Parental educational attainment and adult offspring personality: An intergenerational life span approach to the origin of adult personality traits.

Abstract

Why do some individuals have more self-control or are more vulnerable to stress than others? Where do these basic personality traits come from? Although a fundamental question in personality, more is known about how traits are related to important life outcomes than their developmental origins. The present research took an intergenerational lifespan approach to address whether a significant aspect of the childhood environment – parental educational attainment – was associated with offspring personality traits in adulthood. We tested the association between parents’ educational levels and adult offspring personality traits in seven samples (overall age range 14–95) and meta-analytically combined the results (total N>60,000). Parents with more years of education had children who were more open, extraverted, and emotionally stable as adults. These associations were small but consistent, of similar modest magnitude to the association between life events and change in personality in adulthood, and were also supported by longitudinal analyses. Contrary to expectations, parental educational attainment was unrelated to offspring Conscientiousness, except for a surprisingly negative association in the younger cohorts. The results were similar in a subsample of participants who were adopted, which suggested that environmental mechanisms were as relevant as shared genetic variants. Participant levels of education were associated with greater conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, and openness and partially mediated the relation between parent education and personality. Child IQ and family income were also partial mediators. The results of this research suggest that parental educational attainment is one intergenerational factor associated with offspring personality development in adulthood.

Physical activity and personality development over twenty years: Evidence from three longitudinal samples

“…In each sample, physical activity was as strong as demographic factors and disease burden in predicting conscientiousness change. Consistent with past research (Sutin, et al, 2017), among the demographic factors, educational attainment was a strong predictor of personality change. In particular, the associations between education and change in openness are among the largest effects observed (see Table 2).…”

“…Early theories of personality development implicated genetics as the chief biological antecedent of trait development (McCrae et al, 2000), and most other theories of personality development focus on major life events in adulthood as drivers of personality change (Luhmann, Orth, Specht, Kandler, & Lucas, 2014). In addition to genetics and life events, there is evidence that other important factors in the individual’s life, usually included as a covariate, are important predictors of change in and of themselves (Sutin, Luchetti, Stephan, Robins, & Terracciano, 2017). Physical activity is one such factor.…”

Intra‐cortical myelin mediates personality differences

“…This study also suggests that enhanced intra-cortical myelin synthesis, which is driven by genetic factors and/or complex gene by environment interactions, may be a key determinant of improved behavioral outcomes associated with low Neuroticism, high Extraversion, high Agreeableness, and high Conscientiousness. Examples of these outcome measures include indices of well-being, occupational/educational achievement, risk to develop dementia, and longevity (Kern & Friedman, 2008;Sutin, Luchetti, Stephan, Robins, & Terracciano, 2017;Terracciano, An, Sutin, Thambisetty, & Resnick, 2017).…”

Facets of Conscientiousness and risk of dementia

“…Factors such as low education, cigarette smoking, and physical inactivity, are estimated to account for up to about one-third of the world’s cases of Alzheimer’s disease (Norton et al , 2014). To the extent that personality is also associated with education (Sutin et al , 2017), smoking (Terracciano & Costa, 2004), and physical inactivity (Sutin et al , 2016; Sutin & Terracciano, 2016), the dementia risk associated with personality may be due to the shared vulnerability between personality and these behavioral and clinical risk factors. Accounting for these factors, however, only slightly reduced the association between the facets and risk of cognitive impairment.…”