The Role of Genes and Environment in Degree of Partner Self-Similarity

Sherlock, James M.; Verweij, Karin J. H.; Murphy, Sean C.; Heath, Andrew C.; Martin, Nicholas G.; Zietsch, Brendan P.

doi:10.1007/s10519-016-9808-0

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…However, it may also be that the current environment remains important and that the spouse is a better aggregated indicator of the current environment than the sibling with whom one usually no longer shares a home in adulthood. We find no couple similarity component for personality, which is consistent with much weaker assortative mating on personality, especially neuroticism and extraversion [86][87][88].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

Genomic analysis of family data reveals additional genetic effects on intelligence and personality

et al. 2018

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Pedigree-based analyses of intelligence have reported that genetic differences account for 50-80% of the phenotypic variation. For personality traits these effects are smaller, with 34-48% of the variance being explained by genetic differences. However, molecular genetic studies using unrelated individuals typically report a heritability estimate of around 30% for intelligence and between 0 and 15% for personality variables. Pedigree-based estimates and molecular genetic estimates may differ because current genotyping platforms are poor at tagging causal variants, variants with low minor allele frequency, copy number variants, and structural variants. Using~20,000 individuals in the Generation Scotland family cohort genotyped for~700,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), we exploit the high levels of linkage disequilibrium (LD) found in members of the same family to quantify the total effect of genetic variants that are not tagged in GWAS of unrelated individuals. In our models, genetic variants in low LD with genotyped SNPs explain over half of the genetic variance in intelligence, education, and neuroticism. By capturing these additional genetic effects our models closely approximate the heritability estimates from twin studies for intelligence and education, but not for neuroticism and extraversion. We then replicated our finding using imputed molecular genetic data from unrelated individuals to show that 50% of differences in intelligence, and~40% of the differences in education, can be explained by genetic effects when a larger number of rare SNPs are included. From an evolutionary genetic perspective, a substantial contribution of rare genetic variants to individual differences in intelligence, and education is consistent with mutation-selection balance.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

Genomic analysis of family data reveals additional genetic effects on intelligence and personality

et al. 2018

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“…This analysis comes with the caveat that these SGE estimates cannot be strictly interpreted as causal because controlling for ego's PGS will only partly control for selection. There may be other genetic and non-genetic factors that come into play with partner selection 28,33 . These selection processes could indirectly lead to an association between the partner's PGS and ego's outcome, i.e., spurious SGE.…”

Section: Partners In Health? Investigating Social Genetic Effects Formentioning

confidence: 99%

Partners in health? Investigating social genetic effects for married and cohabiting couples

Mandemakers

Otten

2019

Preprint

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Social contagion' research suggests that health behaviors (BMI, smoking, drinking, etc.) spread through social networks, including dyadic ties such as between married/cohabiting partners. However, separating contagion from assortative mating ('like seeks like') and shared environmental factors remains notoriously difficult in observational studies. It is not possible to obtain exogenous variation in long-term partnerships ('random mating'), but genetic approaches can offer a novel way to examine partner similarity and the role of social contagion. This paper explores possible social genetic effects among partners, i.e., effects of the partner's genes on one's own behavior. We use the longitudinal Health and Retirement Study with data on health behavior and genomic data for both ego and his/her partner to examine social genetic effects for BMI, drinking, and smoking behavior. For each outcome, we find support for social genetic effects. Americans of European descent were more overweight if they had partners with higher polygenic scores for BMI net of their own polygenic score. Similar findings were found for the number of drinks per week and cigarettes per day. Longitudinal analyses that conditioned on past health behavior of both spouses confirmed these findings. We further explored whether susceptibility to the partner's influence differed between men and women, but did not find consistent differences across outcomes. Findings are further discussed in the light of ramifications of social genetic effects for the social and biological sciences.

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“…The degree to which partners are alike has been studied extensively during the past decades showing that assortative mating is important in physical characteristics, lifestyle, intelligence, and educational attainment (Schwartz, 2013;Luo, 2017). Prior research has indicated that for educational assortment spousal correlations range from 0.37 to 0.66 (Abdellaoui et al, 2015;Hur, 2016;Robinson et al, 2017;Sherlock et al, 2017; OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Phil H. Lee, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, United States Tambs, Sundet, and Berg, 1993;Torvik et al, 2021;Zietsch et al, 2012). Over the past 50 years, the level of educational assortment has steadily increased in the United States, Denmark, Norway, the United Kingdom, and Germany (Eika et al, 2019;Mare, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The mechanism of assortative mating for educational attainment: a study of Finnish and Dutch twins and their spouses

Gonggrijp,

Silventoinen,

Dolan

et al. 2023

Front. Genet.

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Introduction: Assortative mating refers describes a phenomenon in which individuals with similar phenotypic traits are more likely to mate and reproduce with each other; i.e. assortative mating occurs when individuals choose partners based on their similarity or dissimilarity in certain traits.to patterns of non-random mating of spouses leading to phenotypic resemblance. There are various theories about the its underlying mechanisms, which have different genetic consequences.Methods: We analyzed examined two possible mechanisms underlying assortative mating – phenotypic assortment and social homogamy – for educational attainment in two countries utilizing data of mono- and dizygotic twins and their spouses (1,451 Finnish and 1,616 Dutch twin-spouse pairs).Results: The spousal correlations were 0.51 in Finland and 0.45 in the Netherlands, to which phenotypic assortment contributed 0.35 and 0.30, and social homogamy 0.16 and 0.15, respectively, indicating that. A random-effects meta-analysis showed a contribution of 0.33 from phenotypic assortment and 0.16 of social homogamy to the spousal correlation.Conclusion: Both social homogamy and phenotypic assortment are important processes in spouse selection in Finland and the Netherlands. In both countries, phenotypic assortment contributes to a greater degree to the similarity of spouses than social homogamy.

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The Role of Genes and Environment in Degree of Partner Self-Similarity

Cited by 5 publications

References 51 publications

Genomic analysis of family data reveals additional genetic effects on intelligence and personality

Genomic analysis of family data reveals additional genetic effects on intelligence and personality

Partners in health? Investigating social genetic effects for married and cohabiting couples

The mechanism of assortative mating for educational attainment: a study of Finnish and Dutch twins and their spouses

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