Eric Turkheimer



Eric Turkheimer is the Hugh Scott Hamilton Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia.

Turkheimer has coined what he calls the "three laws of behaviour genetics":


 * First Law. All human behavioral traits are heritable.
 * Second Law. The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes.
 * Third Law. A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families.

In contrast to other contributors in the field, such as Robert Plomin, he emphasizes the fact that we have in very few cases demonstrated specific causal links between genes and behavior.

Turkheimer is critical of hereditarianism about differences in average IQ scores between one race and another, and argues they are best understood as environmental in origin. He has, along with two other prominent behavioral geneticists (Kathryn Harden and Richard Nisbett), authored various article disproving Charles Murray's hereditarian bullshit on IQ differences between various "races".