Cognitive distortions predict belief that words can cause serious mental harm.
Cognitive distortions predict support for broad use of trigger warnings.
Resiliency and analytic thinking negatively predict safetyism-inspired beliefs.
Provides first empirical support for some of Lukianoff & Haidt 2018’s claims
In their book, The
Coddling of the American Mind, Lukianoff & Haidt 2018
contended that the rise of “safetyism” within American society has inspired beliefs and practices that hinder college
students’ socioemotional development. One of their most controversial claims was that college students’ safetyism-inspired
beliefs (e.g., emotional pain or discomfort is dangerous) are rooted in and supported by cognitive distortions, or
negatively biased patterns of thought (e.g., emotional reasoning). Citing evocative anecdotes, they argued that such
distortions emerge in students’ perceptions of offensive or ideologically-challenging experiences as disproportionately
harmful or traumatic. However, no empirical work has substantiated an association between cognitive distortions and
safetyism-inspired beliefs or practices.
In a large (n = 786), ethnically and economically diverse sample of college students, we conducted the first
examination of the relationship between these variables.
Aligning with Lukianoff and Haidt’s assertions, we found that students’ self-reported prevalence of cognitive
distortions positively predicted their endorsement of safetyism-inspired beliefs, the belief that words can harm, and
support for the broad use of trigger warnings.
Considering our exploratory results, we argue that greater empirical scrutiny of safetyism-inspired beliefs and
practices is warranted before such customs become more widely adopted.
[Keywords: cognitive distortions, college students, trigger warnings, open data]
Belief in astrology is on the rise, although
the reasons behind this are unclear. We tested whether individual personality traits could predict such epistemically
unfounded beliefs.
Data was collected for 264 participants through an anonymous online survey shared on social media. The survey consisted
of 4 instruments: Belief in Astrology (BAI), theBig Five personality traits(IPIP-30),narcissism (SD3 [Short Dark
Triad]), and intelligence (ICAR16-R3D). Data analysis was done with multiple linear
regression.
Narcissism was surprisingly the strongest predictor, and intelligence showed a negative relationship with belief in
astrology.
Overall, our novel results suggest that something as innocent as astrology could both attract and possibly reinforce
individual differences.
[Keywords: belief in astrology, pseudoscience, Big Five, narcissism, intelligence]
The goal of this research was to explore the relationships between 4 parenting dimensions (academic involvement,
structure, cultural stimulation, and goals) and child personality development. Many theories, such as social learning,
attachment theory, and the psychological resources principle assume that parenting practices influence child personality
development. Most of past research on the associations between parenting and child Big Five traits specifically has used
cross-sectional data. The few longitudinal studies that examined these associations found small relations between parenting
and child personality.
We extended this research by examining the long-term relations between 4 underexplored parenting dimensions and child
Big Five personality traits
using bivariate latent growth models in a large longitudinal dataset (n = 3,880).
Results from growth models revealed a preponderance of null relations between these parenting measures and child
personality, especially between changes in parenting and changes in child personality. In general, the observed
associations between parenting and child Big Five personality were comparable in magnitude to the association between
factors such as SES and birth order, and child personality—that is, small.
The small associations between environmental factors and personality suggest that personality development in childhood
and adolescence may be driven by multiple factors, each of which makes a small contribution.
[Keywords: parenting, personality, Big Five, personality development]
Where do our political attitudes originate? Although early research attributed the formation of such beliefs to parent
and peer socialization, genetically sensitive designs later clarified the substantial role of genes in the development of
sociopolitical attitudes. However, it has remained unclear whether parental influence on offspring attitudes persists
beyond adolescence.
In a unique sample of 394 adoptive and biological families with offspring more than 30 years old, biometric modeling
revealed substantial evidence for genetic and nongenetic transmission from both parents for the majority of 7
political-attitude phenotypes. We found the largest genetic effects for religiousness and social liberalism, whereas the
largest influence of parental environment was seen for political orientation and egalitarianism.
Together, these findings indicate that genes, environment, and the gene-environment correlation
all contribute substantially to sociopolitical attitudes held in adulthood, and the etiology and development of those
attitudes may be more important than ever in today’s rapidly changing sociopolitical landscape.
Figure 3: Proportion of variance in parent-offspring transmission attributable to parent genetics,
parental environment, and parental gene-environment (G-E) covariance for each of the 7 political-attitude scales, their
composite score, and the 16-item short form of the International
Cognitive Ability Resource(ICAR-16; included as a negative
control)
Here, we conduct an extensive review of the RRH, using multilevel
meta-analysis to examine relations between varieties of rigidity and ideology alongside a bevy of potential moderators (s =
329, k = 708, n = 187,612).
Associations between conservatism and rigidity were enormously heterogeneous, such that broad theoretical accounts of
left-right asymmetries in rigidity have masked complex—yet conceptually fertile—patterns of relations. Most notably,
correlations between economic conservatism and rigidity constructs were almost uniformly not statistically-significant, whereas social conservatism and rigidity were
statistically-significantly positively correlated. Further, leftists and rightists exhibited modestly asymmetrical
motivations yet closely symmetrical thinking styles and cognitive architecture. Dogmatism was a special case, with
rightists being clearly more dogmatic. Complicating this picture, moderator analyses revealed that the RRH may not generalize to key environmental/psychometric modalities.
Thus, our work represents a crucial launch point for advancing a more accurate—but admittedly more nuanced—model of
political social cognition. We resolve that drilling into this complexity, thereby moving away from the question of if
conservatives are essentially rigid, will amplify the explanatory power of political psychology.
[Keywords: conservatism, meta-analysis, personality psychology, political ideology, political
psychology, rigidity, social psychology]
Cognitive variation is common among-individuals within populations, and this variation can be consistent across time and
context. From an evolutionary perspective, among-individual variation is important and required for natural selection.
Selection has been hypothesised to favour high cognitive performance, however directional selection would be expected to
erode variation over time. Additionally, while variation is a prerequisite for natural
selection, it is also true that selection does not act on traits in isolation. Thus, the extent to which performance
covaries among specific cognitive domains, and other aspects of phenotype (e.g. personality traits) is expected to be
an important factor in shaping evolutionary dynamics. Fitness trade-offs could shape patterns of variation in performance
across different cognitive domains, however positive correlations between cognitive domains and personality traits are also
known to occur. Here we aimed to test this idea using a multivariate approach to characterise and test hypothesised
relationships of cognitive performance across multiple domains and personality, in the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata). We estimate the
among-individual correlation matrix (ID) in performance across three cognitive domains; association learning in a colour
discrimination task; motor cognition in a novel motor task and cognitive flexibility in a reversal learning task, and the
personality trait boldness, measured as time to emerge. We found no support for trade-offs occurring, but the presence of
strong positive domain-general correlations in ID, where 57% of the variation is explained by the leading eigen vector.
While highlighting caveats of how non-cognitive factors and assay composition may affect the structure of the ID-matrix, we
suggest that our findings are consistent with a domain-general axis of cognitive variation in this population, adding to
the growing body of support for domain-general variation among-individuals in animal cognitive ability.
Mate-choice copying occurs when people rely on the mate choices of others (social information) to inform their own mate
decisions. The present study investigated women’s strategic trade-off between such social learning and using the personal
information of a potential mate.
We conducted 2 experiments to investigate how mate-choice copying was affected by the personal information (e.g.,
trait/financial information, negative/positive valence of this information, and attractiveness) of a potential male
mate in short-term/long-term mate selection.
The results demonstrated that when women had no trait/financial information other than photos of potential mates,
they showed mate-choice copying, but when women obtained personality trait or financial situation information (no matter
negative or positive) of a potential mate, their mate-choice copying disappeared; this effect was only observed for
low-attractiveness and long-term potential partners.
These results demonstrated human social learning strategies in mate selection through a trade-off between social
information and personal information.
[Typical Bayesian reasoning: freeriding off priors/stereotypes (mate-copying), but updating as individuating
information is available.]
Objective: The connection between personality traits and performance has fascinated scholars in a
variety of disciplines for over a century. The present research synthesizes results from 54 meta-analyses (k = 2,028,
n = 554,778) to examine the association of Big Five traits with overall performance.
Method: Quantitative aggregation procedures were used to assess the association of Big Five traits with
performance, both overall and in specific performance categories.
Results: Whereas Conscientiousness yielded the strongest effect (ρ = 0.19), the remaining Big
Five traits yielded comparable effects (ρ = 0.10, 0.10, −0.12, and 0.13 for Extraversion, Agreeableness,
Neuroticism, and Openness). These associations varied dramatically by performance category.
Whereas Conscientiousness was more strongly associated with academic than job performance (0.28 vs 0.20), Extraversion
(−0.01 vs 0.14) and Neuroticism (−0.03 vs −0.15) were less strongly associated with academic performance. Finally,
associations of personality with specific performance outcomes largely replicated across independent meta-analyses.
Conclusions: Our comprehensive synthesis demonstrates that Big Five traits have robust associations
with performance and documents how these associations fluctuate across personality and performance dimensions.
Self-handicapping is a maladaptive strategy that students employ to protect their self-image when they fear or
anticipate academic failure. Instead of increasing their effort, students may harm their chances of success by
procrastinating, strategically withdrawing effort, or engaging in destructive behaviors like drug abuse, so that potential
failure can be attributed to these handicaps rather than to stable personal characteristics (e.g., low intelligence).
A large body of research has focused on potential antecedents of students’ self-handicapping, but the literature is
fragmented and the evidence is often mixed. Thus, we know little about which factors have the highest potential to trigger
habitual self-handicapping and to explain interindividual differences in such behaviors.
This meta-analysis is the first to synthesize available evidence across a broad range of potential antecedents of
academic self-handicapping reported in 159 studies and 194 independent samples (n = 81,630).
The strongest associations with habitual self-handicapping were found for the personality traits Conscientiousness
(r = −0.40) and Neuroticism (r = 0.38) as well as stable trait-like factors such as general self-esteem
(r = −0.34) and fear of failure (r = 0.39). Rather malleable factors, such as personal achievement goals
(rs = −0.19 to 0.27), showed comparatively smaller effects. Self-handicapping assessment (scale and reliability)
statistically-significantly moderated most of the investigated associations, thereby implying higher internal validities
for some measures compared with others.
