I’ll be clickin’ by your house about two forty-five
You’ve heard of Neuromarketing, which measures the neural activity of consumers (via fMRI or EEG) in response to various products or advertisements. Now, get ready for Genomarketing!
The Neuroethics & Law Blog has alerted us to a recent paper by De Neve and Fowler (2009) reporting that people with a specific low efficiency variant of the gene for monoamine oxidase A are significantly more likely to have credit card debt. (…)
Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the authors found in that sample of 18-26 year olds,
Having one or both MAOA alleles of the low efficiency type raises the average likelihood of having credit card debt by 7.8% and 15.9% respectively. (…)
Is this the foreshadowing of a highly unethical marketing practice? Marketing based on MAO-A genotype, as determined from mailed-in credit card applications and payments? Credit card companies will have in-house labs to extract DNA from stamps and envelope flaps (Sinclair & McKechnie, 2000; Ng et al., 2007). Taking it one step further, entire marketing campaigns will be tailored to specific markers in an individual’s genome.
Not so fast. There are many limitations in the findings of De Neve and Fowler.
neon { Martin Creed | Thanks Daniel! }
