![]() In a recent paper, Harden asked, “You only have one life to live, but if you rewound the tape and started anew from the exact same genetic and environmental starting point, how differently could your life go?” She continued, “Overall, twin research suggests that, in your alternate life, you might not have gotten divorced, you might have made more money, you might be more extraverted or organized-but you are unlikely to be substantially different in your cognitive ability, education, or mental disease.” In the past few years, Harden noted, new molecular techniques have begun to shore up the basic finding that our personal trajectories owe a considerable debt to our genes. ![]() As a new professor, she co-founded the Texas Twin Project, the first registry engineered to maximize representation of low-income families from ethnically diverse backgrounds. Such research has historically relied upon “twin studies,” which compare identical twins with fraternal ones to differentiate genetic from environmental effects. Harden works in the field of behavior genetics, which investigates the influence of genes on character traits (neuroticism, agreeableness) and life outcomes (educational attainment, income, criminality). She couldn’t cross campus without being stopped for selfies. In 2016, she began co-hosting an Introduction to Psychology class from a soundstage, in the style of a morning show-she and her colleague drank coffee from matching mugs-that was live-streamed each semester to more than a thousand students. “I am absolutely confident she will be a successful addition to any faculty, and she brings a significant chance of being a superstar.” Her early scholarship was singled out for prestigious awards and grants, and she was offered tenure at thirty-two. “More than anyone else who has come through my lab, I find myself answering questions by saying, ‘We should check with Paige,’ ” he wrote. When she first went on the job market, at twenty-six, her graduate-school mentor, Eric Turkheimer, a professor at the University of Virginia, recommended her with an almost mystified alacrity. Until she was thirty-three, Kathryn Paige Harden, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, had enjoyed a vocational ascent so steady that it seemed guided by the hand of predestination.
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