The reported findings provide important insights into mechanisms of and possible starting points for interventions
against self-handicapping in the academic domain.
Educational Impact and Implications Statement: What factors might lead students to strategically and
purposefully harm their chances of academic success—that is, to engage in academic self-handicapping? We present the first
empirical synthesis of available evidence on such factors. Stable personality characteristics such as low levels of
Conscientiousness, lack of emotional stability, and the habitual fear of failure emerged as the most powerful predictors of
self-handicapping. Students’ academic motivation—the desire to learn and improve academically—functions as a protective
factor. Learning environments that foster students’ academic motivation and alleviate concerns about academic failure are
thus needed to reduce students’ self-handicapping tendencies.
Personality traits have been associated with differences in residential mobility, but details are lacking on the types
of residential moves associated with personality differences.
The present study pooled data from 4 prospective cohort studies from the United Kingdom (UK Household Longitudinal
Survey, and British Household Panel Survey), Germany (Socioeconomic Panel Study), and Australia (Household, Income, and
Labour Dynamics in Australia) to assess whether personality traits of the Five Factor Model are differently
related to residential moves motivated by different reasons to move: employment, education, family, housing, and
neighborhood (total n = 86,073).
Openness To Experience was
associated with all moves but particularly with moves due to employment and education. Extraversion was associated with
higher overall mobility, except for moves motivated by employment and education. Lower Emotional Stability predicted higher probability of
moving due to neighborhood, housing, and family, while higher Agreeableness was associated with lower probability of moving due to neighborhood and education.
Adjusting for education, household income, marital status, employment status, number of children in the household, and
housing tenure did not substantially change the associations.
These results suggest that different personality traits may motivate different types of residential moves.
A large literature establishes that cognitive and non-cognitive skills are strongly correlated with educational
attainment and professional achievement. Isolating the causal effects of these traits on career outcomes is complicated by
reverse causality and selection issues.
We suggest a new approach: using within-family differences in the genetic tendency to exhibit the relevant traits as a
source of exogenous variation. Genes are fixed over the life cycle and genetic differences between full siblings are
random, making it possible to establish the causal effects of within-family variation in genetic tendencies.
We link genetic data from individuals in the Swedish Twin Registry to government registry data and find evidence for
causal effects of the genetic predispositions towards cognitive skills, personality traits, and economic preferences on
professional achievement and educational attainment. Our results also demonstrate that education and labor market outcomes
are partially the result of a genetic lottery.
…We find strong evidence for a causal effect of the predisposition toward stronger cognitive skills on income,
occupational status, and educational outcomes. We also find evidence for statistically-significant effects of the
predispositions toward several non-cognitive traits: individuals who tend to be more risk seeking, mentally stable, and
open tend to work in more prestigious occupations. The opposite is true for individuals with a tendency towards narcissism
or discounting the future. A tendency towards being open and forward-looking also increases educational attainment (EA).
Finally, we document large causal effects of the general genetic tendency towards higher EA on all the outcomes we study.
This illustrates that success in education and professional careers is in part down to “genetic luck”. We also investigate
heterogeneity in these effects by gender and socioeconomic status (SES) of the
parents. We find some evidence of a stronger effect of the predisposition toward cognitive skills for
high-SES individuals, in particular on educational outcomes. We also find that
the effects of the genetic tendencies on income tend to be stronger for women, implying that gender differences in labor
market outcomes are generally larger for less skilled individuals. The exception is the link between genetic tendencies and
management positions: our results suggest that cognitive and non-cognitive skills strongly increase the likelihood for men
to work in a management position but that effects are much weaker for women.
…The polygenic indices we use stem from the work of the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium
(SSGAC) (Becker et al 2021).
…2.4 Sample: For the full-sample analyses looking at educational outcomes, we will limit the dataset to
genotyped individuals born between 1934 and 1995 (that is, individuals who have likely completed their education) whom we
can link to their parents’ records for the construction of the socioeconomic controls.13 This subsample contains
29,393 individuals. For the analyses looking at labor market outcomes, we will limit the dataset to individuals born
between 1934 and 1990 (that is, individuals who have likely completed their education and worked for a few years). This
subsample contains 25,515 individuals. For our causal analyses using within-family variation, we will limit the sample to
complete sets of genotyped dizygotic twins. This sample contains 11,344 individuals (5,672 twin pairs) for the education
analyses and 9,594 individuals (4,797 twin pairs) for the income analyses.
…The scaled estimates in Figure 2 show that the magnitudes of the effects are economically meaningful. A
one-standard deviation difference in the cognitive performance PGI is associated with a roughly 10
percentage points increase in the likelihood of having graduated from university. The effect of math skills is roughly 5
percentage points. These 2 effects are estimated simultaneously, meaning that an individual with one-standard
deviation higher cognitive performance and math skills is around 15 percentage points more likely to graduate from
university. The effects of the statistically-significant non-cognitive traits (openness, narcissism, and time discounting
as proxied by smoking) are similarly large. Finally, a one-standard deviation increase in the educational attainment
PGI is associated with 0.4 to 0.6 additional years of education.
[Given the large sample size, it’d be better to skip the PGSes—which still
capture so little of the genetics—and usesibling
IBD or RDR to establish estimates of total causal effects.]
Background: Aggression-related sexual fantasies (ASF)
are considered an important risk factor for sexual aggression, but empirical knowledge is limited, in part because
previous research has been based on predominantly male, North-American college samples, and limited numbers of
questions.
Aim: The present study aimed to foster the knowledge about the frequency and correlates of
ASF, while including a large sample ofwomen and a broad range of
ASF.
Method: A convenience sample of n = 664 participants from Germany including 508 (77%) women
and 156 (23%) men with a median age of 25 (21–27) years answered an online questionnaire. Participants were mainly
recruited via social networks (online and in person) and were mainly students. We examined the frequencies of
(aggression-related) sexual fantasies and their expected factor structure (factors reflecting affective, experimental,
masochistic, and aggression-related contents) via exploratory factor analysis. We investigated potential correlates (eg, psychopathic traits,
attitudes towards sexual fantasies) as predictors of ASF using multipleregression analyses. Finally, we examined whether ASF would positively
predict sexual aggression beyond other pertinent risk factors using multiple regression analysis.
Outcomes: The participants rated the frequency of a broad set of 56 aggression-related and other sexual
fantasies, attitudes towards sexual fantasies, the Big Five (ie, broad personality dimensions including Neuroticism and
Extraversion), sexual aggression, and other risk factors for sexual aggression.
Results: All participants reported non-aggression-related sexual fantasies and 77% reported at
least one ASF in their lives. Being male, frequent sexual fantasies,
psychopathic traits, and negative attitudes towards sexual fantasies predicted
more frequent ASF. ASF were the strongest
predictor of sexual aggression beyond other risk factors, including general aggression, psychopathic traits, rape myth acceptance, and violent pornography consumption.
Clinical Translation: ASF may be an important risk factor
for sexual aggression and should be more strongly considered in prevention and intervention efforts.
Strengths & Limitations: The strengths of the present study include using a large item pool and a large
sample with a large proportion of women in order to examine ASF as a predictor of
sexual aggression beyond important control variables. Its weaknesses include the reliance on cross-sectional data,
that preclude causal inferences, and not continuously distinguishing between consensual and non-consensual acts.
Conclusion: ASF are a frequent phenomenon even in the
general population and among women and show strong associations with sexual aggression. Thus, they require more
attention by research on sexual aggression and its prevention.
[Keywords: aggressive sexual fantasies, sexual aggression, psychopathic traits, rape myths acceptance,
Big Five]
Men, relative to women, can benefit their total reproductive success by engaging in short-term pluralistic mating. Yet
not all men enact such a mating strategy. It has previously been hypothesized that high mate value men should be most
likely to adopt a short-term mating strategy, with this prediction being firmly grounded in some important mid-level
evolutionary psychological theories. Yet evidence to support such a link has been mixed.
This paper presents a comprehensive meta-analysis of 33 published and unpublished studies (n = 5,928).
We find that self-reported mate value accounts for roughly 6% of variance in
men’s sociosexual orientation.
The meta-analysis provides evidence that men’s self-perceived mate value
positively predicts their tendency to engage in short-term mating, but that the total effect-size is small.
Objective & Method: This meta-analysis reports the most comprehensive assessment to date of the
strength of the relationships between the Big Five personality traits and academic performance by synthesizing 267
independent samples (n = 413,074) in 228 unique studies. It also examined the incremental validity of personality
traits above and beyond cognitive ability in predicting academic performance.
Results: The combined effect of cognitive ability and personality traits explained 27.8% of the
variance in academic performance. Cognitive ability was the most important predictor with a relative importance of 64%.
Conscientiousness emerged as a strong and
robust predictor of performance, even when controlling for cognitive ability, and accounted for 28% of the explained
variance in academic performance. A statistically-significant moderating effect of
education level was observed. The relationship of academic performance with Openness, Extraversion, and Agreeableness demonstrated statistically-significantly larger effect
sizes at the elementary/middle school level compared to the subsequent levels. Openness, despite its weak overall
relative importance, was found to be an important determinant of student performance in the early years of school.
Conclusion: These findings reaffirm the critical role of personality traits in explaining academic
performance through the most comprehensive assessment yet of these relationships.
Personality Computing (PC) is a burgeoning field at the intersection of personality and computer
science that seeks to extract personality-relevant information (eg., on Big Five personality trait levels) from
sensor-assessed information (eg., written texts, digital footprints, smartphone usage, non-verbal behavior, speech
patterns, game-play, etc.). Such sensor-based personality assessment promises novel and often technologically sophisticated
ways to unobtrusively measure individual differences in a highly precise, granular, and faking-resistant manner.
We review the different conceptual underpinnings of PC; survey how well different types of sensors can capture different
types of personality-relevant information; discuss the evaluation of PC performance and psychometric issues (reliability
and validity) of sensor-derived scores as well as ethical, legal, and societal implications; and highlight how modern
personality and computer science can be married more effectively to provide practically useful personality assessment.
Together, this review aims to introduce readers to the opportunities, challenges, pitfalls, and implications of PC.
Personality traits relate to both STEM preferences and STEM specialization.
