Kathryn Paige Harden
Kathryn Paige Harden is an American psychologist and behavior geneticist. She is Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is also the leader of the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab and the co-director of the Texas Twin Project. She is also a Faculty Research Associate at the University of Texas at Austin's Population Research Center and a Jacobs Foundation research fellow. Early life and education Harden and her younger brother Micah grew up in a conservative environment in an exurb of Memphis, Tennessee. Her paternal grandparents were Pentecostalists who worked as farmers and pipeline workers in Texas. Her father was a pilot in the U.S. Navy who later flew planes for FedEx. She received a full scholarship to Furman University, a formerly Baptist college in South Carolina, where she worked in a lab on rodent genetics research. She graduated with a B.S. in psychology magna cum laude and was in Phi Beta Kappa. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Virginia in 2005 and 2009 respectively. Her doctoral advisor was Eric Turkheimer. Research Harden's research has focused on using genetic data to understand individual differences in child and adolescent development.