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Updated: May 15, 2026

Assessing the Influence of Personality on Sensitivity to Magnetic Fields in Zebrafish
07:47

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Published on: March 18, 2019

Genetic variance in adaptive personality traits.

I I Gottesman1

  • 1Department of Psychiatry and Genetics Training Committee, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, USA.

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines
|January 2, 2013
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

This study on adolescent twins found significant genetic influence on personality traits, particularly extraversion-introversion. These findings support an evolutionary biology framework for understanding personality development.

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Area of Science:

  • Behavioral Genetics
  • Evolutionary Psychology
  • Developmental Psychology

Background:

  • Personality traits are influenced by a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors.
  • Understanding the genetic basis of personality is crucial for developmental and evolutionary psychology.
  • Adolescent twin studies provide a powerful model for disentangling genetic and environmental contributions to behavior.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the heritability of personality traits in adolescents using twin data.
  • To examine the genetic variation in specific personality factors, including person orientation (extraversion-introversion).
  • To frame personality trait heritability within an evolutionary biology context.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized personality test data from the California Psychological Inventory.
  • Analyzed data from 147 same-sex adolescent twin pairs (79 identical, 68 fraternal).
  • Calculated intraclass correlation coefficients and estimated heritability from intrapair variances.

Main Results:

  • Identical twin pairs showed significantly higher intraclass correlation coefficients for all 18 traits compared to fraternal pairs.
  • Seven personality traits exhibited one-third or more of their within-family variance significantly associated with genetic factors.
  • Person orientation (extraversion-introversion) demonstrated the greatest genetic variation among the studied traits.

Conclusions:

  • Personality traits in adolescents have a substantial genetic component, supporting evolutionary explanations.
  • Extraversion-introversion appears to be a highly heritable personality dimension.
  • Introversion may be linked to innate social attachment tendencies observed in early development.