Openness and Agreeableness are the best predictors of STEM
preferences.
Extraversion is the strongest predictor of actual choice for STEM.
Cognitive skills become more important when moving from preferences to actual choice.
There are markedly different patterns for boys compared to girls.
Around the developed world, the need for graduates from Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
(STEM) fields is growing. Research on educational and occupational choice has
traditionally focused on the cognitive skills of prospective students, and on how these determine the expected costs and
benefits of study programs. Little work exists that analyzes the role of personality traits on study choice.
This study investigates how personality traits relate to preferences of students for STEM studies and occupations, and to specialization choice in high school. We use a rich
data set that combines administrative and survey data of Dutch secondary education students.
We find that personality traits are related to both the preference that students have for STEM as the actual decision to specialize inSTEM
studies, but to different degrees. We identify statistically-significant relations with preference indicators for
all Big Five traits, especially for Openness to Experience (positive), Extraversion
and Agreeableness (both negative). The size of these relations is often larger than those between cognitive skills
and STEM preferences. Personality traits are comparatively less important with
respect to the actual specialization choice, for which we identify a robust (and sizable) negative relation with
Extraversion, and for girls find a positive relation with Openness to
Experience.
The results suggest that once students have to make actual study choice decisions, they rely more on cognitive skills
rather than personality traits, in contrast to their expressed preferences.
[media]
Authoritarianism has been the subject of scientific inquiry for nearly a century, yet the vast majority of authoritarianism
research has focused on right-wing authoritarianism. In the present studies, we investigate the nature, structure, and
nomological network of left-wing authoritarianism (LWA), a construct famously
known as “the Loch Ness Monster” of political psychology.
We iteratively construct a measure and data-driven conceptualization of LWA
across 6 samples (n = 7,258) and conduct quantitative tests of LWA’s relations with over 60 authoritarianism-related variables. Wefind that
LWA, right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation reflect a
shared constellation of personality traits, cognitive features, beliefs, and motivational values that might be considered
the “heart” of authoritarianism. Still, relative to right-wing authoritarians, left-wing authoritarians were lower in
dogmatism and cognitive rigidity, higher in negative emotionality, and expressed stronger support for a political system
with substantial centralized state control. Our results also indicate that LWA powerfully predicts behavioral aggression and is strongly correlated with participation
in political violence.
We conclude that a movement away from exclusively right-wing conceptualizations of authoritarianism may be required to
illuminate authoritarianism’s central features, conceptual breadth, and psychological appeal.
[Keywords: authoritarianism, construct validity, left-wing authoritarianism, right-wing
authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, political violence, political extremism, construct validity, individual
differences, personality]
Do psychological traits predict philosophical views?
We administered the PhilPapers Survey, created by David Bourget and David Chalmers, which consists of 30 views on
central philosophical topics (e.g., epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language) to a
sample of professional philosophers (n = 314). We extended the PhilPapers survey to measure a number of
psychological traits, such as personality, numeracy, well-being, lifestyle, and life experiences. We also included
non-technical ‘translations’ of these views for eventual use in other populations.
We found limited to no support for the notion that personality or demographics predict philosophical views. We did,
however, find that some psychological traits were predictive of philosophical views, even after strict correction for
multiple
comparisons. Findings include: higher interest in numeracy predicted physicalism, naturalism, and consequentialism;
lower levels of well-being and higher levels of mental illness predicted hard determinism; using substances such as
psychedelics and marijuana predicted non-realist and subjectivist views of morality and aesthetics; having had a
transformative or self-transcendent experience predicted theism and idealism.
We discuss whether or not these empirical results have philosophical implications, while noting that 68% of our sample
of professional philosophers indicated that such findings would indeed have philosophical value.
Table 5: Pre-registered hypothesized relationships between psychological traits and philosophical
views. The Anti-Naturalism factor consists of the following items (from Bourget & Chalmers 2014):
Freewill: Libertarian, Mind: Nonphysicalism, God: Theism, Meta-Philosophy: Non-Naturalism, Zombies: Metaphysically
Possible, and Personal Identity: Further Fact. statistically-significantly correlated items from the Anti-Naturalism
factor are shown indented and in italics, whereas non-significantly correlated items from the Anti-Naturalism factor
are not shown. As these hypotheses were planned (and pre-registered), they are not corrected for multiple comparisons. ✱p < 0.05. ✱✱p < 0.01.
Objective: At work, people are confronted with clear behavioral expectations. In line with the Social Investment Principle, the
beginning and ending of working life might thus promote changes in personality traits that are relevant at work (e.g.,
Conscientiousness).
Method: Based on the data from the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), we examined nuanced
differences of theBig Five
personality traits in the years around the beginning and ending of working life. Whether participants had started
working or retired in the past year was assessed yearly. The Big Five personality traits were assessed in 4 waves between
2005 and 2017.
Results: In people who started working, multilevel analyses revealed that Conscientiousness was higher in the first year of working life versus all other
years. Extraversion was higher in and after
the first year of working life versus before, and Agreeableness increased gradually in the 3 years after people had started working. In people who retired,
Conscientiousness was lower in and after the first year of retirement versus before.
No other traits differed around the start of retirement.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the start of working life might promote personality maturation
and that retirement might promote personality “relaxation.”
We document gender and socioeconomic inequalities in personality over the life cycle (age 18–75), using the Big
Five 2 (BFI-2) inventory linked to administrative data on a large Danish
population.
We estimate life-cycle profiles non-parametrically and adjust for cohort and sample-selection effects. We find that:
Women of all ages score more highly than men on all personality traits, including 3 that are positively associated
with wages;
High-education groups score more favorably on Openness to Experience,
Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism than low-education groups, while there is no socioeconomic inequality by
Conscientiousness;
Over the life cycle, gender and socioeconomic gaps remain constant, with 2 exceptions: the gender and
SES gaps in Openness to Experience widen, while gender differences in
Neuroticism, a trait associated with worse outcomes, diminish with age.
We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of gender wage gaps, household production models, and
optimal taxation.
[Keywords: inequality, personality, Big Five-2 Inventory, life cycle dynamics, gender disadvantage,
socioeconomic disadvantage]
Whether free will exists is a longstanding philosophical debate. Cognitive neuroscience and popular media have been
putting forward the idea that free will is an illusion, raising the question of what would happen if people stopped
believing in free will altogether.
Psychological research has investigated this question by testing the consequences of experimentally weakening people’s
belief in free will. The results of these investigations have been mixed, with successful experiments and unsuccessful
replications. This raises two fundamental questions that can best be investigated with a meta-analysis: First, can free
will beliefs be manipulated and, second, do such manipulations have downstream consequences?
In a meta-analysis across 146 experiments (95 unpublished) with a total of 26,305 participants, we show that exposing
individuals to anti-free will manipulations decreases belief in free will, g = −0.29, 95% CI = [−0.35, −0.22],
and increases belief in determinism, g = 0.17, 95% CI = [0.09, 0.24]. In
contrast, we find little evidence for the idea that manipulating belief in free will has downstream consequences after
accounting for small sample and publication bias.
Together, our findings have important theoretical implications for research on free will beliefs and contribute to the
discussion of whether reducing people’s belief in free will has societal consequences.
[Keywords: social and behavioral sciences, social and personality psychology, personality processes,
prosocial behavior, prejudice and discrimination, religion and spirituality, moral behavior, cognitive psychology,
consciousness]
Social media has become one of the most important things in daily life to communicate, show expression and exchange
information. Facebook is one of the most widely used social media.
This research focuses on classifying the personality of Facebook users into one of the Big Five Personality Traits. There are
170 volunteers who are Facebook users who have been asked to fill out the Big Five Inventory questionnaire and have allowed
their data to be scraped. Based on the data collected, the classifier is built using data mining techniques using Support Vector Machine (SVM) that aim to find out someone’s personality based on a Facebook account without having to
fill in any questionnaire.
The best accuracy results in this study with a classification model that has been built at 87.5% using the Radial
Basis Function (RBF) kernel.
[Keywords: personality, Big Five Personality Traits, data mining, classification, support vector machine (SVM)]
Examined genetic background and environmental experiences as reasons for ties between personality and sleep
quality.
Among 734 twin-pairs genetic factors accounted for the majority of associations between sleep quality and
traits.
Non-shared environmental experiences also contributed to linkages of sleep quality with some traits.
Genetic influences that tied traits to sleep quality were somewhat unique across traits.
Despite consistent links between personality traits and poor sleep, little is known about genetic and environmental
influences that may produce them. This study examined how much genetic background and environmental experiences contributed
to phenotypic linkages between personality and subjective sleep quality.
734 twin pairs from the Minnesota Study of Twin Aging and Development rated their sleep quality and provided personality
reports. Bi-variate analyses revealed that genetic factors accounted for the majority of observed associations between
subjective sleep quality and traits, but also that non-shared environmental experience played a role that varied across
traits.
The findings strongly implicate genotype in tying subjective sleep quality to personality variation, alongside
non-shared environmental influences, and suggest indicate influences unique to individual traits.
Comparative studies can help identify selective pressures that contributed to species differences in the number and
composition of personality domains. Despite being adapted to an aquatic lifestyle and last sharing a common ancestor with
primates some 95 million years ago, bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) resemble nonhuman primate species in several behavioral
and cognitive traits. For example, like chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), dolphins live in fission-fusion societies,
use tools, and have relatively large brains.
To determine the extent to which these and other factors contribute to the evolution of dolphin personality, we examined
personality structure in 134 bottlenose dolphins. Personality was measured in 49 dolphins using a 42-item questionnaire,
and in 85 dolphins using a version of the questionnaire that included 7 additional items. We found four domains.
Three—Openness, Sociability, and Disagreeableness—resembled personality domains found in nonhuman primates and other
species. The fourth, Directedness, was a blend of high Conscientiousness and low Neuroticism and was unique to dolphins.
Unlike other species, but like humans, dolphins did not appear to have a strong Dominance domain.
The overlap in personality structure between dolphins and other species suggests that selective pressures, such as those
related to group structure, terrestrial lifestyles, morphology, and social learning or tool use are not necessary for
particular domains to evolve within a species.
