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Abstract

There is abundant evidence, some of it reviewed in this paper, that personality traits are substantially influenced by the genes. Much remains to be understood about how and why this is the case. We argue that placing the behavior genetics of personality in the context of epidemiology, evolutionary psychology, and neighboring psychological domains such as interests and attitudes should help lead to new insights. We suggest that important methodological advances, such as measuring traits from multiple viewpoints, using large samples, and analyzing data by modern multivariate techniques, have already led to major changes in our view of such perennial puzzles as the role of "unshared environment" in personality. In the long run, but not yet, approaches via molecular genetics and brain physiology may also make decisive contributions to understanding the heritability of personality traits. We conclude that the behavior genetics of personality is alive and flourishing but that there remains ample scope for new growth and that much social science research is seriously compromised if it does not incorporate genetic variation in its explanatory models.

Predicting Psychological and Subjective Well-Being from Personality: Incremental Prediction from 30 Facets Over the Big 5

“…Environmental mastery had a significant residual cross-correlation with openness; there were no significant residual cross-correlations for self-acceptance. Both of these PWB dimensions have been flagged (Bouchard Jr & Loehlin, 2001) as more reflective of SWB than PWB. Self-acceptance items largely focus on self-esteem, positive comparison of self versus others, and elements of life satisfaction.…”

Why Do Entrepreneurial Parents Have Entrepreneurial Children?

“…This allows us to gauge the relative importance of nature and nurture in the reproduction of entrepreneurship from one generation 1 Environmental factors include capital constraints (Blanchflower and Oswald 1998), peer effects (Nanda and Sørensen 2010), and regional influences (Reynolds, Storey, and Westhead 1994). Several heritable traits, such as risk aversion (Cesarini et al 2009a), extraversion (Bouchard and Loehlin 2001), and overconfidence (Cesarini et al 2009b) relate to the choice for entrepreneurship; see van Praag and Cramer (2001), Baron and Markman (2003), Koellinger et al (2007), respectively for evidence. Other factors are discussed in Parker (2009) who also discusses different definitions used for entrepreneurship.…”

Genotype on the Pigmentation Regulating PMEL17 Gene Affects Behavior in Chickens Raised Without Physical Contact with Conspecifics

“…In fact, 73.5% of the between test variation was explained by three factors, where the two first could be interpreted as an activity/exploration and an aggression related factor respectively. This indicates that individual chickens differed in their personality traits (Bouchard and Loehlin 2001). The factor score distribution on the first factor suggests that chickens high in exploration are also more social and less fearful, while the second suggests that more aggressive birds were also more fearful, as indicated by the TI-test.…”