Recently, it has been argued that improving students' genomics literacy could prevent students from developing erroneous beliefs about social identity, such as the belief that racial groups differ cognitively and behaviorally because of their genes; a belief called genetic essentialism. To date, however, little research has explored if or how a conceptual understanding of genomics protects against the development of genetic essentialism. Using a randomized control trial (RCT) (N = 721, 9th–12th graders), we explore if students with more genomics literacy are more able to conceptually change their genetic essentialist beliefs after engaging in a learning experience designed to refute essentialist thinking. The results of the RCT demonstrated that students with higher genomics literacy (relative to those with lower genomics literacy) exhibited greater reductions in the perception of racial differences and greater reductions in belief in genetic essentialism after learning how patterns of human genetic variation refute genetic essentialism. These results suggest that genetics education can protect students from developing a belief in genetic essentialism when it provides them with opportunities to learn multifactorial genetics and population thinking in conjunction with how these concepts refute essentialist thinking.

中文翻译：

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基因组学素养很重要：通过遗传学教育支持基因组学素养的发展可以减少基因本质论的普及

最近，有人争辩说，提高学生的基因组学素养能力可以防止学生发展关于社会身份的错误观念，例如认为种族群体由于其基因而在认知和行为上有所不同；一种称为遗传本质主义的信念。然而，迄今为止，很少有研究探索对基因组学的概念理解是否或如何防止基因本质主义的发展。使用随机对照试验（RCT）（N= 721（9至12年级学生），我们探讨了拥有更丰富的基因组学知识的学生，在从事旨在反驳本质主义思维的学习经历之后，是否更有能力在概念上改变他们的遗传本质主义信念。RCT的结果表明，在了解了人类遗传变异模式反驳遗传本质主义后，具有较高基因组知识（相对于具有较低基因组文化素养的学生）的学生表现出了对种族差异的感知上的更大减少，以及对遗传本质上的信念的更大减少。这些结果表明，遗传学教育可以为学生提供学习多元遗传学和群体思维以及这些概念如何反驳本质主义思维的机会，从而保护他们免于对遗传本质主义的信念。