Ubiquitous facial recognition technology can expose individuals’ political orientation, as faces of liberals and
conservatives consistently differ. A facial recognition algorithm was applied to naturalistic images of 1,085,795
individuals to predict their political orientation by comparing their similarity to faces of liberal and conservative
others. Political orientation was correctly classified in 72% of liberal-conservative face pairs, remarkably better than
chance (50%), human accuracy (55%), or one afforded by a 100-item personality questionnaire (66%). Accuracy was similar
across countries (the U.S., Canada, and the UK), environments (Facebook and dating websites), and when comparing faces
across samples. Accuracy remained high (69%) even when controlling for age, gender, and ethnicity. Given the widespread use
of facial recognition, our findings have critical implications for the protection of privacy and civil liberties.
[Stats
evaluation by Andrew Gelman et al, plus copy of behind-the-scenes letter lobbying to censor such research in the
future.]
His contributions were prodigious and spanned psychopathy and personality
disorders, psychiatric classification and diagnosis, dissociation, memory and trauma, neuroscience, and cultural
sensitivity. He authored, coauthored, and co-edited more than 500 articles and book chapters and 20 books, including the
Encyclopedia of Clinical Psychology. His intellectual reach extended to writing introductory psychology and
graduate textbooks, to op-eds and coverage in major news outlets, TV appearances, radio programs, podcasts, and lectures
across the world. He made his mark in editorial roles including as editor-in-chief of Clinical Psychological
Science, and as past editor and founder of the Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice.
Human children show unique cognitive skills for dealing with the social world but their cognitive performance is
paralleled by great apes in many tasks dealing with the physical world. Recent studies suggested that members of a songbird
family—corvids—also evolved complex cognitive skills but a detailed understanding of the full scope of their cognition was,
until now, not existent. Furthermore, relatively little is known about their cognitive development.
Here, we conducted the first systematic, quantitative large-scale assessment of physical and social cognitive
performance of common ravens with a special focus on development. To do so, we fine-tuned one of the most comprehensive
experimental test-batteries, the Primate
Cognition Test Battery(PCTB), to raven features enabling also a
direct, quantitative comparison with the cognitive performance of 2 great ape species. Full-blown cognitive skills were
already present at the age of 4 months with subadult ravens’ cognitive performance appearing very similar to that of adult
apes in tasks of physical (quantities, and causality) and social cognition (social learning, communication, and theory of
mind).
These unprecedented findings strengthen recent assessments of ravens’ general intelligence, and aid to the growing
evidence that the lack of a specific cortical architecture does not hinder advanced cognitive skills. Difficulties in
certain cognitive scales further emphasize the quest to develop comparative test batteries that tap into true species
rather than human specific cognitive skills, and suggest that socialization of test individuals may play a crucial
role.
We conclude to pay more attention to the impact of personality on cognitive output, and a currently neglected topic in
Animal Cognition—the linkage between ontogeny and cognitive performance.
Objective: A key principle of individual differences research is that biological and environmental
factors jointly influence personality and psychopathology. Genes and environments interact to influence the emergence and
stability of both normal and abnormal behavior (ie., genetic predisposition, X, is exacerbated or buffered under
environmental conditions, Y, or vice versa), including by shaping the neural circuits underpinning behavior. The
interplay of genes and environments is also reflected in various ways in which they are correlated (ie., rGE).
That is, the same genetic factors that give rise to personality or psychopathology also shape that person’s
environment.
Methods: In this review, we outline passive, evocative, and active rGE processes and review
the findings of studies that have addressed rGE in relation to understanding individual differences in personality
and psychopathology across development.
Results: Throughout, we evaluate the question of whether it is possible, not only to differentiate the
person from their problems, but also to differentiate the person from their problems and their
environment.
Conclusions: We provide recommendations for future research to model rGE and better inform our
ability to study personality and psychopathology, while separating the influence of the environment.
The proliferation of media streaming services has increased the volume of personalized video consumption, allowing
marketers to reach massive audiences and deliver a range of customized content at scale. However, relatively little is
known about how consumers’ psychological makeup is manifested in their media preferences. The present paper addresses this
gap in a preregistered study of the relationship between movie plots, quantified via
user-generated keywords, and the aggregate personality profiles of those who “like” them on social media. We find that
movie plots can be used to accurately predict aggregate fans’ personalities, above and beyond the demographic
characteristics of fans, and general film characteristics such as quality, popularity, and genre. Further analysis reveals
various associations between the movies’ psychological themes and their fans’ personalities, indicating congruence between
the two. For example, films with keywords related to anxiety are liked more among people who are high in Neuroticism and
low in Extraversion. In contrast, angry and violent movies are liked more by people who are low in Agreeableness. Our
findings provide a fine-grained mapping between personality dimensions and preferences for media content, and demonstrate
how these links can be leveraged for assessing audience psychographics at scale.
Supplementary Figure 1: Correlations between dimensions of the aggregate fan personality
(AFPP), aggregate fan demographic profile(AFDP) and Metadata variables, across Movies
Extremes of movie correlations: movies with the highest/lowest correlation to Openness to Experience
Extremes: Extraversion
Extremes: Agreeableness
In the present research, we introduce a conceptualization of the Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood
(TIV), which we define as an enduring feeling that the self is a victim across
different kinds of interpersonal relationships. Then, in a comprehensive set of eight studies, we develop a measure
for this novel personality trait, TIV, and examine its correlates, as well as
its affective, cognitive, and behavioral consequences. In Part 1 (Studies 1A-1C) we establish the construct
of TIV, with its four dimensions; ie., need for recognition,moral
elitism, lack of empathy, and rumination, and then assess TIV’s internal
consistency, stability over time, and its effect on the interpretation of ambiguous situations. In Part 2
(Studies 2A-2C) we examine TIV’s convergent and discriminant validities,
using several personality dimensions, and the role of attachment styles as conceptual antecedents. In Part 3
(Studies 3–4) we explore the cognitive and behavioral consequences of TIV.
Specifically, we examinethe relationships between TIV, negative
attribution and recall biases,and the desire for revenge (Study 3), and the effects of TIV on behavioral revenge (Study 4). The findings highlight the importance of
understanding, conceptualizing, and empirically testing TIV, and suggest
that victimhood is a stable and meaningful personality tendency.
In societies where military service is voluntary multiple factors are likely to affect the decision to enlist. Past
research has produced evidence that a handful of personality and social factors seem to predict service in the military.
However, recent quantitative genetic research has illustrated that enlistment in the military appears to be partially
heritable and thus past research is potentially subject to genetic confounding. To assess the extent to which genetic confounding exists,
the current study examined a wide range of individual-level factors using a subsample of twins (n = 1,232) from
the restricted-use version of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. The results of a series of
longitudinal twin comparison models, which control for the latent sources of influence that cluster within families (ie.,
shared genetic and family factors), illustrated generally null findings. However, individuals with higher scores on
measures of extraversion and the general factor of personality were more likely to enlist in the military, after correction
for familial confounding. Nonetheless, the overall results suggest that familial
confounding should be a methodological concern in this area of research, and future
work is encouraged to employ genetically informed methodologies in assessments of predictors of military enlistment.
[Keywords: military enlistment, genetic confounding, twin
comparison, Add Health]
Theorists have suggested that beliefs about whether personality can change might operate in a self-fulfilling fashion,
leading to growth in personality traits across time. In the present two studies, we collected intensive longitudinal data
from a total of 1339 emerging adults (n s = 254 and 1085) and examined the extent to which both global beliefs
that personality can change (eg. ‘You can change even your most basic qualities’) and granular beliefs that the individual
Big Five personality domains can change (eg. ‘You can change how extraverted and enthusiastic you generally are’) predicted
trait change across approximately 4 months. Results indicated that traits did change across time, yet beliefs that
personality can change were almost completely unrelated to actual change in personality traits. Our findings suggest that
personality development during emerging adulthood does not depend to any meaningful degree on whether or not individuals
believe that their traits can change.
[Keywords: adult personality development, implicit theories of personality, personality mindsets, fixed
vs. growth mindsets, entity vs. incremental orientation]
We investigate the consequences and predictors of emitting signals of victimhood and virtue. In our first three studies,
we show that the virtuous victim signal can facilitate nonreciprocal resource transfer from others to the signaler. Next,
we develop and validate a victim signaling scale that we combine with an established measure of virtue signaling to
operationalize the virtuous victim construct. We show that individuals with Dark Triad traits—Machiavellianism, Narcissism,
Psychopathy—more frequently signal virtuous victimhood, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic variables that are
commonly associated with victimization in Western societies. In Study 5, we show that a specific dimension of
Machiavellianism—amoral manipulation—and a form of narcissism that reflects a person’s belief in their superior
prosociality predict more frequent virtuous victim signaling. Studies 3, 4, and 6 test our hypothesis that the frequency of
emitting virtuous victim signal predicts a person’s willingness to engage in and endorse ethically questionable behaviors,
such as lying to earn a bonus, intention to purchase counterfeit products and moral judgments of counterfeiters, and making
exaggerated claims about being harmed in an organizational context.
[Keywords: dark triad, unethical behavior, victim-signaling, victimization, virtue-signaling]
This research explored associations between personality and sexual orientation. In Study 1, we explored whether the
Big Five trait dimensions relate to sexual orientation in a nationally representative sample of Australian adults
(n = 13,351). Personality differences were observed between those who identified as heterosexual (straight),
bisexual, and homosexual (gay/lesbian) on all five measured traits. In Study 2, we conducted an updated systematic
review and meta-analysis of personality and sexual orientation. A total of 21 studies (35 independent samples, 262 effect
sizes) comprising 377,951 men and women were identified that satisfied inclusion criteria. Results showed that bisexual
individuals reported higher levels of openness than homosexual individuals, who in turn, reported higher levels of openness
than heterosexual individuals. Bisexual individuals also report lower levels of conscientiousness than both heterosexual
and homosexual individuals. Sex moderation effects showed that homosexual men scored higher than heterosexual men on
neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness, whereas homosexual women scored lower than heterosexual women on
extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. There was also evidence that personality differences between sexual
orientation categories tend to decline with age. These findings align with the gender-shift hypothesis and should be of
interest to theorists working in personality science and sexual identity development.
