Summary Despite advancements in genomics, misconceptions about the extent to which genetics contributes to observable differences across racial groups persist. These misconceptions are often rooted in genetic essentialism, a social-cognitive bias that leads individuals to believe that most complex traits are primarily determined by genetics. This scientifically inaccurate belief overlooks the environmental and social influences on complex human outcomes, reinforcing deterministic views about human diversity. Our study examines how and for whom genetics education can reduce genetic essentialist beliefs using targeted interventions. We use data from a randomized controlled trial collected at a large US West Coast public university in 2023, including 2,061 undergraduate students. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four curriculum-based interventions, ensuring balanced characteristics across conditions. Three interventions were compared: population thinking; multifactorial causation; and a curriculum where we combined both approaches, which we call full Humane Genetics Curriculum. Results are reported relative to a control group that taught students about climate change. Using structural equation modeling, we explore the effectiveness of these interventions with our data. We find that all three interventions reduce genetic essentialist beliefs by decreasing the perception of between-group racial variation and by reducing genetic attributions for complex human traits. We also find that the three intervention curricula are highly effective across sociodemographic group characteristics such as self-reported gender, self-reported race, and cultural/political belief systems. However, the interventions were more effective among students who possessed greater baseline genetics knowledge. Using these findings, we offer evidence-based strategies for curriculum development. Summary Despite advancements in genomics, misconceptions about the extent to which genetics contributes to observable differences across racial groups persist. These misconceptions are often rooted in genetic essentialism, a social-cognitive bias that leads individuals to believe that most complex traits are primarily determined by genetics. This scientifically inaccurate belief overlooks the environmental and social influences on complex human outcomes, reinforcing deterministic views about human diversity. Our study examines how and for whom genetics education can reduce genetic essentialist beliefs using targeted interventions. Rather than ignoring that phenotypic differences between groups exist or that there are some biological differences between groups, HGC uses scientific evidence to help students disentangle the relative contributions of genes and the environment in regard to trait variation within and between groups. 6 For example, HGC uses the concept of gene-environment covariance to help students understand that genes are an especially poor explanation for variation across groups, given that genetic differences are strongly confounded by environmental differences (an issue that the intervention notes is also still relevant when explaining variation within groups). Across between-group, genetic attribution, and environmental attribution mechanisms, the indirect effects for the FHGC were stronger than that of the PT and MC interventions, although this difference was significant only for genetic and environmental attribution. The FHGC was the only intervention to show significant indirect effects of within-group perception (β = −0.0305, 95% Panel A indicates our linear regression models, Panel B indicates our mediation models, and Panel C indicates our moderated mediation models. We found no evidence of moderation in the indirect effects via gender, race, or egalitarian views. There was no moderation on the A×B path. Thus, the full curriculum worked equally well through all four mechanisms regardless of these student characteristics. There were no statistically significant differences in the indirect effects between men and women ( Figure 3 A; Table S1 ), White and non-White racial groups ( Figure 3 B; Table S2 ), and students with high and low CTR ( Figure 3 C; Table S3 ). 24 Therefore, when learners read sentences that include generic noun phrases such as “There is a lot of genetic variation within Black people,” it may attenuate their ability to develop an accurate perception of within-group variation. These two factors, generic noun phrases and cognitive difficulty, may explain why the social categorization mechanism appears to operate more strongly through perceptions of between-group variation. Relatedly, when it comes to causal reasoning, reductions in genetic essentialism were mediated more strongly by learners’ genetic attributions for complex traits than their environmental attributions. Students were asked to evaluate 12 statements using 6-point Likert scales with response options “strongly disagree,” “disagree,” “somewhat disagree,” “somewhat agree,” “agree,” and “strongly agree.” Some of these statements included “Racial differences in academic ability are caused by genetics” or “Members of one racial group are stronger than members of another racial group because of genetics” or “Genetics causes differences in intelligence.” These psychometrically valid questions were taken from the genetically based racism instrument. This would also indicate that this is the model we would want to move forward into our moderated mediation analyses described below. However, one reason why the FHGC may not be the strongest intervention is because of the complexity of the content. Developing the ability to reason about patterns of genetic variation within and between populations is conceptually analogous to understanding an intraclass correlation coefficient from a linear mixed model. Reasoning about the multiple causes of trait variation within and between groups is therefore a difficult cognitive task.