for us? Is there evidence for social determinism?
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know