Taxometric procedures have been used extensively to investigate whether individual differences in personality and
psychopathology are latently dimensional or categorical (‘taxonic’). We report the first meta-analysis of taxometric
research, examining 317 findings drawn from 183 articles that employed an index of the comparative fit of observed data to
dimensional and taxonic data simulations. Findings supporting dimensional models outnumbered those supporting taxonic
models five to one. There were systematic differences among 17 construct domains in support for the two models, but
psychopathology was no more likely to generate taxonic findings than normal variation (ie. individual differences in
personality, response styles, gender, and sexuality). No content domain showed aggregate support for the taxonic model. Six
variables—alcohol use disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, problem gambling, autism, suicide risk, and
pedophilia—emerged as the most plausible taxon candidates based on a preponderance of independently replicated findings. We
also compared the 317 meta-analyzed findings to 185 additional taxometric findings from 96 articles that did not employ the
comparative fit index. Studies that used the index were 4.88× more likely to generate dimensional findings than those that
did not after controlling for construct domain, implying that many taxonic findings obtained before the popularization of
simulation-based techniques are spurious. The meta-analytic findings support the conclusion that the great majority of
psychological differences between people are latently continuous, and that psychopathology is no exception.
There is ample evidence that a human face provides signals of human personality and behaviour. Previous studies have
found associations between the features of artificial composite facial images and attributions of personality traits by
human experts. We present new findings demonstrating the statistically-significant
prediction of a wider set of personality features (all the Big Five personality traits) for both men and women using
real-life static facial images. Volunteer participants (N = 12,447) provided their face photographs (31,367
images) and completed a self-report measure of the Big Five traits. We trained a cascade of artificial neural
networks (ANNs) on a large labeled dataset to predict self-reported Big Five
scores. The highest correlations were found for Conscientiousness (0.360 for men and 0.335 for women), exceeding the
results obtained in prior studies. The findings provide strong support for the hypothesis that it is possible to predict
multidimensional personality profiles from static facial images using ANNs
trained on large labeled datasets.
Professor Nicholas (Nick) Martin spearheaded initial investigations into the genetic basis of political attitudes and
behaviors, demonstrating that behaviors that are perceived as socially constructed could have a biological basis. As he
showed, the typical mode of inheritance for political attitudes consists of approximately equal proportions of variance
from additive genetic, shared environmental and unique environmental sources. This differs from other psychological
variables, such as personality traits, which tend to be characterized by genetic and unique environmental sources of
variation. By treating political attitudes as a model phenotype, Nick Martin was able to leverage the unique pattern of
observed intergenerational transmission for political attitudes to reexamine the quintessential assumptions of the
classical twin model. Specifically, by creatively leveraging the nuances of the genetic architecture of political
attitudes, he was able to demonstrate the robustness of the equal environments assumption and suggest corrections to
account for assortative mating. These advances have had a substantial impact on both the
fields of political science, as well as behavioral and quantitative genetics.
The replication crisis has seen increased focus on best practice techniques to improve the reliability of scientific
findings. What remains elusive to many researchers and is frequently misunderstood is that predictions involving
interactions dramatically affect the calculation of statistical power. Using recent papers published in Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin(PSPB), we illustrate the pitfalls of improper
power estimations in studies where attenuated interactions are predicted. Our investigation shows why even a programmatic
series of 6 studies employing 2×2 designs, with samples exceeding n = 500, can be woefully underpowered to detect
genuine effects. We also highlight the importance of accounting for error-prone measures when estimating effect sizes and
calculating power, explaining why even positive results can mislead when power is low. We then provide five guidelines for
researchers to avoid these pitfalls, including cautioning against the heuristic that a series of underpowered studies
approximates the credibility of one well-powered study.
Technologies to measure gaze direction and pupil reactivity have become efficient, cheap, and compact and are finding
increasing use in many fields, including gaming, marketing, driver safety, military, and healthcare. Besides offering
numerous useful applications, the rapidly expanding technology raises serious privacy concerns. Through the lens of
advanced data analytics, gaze patterns can reveal much more information than a user wishes and expects to give away.
Drawing from a broad range of scientific disciplines, this paper provides a structured overview of personal data that can
be inferred from recorded eye activities. Our analysis of the literature shows that eye tracking data may implicitly
contain information about a user’s biometric identity, gender, age, ethnicity, body weight, personality traits, drug
consumption habits, emotional state, skills and abilities, fears, interests, and sexual preferences. Certain eye tracking
measures may even reveal specific cognitive processes and can be used to diagnose various physical and mental health
conditions. By portraying the richness and sensitivity of gaze data, this paper provides an important basis for consumer
education, privacy impact assessments, and further research into the societal implications of eye tracking.
We discuss methods of data collection and analysis that emphasize the power of individual personality items for
predicting real world criteria (eg., smoking, exercise, self-rated health). These methods are borrowed by analogy from
radio astronomy and human genomics. Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment (SAPA) applies a matrix sampling procedure that synthesizes very large covariance matrices
through the application of massively missing at random data collection. These large covariance matrices can be applied, in
turn, in Persome Wide Association Studies (PWAS) to form personality
prediction scores for particular criteria. We use two open source data sets (n = 4,000 and 126,884 with 135 and
696 items respectively) for demonstrations of both of these procedures. We compare these procedures to the more traditional
use of “Big 5” or a larger set of narrower factors (the “little 27”). We argue that there is more information at the item
level than is used when aggregating items to form factorially derived scales.
Objective: Many studies have demonstrated that personality traits predict academic performance for
students in high school and college. Much less evidence exists on whether the relationship between personality traits and
academic performance changes from childhood to adolescence, and existing studies show very mixed findings. This study tests
one hypothesis—that the importance of Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, and Conscientiousness for academic performance
changes fundamentally during school—against an alternative hypothesis suggesting that the changing relationships found in
previous research are largely measurement artifacts.
Method: We used a nationwide sample of 135,389 primary and lower secondary students from Grade 4 to
Grade 8. We replicated all results in a separate sample of another 127,375 students.
Results: We found that academic performance was equally strongly related to our measure of
Conscientiousness at all these grade levels, and the statistical-significance of
Agreeableness and Emotional Stability predominantly reflected their connections with Conscientiousness. However, age also
appeared to shape the relationship between Emotional Stability and performance.
Conclusion: Amidst the replication crisis in psychology these findings demonstrate a very stable and
predictable relationship between personality traits and academic performance, which may have important implications for the
education of children already in primary school.
Because stereotypes and social reality are mutually reinforcing, it is often unclear whether a given stereotype has
emerged from preexisting social reality, or has shaped social reality over time to resemble the stereotype (eg., via
discrimination). To address this chicken-or-egg problem, we advance an integrative model that captures not only endogenous
stereotype formation from social reality, but also exogenous stereotype formation without social reality. When arbitrary
social categories are introduced, the cultural meanings of category cues (eg., semantic category names) can be exogenously
projected as stereotypes onto those social categories.
To illustrate exogenous stereotype formation, we examined a novel form of stereotyping and discrimination in China based
on astrological signs, which were introduced into China from the West. Studies 1a, 1b, and 2 revealed that
astrological stereotypes are salient in China (but not in the United States). These stereotypes were likely produced
exogenously because of how the signs were translated into Chinese. In particular, Virgos are stereotyped as having
disagreeable personalities, likely because of Virgo’s Chinese translation as “virgin” (Study 3). This translation-based
stereotype led Chinese individuals to discriminate against Virgos in romantic dating (Study 4) and in simulated job
recruitment (Studies 5 and 6). Studies 7 and 8 confirmed that astrological stereotypes are inaccurate and astrological
discrimination is irrational: Astrological sign predicted neither personality (n = 173,709) nor job performance
(n = 32,878).
Overall, our research disentangles stereotypes from social reality by providing a real-world demonstration that
stereotypes can form without preexisting social reality, yet still produce discrimination that can then shape social
reality.
Employment is thought to be more enjoyable and beneficial to individuals and society when there is alignment between the
person and the occupation, but a key question is how to best match people with the right profession. The information that
people broadcast online through social media provides insights into who they are, which we show can be used to match people
and occupations. Findings have implications for career guidance for new graduates, disengaged employees, career changers,
and the unemployed.
Work is thought to be more enjoyable and beneficial to individuals and society when there is congruence between one’s
personality and one’s occupation. We provide large-scale evidence that occupations have distinctive psychological profiles,
which can successfully be predicted from linguistic information unobtrusively collected through social media. Based on
128,279 Twitter users representing 3,513 occupations, we automatically assess user personalities and visually map the
personality profiles of different professions. Similar occupations cluster together, pointing to specific sets of jobs that
one might be well suited for. Observations that contradict existing classifications may point to emerging occupations
relevant to the 21st century workplace. Findings illustrate how social media can be used to match people to
their ideal occupation.
[Keywords: personality, employment, linguistic analysis, social media, 21st century
workplace]
Napoleon Bonaparte had one of the
most accomplished, divisive, big lives of any person in history, which reshaping the way we think about war,
politics, revolution, culture, law, religion, and so much more in a mere 52 years. Any one of those elements could (and
has) been isolated and made into a massive tome on its own.
So I just set out to describe and analyze all of the things I found most interesting about the man. This includes a
summary of his entire life, his personality quirks, unusual events, driving beliefs, notable skills, and more. If there is
an over-arching theme to be found, it’s my amazement at how an extraordinarily competent and risk-tolerant individual lived
his life up to the greatest heights only to come tumbling back down to earth.
Research focusing on among-individual differences in behaviour (‘animal personality’) has been blooming for over a
decade. Central theories explaining the maintenance of such behavioural variation posits that individuals expressing
greater “risky” behaviours should suffer higher mortality. Here, for the first time, we synthesize the existing empirical
evidence for this key prediction. Our results did not support this prediction as there was no directional relationship
between riskier behaviour and greater mortality; however there was a statistically-significant absolute relationship
between behaviour and survival. In total, behaviour explained a statistically-significant, but small, portion (5.8%) of the variance in survival. We also found
that risky (vs. “shy”) behavioural types live statistically-significantly longer in the wild, but not in the
laboratory. This suggests that individuals expressing risky behaviours might be of overall higher quality but the lack of
predation pressure and resource restrictions mask this effect in laboratory environments. Our work demonstrates that
individual differences in behaviour explain important differences in survival but not in the direction predicted by theory.
