Do genetic ancestry tests increase racial essentialism? Findings from a randomized controlled trial

Abstract

Genetic ancestry testing is a billion-dollar industry, with more than 26 million tests sold by 2018, which raises concerns over how it might influence test-takers' understandings of race. While social scientists argue that genetic ancestry tests may promote an essentialist view of race as fixed and determining innate abilities, others suggest it could reduce essentialist views by reinforcing a view of race as socially constructed. Essentialist views are a concern because of their association with racism, particularly in its most extreme forms. Here we report the first randomized controlled trial of genetic ancestry testing conducted to examine potential causal relationships between taking the tests and essentialist views of race. Native-born White Americans were randomly assigned to receive Admixture and mtDNA tests or no tests. While we find no significant average effect of genetic ancestry testing on essentialism, secondary analyses reveal that the impact of these tests on racial essentialism varies by type of genetic knowledge. Within the treatment arm, essentialist beliefs significantly declined after testing among individuals with high genetic knowledge, but increased among those with the least genetic knowledge. Additional secondary analysis show that essentialist beliefs do not change based on the specific ancestries reported in test-takers' results. These results indicate that individuals' interpretations of genetic ancestry testing results, and the links between genes and race, may depend on their understanding of genetics.

A variant-centric perspective on geographic patterns of human allele frequency variation

“…(Our awareness of these misconceptions comes from personal experiences in teaching and outreach. However, there is a growing body of formal research on misconceptions regarding human genetic variation, e.g., Bowling et al, 2008 ; Phelan et al, 2014 ; Hubbard, 2017 ; Roth et al, 2020 ).…”

Measuring Race and Ancestry in the Age of Genetic Testing

“…This flex i ble and ambig u ous defi ni tion of human "pop u la tions" may serve to consol i date the author ity of genetic research rather than undermining it (Panofsky and Bliss 2017), allowing essen tial ized beliefs about racial dif fer ence to per sist among aca dem ics, pol icy-mak ers and lay peo ple alike. In this con text, schol ars have warned that peo ple who receive GAT results will be more likely to believe that race is geneti cally deter mined (Duster 2011(Duster , 2015Nelson 2008), with increas ing racial essen tialism being most likely among peo ple with less under stand ing of the sci ence behind their results (Roth et al 2020).…”

Genomics literacy matters: Supporting the development of genomics literacy through genetics education could reduce the prevalence of genetic essentialism

“…Nationally representative experiments suggest that when adults are exposed to information about the methods and results of genetic ancestry tests conducted on other people —as when the results of such tests are communicated through television commercials or shows—it exacerbates viewers' belief in genetic essentialism (Phelan et al, 2014). Yet, studies also suggest that adults who understand that genes are segments of DNA within the nuclei of cells, and who also know that human populations are genetically similar, exhibit declines in belief in essentialism after making sense of their own genetic ancestry test results (Roth et al, 2020). In contrast, adults lacking this knowledge show increases in belief in genetic essentialism after making sense of such results (Roth et al, 2020).…”

“…Yet, studies also suggest that adults who understand that genes are segments of DNA within the nuclei of cells, and who also know that human populations are genetically similar, exhibit declines in belief in essentialism after making sense of their own genetic ancestry test results (Roth et al, 2020). In contrast, adults lacking this knowledge show increases in belief in genetic essentialism after making sense of such results (Roth et al, 2020). Thus, genomics literacy matters not only because it helps people make sense of ancestry testing, it also matters because it moderates how this information influences belief in genetic essentialism.…”