Importantly, this suggests that models predicting behaviour to be a mediator of reproduction-survival trade-offs may need
revision and/or empiricists may need to reconsider their proxies of risky behaviours when testing such theory.
Evidence from different countries suggests that non-cognitive skills play an important role in wage determination and
overall social outcomes, but studies for Canada are scarce. We contribute to filling this gap by estimating wage
regressions with the Big Five traits using the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults. Our results indicate that
conscientiousness is positively associated with wages, while agreeableness, extraversion, and neuroticism are associated
with negative returns, with higher magnitudes on agreeableness and conscientiousness for females. Cognitive ability has the
highest estimated wage return so, while substantial, non-cognitive skills do not seem to be the most important wage
determinant.
[Keywords: management, labour market, returns to skills, non-cognitive skill, cognitive skill, wage
regressions, personality traits, Five-Factor Model]
A Genome-wide association study (GWAS) estimates size and statistical-significance of the effect of common genetic variants on
a phenotype of interest. A Polygenic Score (PGS) is a score, computed for each individual, summarizing the expected value of a
phenotype on the basis of the individual’s genotype. The PGS is computed as a
weighted sum of the values of the individual’s genetic variants, using as weights the GWAS estimated coefficients from a training sample. Thus, PGS carries information on the genotype, and only on the genotype, of an individual. In our
case phenotypes of interest are measures of educational achievement, such as having a college degree, or the education
years, in a sample of approximately 2700 adult twins and their parents.
We set up the analysis in a standard model of optimal parental investment and intergenerational mobility, extended to
include a fully specified genetic analysis of skill transmission, and show that the model’s predictions on mobility differ
substantially from those of the standard model. For instance, the coefficient of intergenerational income elasticity maybe
larger, and may differ across countries because the distribution of the genotype is different, completely independently of
any difference in institution, technology or preferences.
We then study how much of the educational achievement is explained by the PGS for education, thus estimating how much of the variance of education can be explained by
genetic factors alone. We find a substantial effect of PGS on performance in
school, years of education and college.
Finally we study the channels between PGS and the educational achievement,
distinguishing how much is due to cognitive skills and to personality traits. We show that the effect of PGS is substantially stronger on Intelligence than on other traits, like Constraint, which
seem natural explanatory factors of educational success. For educational achievement, both cognitive and non cognitive
skills are important, although the larger fraction of success is channeled by Intelligence.
Twin studies and other analyses of inheritance of sexual orientation in humans has indicated that same-sex sexual
behavior has a genetic component. Previous searches for the specific genes involved have been underpowered and thus unable
to detect genetic signals. Ganna et al 2019 perform a genome-wide
association study on 493,001 participants from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Sweden to study genes
associated with sexual orientation (see the Perspective by Mills). They find multiple loci implicated in same-sex sexual
behavior indicating that, like other behavioral traits, nonheterosexual behavior is polygenic.
Introduction: Across human societies and in both sexes, some 2 to 10% of individuals report engaging in
sex with same-sex partners, either exclusively or in addition to sex with opposite-sex partners. Twin and family studies
have shown that same-sex sexual behavior is partly genetically influenced, but previous searches for the specific genes
involved have been underpowered to detect effect sizes realistic for complex traits.
Rationale: For the first time, new large-scale datasets afford sufficient statistical power to identify genetic variants associated with same-sex sexual behavior (ever
versus never had a same-sex partner), estimate the proportion of variation in the trait accounted for by all variants in
aggregate, estimate the genetic correlation of same-sex sexual behavior with other traits, and probe
the biology and complexity of the trait. To these ends, we performed genome-wide association discovery analyses on 477,522
individuals from the United Kingdom and United States, replication analyses in 15,142 individuals from the United States
and Sweden, and follow-up analyses using different aspects of sexual preference.
Results: In the discovery samples (UK Biobank and 23andMe), 5 autosomal loci were statistically-significantly
associated with same-sex sexual behavior. Follow-up of these loci suggested links to biological pathways that involve sex
hormone regulation and olfaction. 3 of the loci were statistically-significant in a
meta-analysis of smaller, independent replication samples. Although only a few loci passed the stringent statistical
corrections for genome-wide multiple testing and were replicated in other samples, our analyses show that many loci
underlie same-sex sexual behavior in both sexes. In aggregate, all tested genetic variants accounted for 8 to 25% of
variation in male and female same-sex sexual behavior, and the genetic influences were positively but imperfectly
correlated between the sexes [genetic correlation coefficient
(rg)= 0.63; 95% confidence intervals, 0.48 to 0.78]. These aggregate genetic influences partly
overlapped with those on a variety of other traits, including externalizing behaviors such as smoking, cannabis use,
risk-taking, and the personality trait “openness to experience.” Additional analyses suggested that sexual behavior,
attraction, identity, and fantasies are influenced by a similar set of genetic variants (rg > 0.83);
however, the genetic effects that differentiate heterosexual from same-sex sexual behavior are not the same as those that
differ among nonheterosexuals with lower versus higher proportions of same-sex partners, which suggests that there is no
single continuum from opposite-sex to same-sex preference.
Conclusion: Same-sex sexual behavior is influenced by not one or a few genes but many. Overlap with
genetic influences on other traits provides insights into the underlying biology of same-sex sexual behavior, and analysis
of different aspects of sexual preference underscore its complexity and call into question the validity of bipolar
continuum measures such as the Kinsey scale. Nevertheless, many uncertainties remain to be explored, including how
sociocultural influences on sexual preference might interact with genetic influences. To help communicate our study to the
broader public, we organized workshops in which representatives of the public, activists, and researchers discussed the
rationale, results, and implications of our study.
The understanding, quantification and evaluation of individual differences in behavior, feelings and thoughts have
always been central topics in psychological science. An enormous amount of previous work on individual differences in
behavior is exclusively based on data from self-report questionnaires. To date, little is known about how individuals
actually differ in their objectively quantifiable behaviors and how differences in these behaviors relate to big five
personality traits. Technological advances in mobile computer and sensing technology have now created the possibility to
automatically record large amounts of data about humans’ natural behavior. The collection and analysis of these records
makes it possible to analyze and quantify behavioral differences at unprecedented scale and efficiency. In this study, we
analyzed behavioral data obtained from 743 participants in 30 consecutive days of smartphone sensing (25,347,089
logging-events). We computed variables (15,692) about individual behavior from five semantic categories (communication &
social behavior, music listening behavior, app usage behavior, mobility, and general daytime & nighttime activity). Using a
machine learning approach (random forest, elastic net), we show how these variables can be used to
predict self-assessments of the big five personality traits at the factor and facet level. Our results reveal distinct
behavioral patterns that proved to be differentially-predictive of big five personality traits. Overall, this paper shows
how a combination of rich behavioral data obtained with smartphone sensing and the use of machine learning techniques can
help to advance personality research and can inform both practitioners and researchers about the different behavioral
patterns of personality.
The study of human individual differences has matured substantially, in the last decade or so owing, in part, to the
notable advances in neuroimaging techniques. There are three major domains of inquiry within individual differences
research: personality, creativity, and intelligence. Each has a discrete, testable definition (a new definition for
intelligence is offered: rapid and accurate problem solving), and each has been associated with distinct brain regions and
interactive networks.
Here, we outline commonalities between these constructs, which appear to conform to two major axes: exploratory behavior
and restraint. These axes, in turn, conform largely to two major brain networks dedicated to novelty generation (ie.
default mode
network—DMN), and refinement of ideas (ie. cognitive control network—CCN).
Thus, human individual differences represent the expression of adaptive behaviors leading to exploratory and/or
restrained action arising from brain structure and function.
Will Wilkinson explored one possibility in an essay he wrote a few years ago on American country music. Wilkinson begins
with the observation that American conservatives (ie., the consumers of country music) tend to be low on “openness” in the
Big-5 personality scale. Folks who rate high on openness are the sort attracted to novelty: world travels, new drugs, and
so forth. Country music, he suggests, captures the emotional lives of a different group of people:
Emotional highlights of the low-openness life are going to be the type celebrated in “One Boy, One Girl”: the moment
of falling in love with “the one”, the wedding day, the birth one’s children (though I guess the song is about a
surprising ultrasound). More generally, country music comes again and again to the marvel of advancing through life’s
stations, and finds delight in experiencing traditional familial and social relationships from both sides. Once I was a
girl with a mother, now I’m a mother with a girl. My parents took care of me, and now I take care of them. I was once a
teenage boy threatened by a girl’s gun-loving father, now I’m a gun-loving father threatening my girl’s teenage boy. Etc.
And country is full of assurances that the pleasures of simple, rooted, small-town, lives of faith are deeper and more
abiding than the alternatives.
My conjecture, then, is that country music functions in part to reinforce in low-openness individuals the idea that
life’s most powerful, meaningful emotional experiences are precisely those to which conservative personalities living
conventional lives are most likely to have access. And it functions as a device to coordinate members of
conservative-minded communities on the incomparable emotional weight of traditional milestone experiences…
But why would you want your kids to grow up with the same way of life as you and your grandparents? My best guess (and
let me stress guess) is that those low in openness depend emotionally on a sense of enchantment of the everyday and the
profundity of ritual. Even a little change, like your kids playing with different toys than you did, comes as a small
reminder of the instability of life over generations and the contingency of our emotional attachments. This is a reminder
low-openness conservatives would prefer to avoid, if possible. What high-openness liberals feel as mere nostalgia,
low-openness conservatives feel as the baseline emotional tone of a recognizably decent life. If your kids don’t
experience the same meaningful things in the same way that you experienced them, then it may seem that their lives will
be deprived of meaning, which would be tragic. And even if you’re able to see that your kids will find plenty of meaning,
but in different things and in different ways, you might well worry about the possibility of ever really understanding
and relating to them. The inability to bond over profound common experience would itself constitute a grave loss of
meaning for both generations. So when the culture redefines a major life milestone, such as marriage, it trivializes
one’s own milestone experience by imbuing it was a sense of contingency, threatens to deprive one’s children of the same
experience, and thus threatens to make the generations strangers to one another. And what kind of monster would want
that?
Country music is a bulwark against cultural change, a reminder that “what you see is what you get”, a means of keeping
the charge of enchantment in “the little things” that make up the texture of the every day, and a way of literally
broadcasting the emotional and cultural centrality of the conventional big-ticket experiences that make a life a
life.3
…Yet there is one segment of society that seems to get it. In the years since my [Mormon missionary] service, I have been surprised
to find that the one group of people who consistently understands my experience are soldiers…both many ex-missionaries
(known as “RMs” or “Return Missionaries” in Mormon lingo) and many veterans have such trouble adapting to life when they
return to their homes. This comparison occurred to me first several years ago, when I read a Facebook comment left by a man
who had served as a Marine mechanic in Afghanistan…I did not save the comment at the time, but I remember it well enough to
reproduce a paraphrase here:
“I do not know if I want to live any more. I served in Afghanistan from [various dates of various deployments] and am
now working as a salesman for [a prominent American company]. I despise this world I am in now—everything is so selfish
and so self centered. In Afghanistan every single decision I made had a purpose; every single thing I did was for
something bigger than myself. Everything I did, I did to save lives. Every deed helped accomplish our mission. Here in
America no one does anything except for themselves. We work to earn a buck—what is the point to living like this? There
is not a day that goes by that I don’t wish I was back in that hellhole. There what I did mattered. Here it is all
meaningless.”
This paper examines the joint evolution of emigration and individualism in Scandinavia during the Age of Mass Migration
(1850–1920). A long-standing hypothesis holds that people of a stronger individualistic mindset are more likely to migrate
as they suffer lower costs of abandoning existing social networks. Building on this hypothesis, I propose a theory of
cultural change where migrant self-selection generates a relative push away from individualism, and towards collectivism,
in migrant-sending locations through a combination of initial distributional effects and channels of intergenerational
cultural transmission. Due to the interdependent relationship between emigration and individualism, emigration is
furthermore associated with cultural convergence across subnational locations. I combine various sources of empirical data,
including historical population census records and passenger lists of emigrants, and test the relevant elements of the
proposed theory at the individual and subnational district level, and in the short and long run. Together, the empirical
results suggest that individualists were more likely to migrate than collectivists, and that the Scandinavian countries
would have been considerably more individualistic and culturally diverse, had emigration not taken place.
The Big Five personality traits have been linked to dozens of life outcomes. However, metascientific research has raised
questions about the replicability of behavioral science. The Life Outcomes of Personality Replication (LOOPR) Project was therefore conducted to estimate the replicability of the
personality-outcome literature. Specifically, I conducted preregistered,
high-powered (median n = 1,504) replications of 78 previously published trait-outcome associations. Overall, 87%
of the replication attempts were statistically-significant in the expected direction. The replication effects were
typically 77% as strong as the corresponding original effects, which represents a significant decline in effect size. The
replicability of individual effects was predicted by the effect size and design of the original study, as well as the
sample size and statistical power of the replication. These results indicate that the personality-outcome literature
provides a reasonably accurate map of trait-outcome associations but also that it stands to benefit from efforts to improve
replicability.
The automatic assessment of psychological traits from digital footprints allows researchers to study psychological
traits at unprecedented scale and in settings of high ecological validity. In this research, we investigated whether
spending records—a ubiquitous and universal form of digital footprint—can be used to infer psychological traits. We applied
an ensemble machine-learning technique (random-forest modeling) to a data set combining two million spending records from
bank accounts with survey responses from the account holders (n = 2,193). Our predictive accuracies were modest
for the Big Five personality traits (r = 0.15, corrected ρ = 0.21) but provided higher precision for specific
traits, including materialism (r = 0.33, corrected ρ = 0.42). We compared the predictive accuracy of these models
with the predictive accuracy of alternative digital behaviors used in past research, including those observed on social
media platforms, and we found that the predictive accuracies were relatively stable across socioeconomic groups and over
time.
The heritability of exercise behavior (EB) in young adults is substantial (60%–81%).
Several parameters measured in adolescence were correlated with adult EB.
These correlates showed statistically-significant genetic associations with
adult EB.
A large part of the covariation between EB and the correlates was due to genetic causes.
Objectives: To improve the success of interventions aimed to increase moderate to vigorous physical
activity, we need to better understand the correlates of the extensive individual differences in voluntary exercise
activities. Starting in adolescence, genetic effects become a dominant factor in explaining individual differences in
voluntary exercise behavior. Here we aim to establish the prospective contribution of potential correlates of voluntary
exercise behavior to its heritability.
Design: In a sample of adolescent and young adult twins, data on potential correlates of exercise
behavior were collected using surveys (time point 1, n = 373) and a laboratory study (time point 2, n =
499). Information on personality, perceived barriers & benefits, subjective and objective exercise ability and the
affective response to exercise were collected in a set of healthy adolescent twin pairs (16–18y) and their non-twin
siblings (12–25y). Almost 3 years later, the subjects were sent an online follow-up survey on their current exercise status
(time point 3, n = 423).
Methods: In bivariate models, the phenotypic (co)variance in these correlates and exercise behavior at
all time points were decomposed in sources of genetic (co)variance and environmental (co)variance. The correlates that were
statistically-significant associated with exercise behavior at time point 1 or 2 and
showed statistically-significant genetic correlations to exercise behavior at time
point 3 were used in 2 further analyses: Multiple regression analysis to predict exercise behavior at time point 3, and a
genetic analysis in a common 2-factor model, that tested the overlap in genetic factors influencing these correlates and
exercise behavior.
Results: Personality (Extraversion), perceived benefits and barriers, exercise-induced affective
response (Energy measured after the cycling test), and subjective and objective exercise ability (VO2max) showed
statistically-significant phenotypic and genetic association with exercise behavior
at time point 3. The genetic correlation between the 2 latent factors in the common 2-factor model was 0.51, indicating
that part of the heritability in exercise behavior derives from genetic variants that also influence these correlates.
Conclusions: Given their shared genetic basis and predictive power we assert that individual
differences in extraversion, perceived benefits and barriers, exercise-induced feelings of energy, and subjective and
objective exercise ability can be used to develop stratified interventions for adolescent and young adult exercise
behavior. In addition, our results provide the first clues on ‘where to look’ for specific genetic variants for voluntary
exercise behavior.
Accelerometers are sensors for measuring acceleration forces. They can be found embedded in many types of mobile
devices, including tablet PCs, smartphones, and smartwatches. Some common uses of built-in accelerometers are automatic
image stabilization, device orientation detection, and shake detection. In contrast to sensors like microphones and
cameras, accelerometers are widely regarded as not privacy-intrusive. This sentiment is reflected in protection policies of
current mobile operating systems, where third-party apps can access accelerometer data without requiring security
permission.
It has been shown in experiments, however, that seemingly innocuous sensors can be used as a side channel to infer
highly sensitive information about people in their vicinity. Drawing from existing literature, we found that accelerometer
data alone may be sufficient to obtain information about a device holder’s location, activities, health condition, body
features, gender, age, personality traits, and emotional state. Acceleration signals can even be used to uniquely identify
a person based on biometric movement patterns and to reconstruct sequences of text entered into a device, including
passwords.
In the light of these possible inferences, we suggest that accelerometers should urgently be re-evaluated in terms of
their privacy implications, along with corresponding adjustments to sensor protection mechanisms.
[Keywords: accelerometer, sensor, privacy, side channel, inference attack]
This study was designed to provide detailed estimates of genetic and environmental sources of variance in the HEXACO personality traits. For this purpose, we analyzed data from a German extended twin
family study including 573 pairs of twins as well as 208 mothers, 119 fathers, 228 spouses, and 143 offspring of twins. All
participants provided self-reports on the HEXACO-60.
Extended twin family analyses using structural equation modeling (SEM) yielded that additive and nonadditive genetic influences accounted for about
50% of the variance in personality traits. The remaining variance was primarily due to individual-specific environmental
sources and random measurement error. Spousal similarity in Openness was attributable to
assortative mating, whereas spousal similarity in Honesty-Humility was attributable
to environmental circumstances, partly due to a shared social background and spouse-specific effects.
Our analyses yielded specifics for different personality traits. However, transmission of trait similarity from one
generation to the next was primarily genetic.
The phenomenon of ‘microdosing’, that is, regular ingestion of very small quantities of psychedelic substances, has seen
a rapid explosion of popularity in recent years. Individuals who microdose report minimal acute effects from these
substances yet claim a range of long-term general health and wellbeing benefits. There have been no published empirical
studies of microdosing and the current legal and bureaucratic climate makes direct empirical investigation of the effects
of psychedelics difficult.
In Study One we conducted a systematic, observational investigation of individuals who microdose. We tracked the
experiences of 98 microdosing participants, who provided daily ratings of psychological functioning over a six week period.
63 of these additionally completed a battery of psychometric measures tapping mood, attention, wellbeing, mystical
experiences, personality, creativity, and sense of agency, at baseline and at completion of the study. Analyses of daily
ratings revealed a general increase in reported psychological functioning across all measures on dosing days but limited
evidence of residual effects on following days. Analyses of pre and post study measures revealed reductions in reported
levels of depression and stress; lower levels of distractibility; increased absorption; and increased neuroticism.
To better understand these findings, in Study Two we investigated pre-existing beliefs and expectations about the
effects of microdosing in a sample of 263 naïve and experienced microdosers, so as to gauge expectancy bias. All
participants believed that microdosing would have large and wide-ranging benefits in contrast to the limited outcomes
reported by actual microdosers. Notably, the effects believed most likely to change were unrelated to the
observed pattern of reported outcomes.
The current results suggest that dose controlled empirical research on the impacts of microdosing on mental health and
attentional capabilities are needed.
Beyond money and possessions, how are the rich different from the general population?
Drawing on a unique sample of high-net-worth individuals from Germany (≥1 million Euro in financial assets; n =
130), nationally representative data (n = 22,981), and an additional online panel (n = 690), we provide
the first direct investigation of the stereotypically perceived and self-reported personality profiles of high-net-worth
individuals.
Investigating the broad personality traits of the Big Five and the more specific traits of narcissism and locus of
control, we find that stereotypes about wealthy people’s personality are accurate albeit somewhat exaggerated and that
wealthy people can be characterized as stable, flexible, and agentic individuals who are focused more on themselves than on
others.
Disorders of the brain can exhibit considerable epidemiological comorbidity and often share symptoms, provoking debate
about their etiologic overlap. We quantified the genetic sharing of 25 brain disorders from genome-wide association studies of 265,218 patients and 784,643 control participants and
assessed their relationship to 17 phenotypes from 1,191,588 individuals. Psychiatric disorders share common variant risk,
whereas neurological disorders appear more distinct from one another and from the psychiatric disorders. We also identified
statistically-significant sharing between disorders and a number of brain
phenotypes, including cognitive measures. Further, we conducted simulations to explore how statistical power, diagnostic misclassification, and phenotypic heterogeneity affect genetic
correlations. These results highlight the importance of common genetic variation as a risk factor for brain disorders and
the value of heritability-based methods in understanding their etiology.
Mean level sex differences were found for Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness (women higher on
all).
No evidence of qualitative genetic differences between men and women on any of the Big Five traits.
No evidence of quantitative genetic or environmental differences between men and women on any of the Big Five
traits.
The importance of genetic influences for the Five Factor/Big Five Model (BFM) traits is well established. Relatively understudied, however, are the presence and
magnitude of sex differences in genetic and environmental variance of these traits. The current study tested if men and
women differ (1) qualitatively in the genetic mechanisms, or (2) quantitatively, on the genetic and environmental variance,
contributing to BFM personality domains. Results from a nationally
representative U.S. adult twin sample (n = 973 pairs) supported phenotypic (ie., mean level) sex differences in 3
of 5 personality traits (Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness) but did not support genetic or environmental sex
differences in any trait.
[Keywords: personality, sex differences, behavior genetics, twin]
This paper explores the use of language models to predict 20 human traits from users’ Facebook status updates. The data
was collected by the myPersonality project, and includes user statuses along with their personality, gender, political
identification, religion, race, satisfaction with life, IQ, self-disclosure, fair-mindedness, and belief in astrology. A
single interpretable model meets state of the art results for well-studied tasks such as predicting gender and personality;
and sets the standard on other traits such as IQ, sensational interests, political identity, and satisfaction with life.
Additionally, highly weighted words are published for each trait. These lists are valuable for creating hypotheses about
human behavior, as well as for understanding what information a model is extracting. Using performance and extracted
features we analyze models built on social media. The real world problems we explore include gendered classification bias
and Cambridge Analytica’s use of psychographic models.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common illness accompanied by
considerable morbidity, mortality, costs, and heightened risk of suicide.
We conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis based in 135,458 cases and 344,901 controls and identified 44
independent and statistically-significant loci.
The genetic findings were associated with clinical features of major depression and implicated brain regions exhibiting
anatomical differences in cases. Targets of antidepressant medications and genes involved in gene splicing were enriched
for smaller association signal. We found important relationships of genetic risk for major depression with educational
attainment, body mass, and schizophrenia: lower educational attainment and higher body mass were
putatively causal, whereas major depression and schizophrenia reflected a partly
shared biological etiology.
All humans carry lesser or greater numbers of genetic risk factors for major depression. These findings help refine the
basis of major depression and imply that a continuous measure of risk underlies the clinical phenotype.
This paper estimates the effects of personality traits and IQ on lifetime earnings, both as a sum and individually by
age.
The payoffs to personality traits display a concave life-cycle pattern, with the largest effects between the ages of
40 and 60.
The largest effects on earnings are found for Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Agreeableness (negative).
An interaction of traits with education reveals that personality matters most for highly educated men.
The overall effect of Conscientiousness operates partly through education, which also has substantial returns.
This paper estimates the effects of personality traits and IQ on lifetime earnings of the men and women of the Terman study,
a high-IQ U.S. sample. Age-by-age earnings profiles allow a study of when personality traits affect earnings most,
and for whom the effects are strongest. I document a concave life-cycle pattern in the payoffs to personality
traits, with the largest effects between the ages of 40 and 60. An interaction of traits with education reveals that
personality matters most for highly educated men. The largest effects are found for Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and
Agreeableness (negative), where Conscientiousness operates partly through education, which also has substantial
returns.
[Keywords: Personality traits, Socio-emotional skills, Cognitive skills, Returns to education, Lifetime
earnings, Big Five, Human capital, Factor analysis]
Paranormal beliefs (PBs), such as the belief in the soul, or in extrasensory perception, are common in the general
population. While there is information regarding what these beliefs correlate with (eg., cognitive biases, personality
styles), there is little information regarding the causal direction between these beliefs and their correlates.
To investigate the formation of beliefs, we use an experimental design, in which PBs and belief-associated cognitive biases are
assessed before and after a central event: a magic performance (see also Mohr et al 2018). In the current
paper, we report a series of studies investigating the “paranormal potential” of magic performances (Study 1,
n = 49; Study 2, n = 89; Study 3, n = 123). We investigated (1) which magic performances
resulted in paranormal explanations, and (2) whether PBs and a belief-associated cognitive bias (ie., repetition avoidance)
became enhanced after the performance. Repetition avoidance was assessed using a random number generation task. After the
performance, participants rated to what extent the magic performance could be explained in psychic (paranormal), conjuring,
or religious terms.
We found that conjuring explanations were negatively associated with religious and psychic explanations, whereas
religious and psychic explanations were positively associated. Enhanced repetition avoidance correlated with higher PBs
ahead of the performance. We also observed a statistically-significant increase in
psychic explanations and a drop in conjuring explanations when performances involved powerful psychic routines (eg., the
performer contacted the dead).
While the experimentally induced enhancement of psychic explanations is promising, future studies should account for
potential variables that might explain absent framing and before-after effects (eg., emotion, attention). Such effects are
essential to understand the formation and manipulation of belief.
Existing literature connects military service to regional characteristics and family traditions, creating real
distinctions between those who serve and those who do not. We engage this discussion by examining military service as a
function of personality. In the second portion, we examine military service as predisposed by genetics. Our findings
indicate there is a statistically-significant heritability component of serving in the military. We find a
statistically-significant genetic correlation between personality traits associated
with progressive political ambition and military service, suggesting that military service represents a different form of
political participation to which individuals are genetically predisposed. We discuss the long-term implications of our
findings for policy makers and recruiters.
Women with PCOS had a 2-fold increase in odds for lifetime MDD.
Women with PCOS score higher on Neuroticism scale.
There are common genetic factors between neuroticism, PCOS, andMDD.
Neuroticism contributes to a portion of the comorbidity between PCOS and
MDD.
Background: Women with polycystic ovary syndrome(PCOS) are at elevated risk
for suffering from depression. Neuroticism is a
personality trait that has been associated with an increased risk for developing major depressive disorder
(MDD). The aim of the present study was to quantify and decompose the
correlation between Neuroticism, PCOS, and MDD into shared and unique genetic and environmental etiologies, by using quantitative
genetic methods.
Methods: In a cohort of 12,628 Swedish female twins born from 1959 to 1985, Neuroticism,
PCOS identified by symptoms ofhyperandrogenemia (ie., hirsutism) and oligoovulation and/or anovulation, and lifetime MDD status were determined through questionnaire responses. Structural equation modeling was used to study the genetic and environmental sources of the
variation within, and covariation between Neuroticism, PCOS, and MDD.
Results: Female twins with PCOS (n = 752) had
statistically-significantly higher levels of Neuroticism than women without PCOS,
and a 2-fold increase in odds for a lifetime prevalenceof MDD. The
phenotypic correlation between PCOS and MDD was
0.19, with 63% of the correlation attributable to common genetic factors between the 2 traits. When taking into
account Neuroticism, 41% was attributable to common genetic factors and 9% attributable to common environmental factors
shared between all 3 traits, with the remainder attributable to components unique to PCOS and MDD.
Conclusion: There are common genetic factors between Neuroticism, PCOS, and MDD; however, Neuroticism shares approximately half
of the genetic and environmental components behind the phenotypic correlation between PCOS and MDD, providing some etiological evidence behind
thecomorbidity between PCOS and depression.
[Psychiatrist muses about individual differences: how do people perceive & experience such extremely different ‘worlds’,
such that some lurch from drama to trauma while others experience few problems, a large fraction of Americans are Young
Earth Creationists while he knows none personally, some constantly experience ‘sexism’ and ‘racism’ while others never
experience it, some psychiatrists get patients who melt down regularly while others (like him) never do, and so on? (See
also: the Dodo Bird
Verdict/therapist-specific effects, heritability, reactive gene-environment interaction, typical mind fallacy, cognitive biases, ‘everything is correlated’, the
Metallic Laws.)]
People self-select into bubbles along all sorts of axes. Some of these bubbles are obvious and easy to explain, like
rich people mostly meeting other rich people at the country club. Others are more mysterious, like how some non-programmer
ends up with mostly programmer friends. Still others are horrible and completely outside comprehension, like someone who
tries very hard to avoid abusers but ends up in multiple abusive relationships anyway. Even for two people living in the
same country, city, and neighborhood, they can have a “society” made up of very different types of people. People vary
widely on the way they perceive social interaction. A paranoid schizophrenic will view every interaction as hostile; a
Williams Syndrome kid will view every interaction as friendly. In between, there will be a whole range of healthy people
without any psychiatric disorder who tend toward one side or the other. Only the most blatant data can be interpreted
absent the priors that these dispositions provide; everything else will only get
processed through preexisting assumptions about how people tend to act. Since things like racism rarely take the form of
someone going up to you and saying “Hello, I am a racist and because of your skin color I plan to discriminate against you
in the following ways…”, they’ll end up as ambiguous stimuli that everyone will interpret differently. Finally, some people
have personalities or styles of social interaction that unconsciously compel a certain response from their listeners. Call
these “niceness fields” or “meanness fields” or whatever: some people are the sort who—if they became
psychotherapists—would have patients who constantly suffered dramatic emotional meltdowns, and others’ patients would
calmly discuss their problems.
The old question goes: are people basically good or basically evil? Different philosophers give different answers. But
so do different random people I know who aren’t thinking philosophically at all. Some people describe a world of
backstabbing Machiavellians, where everybody’s a shallow social climber who will kick down anyone it takes to get to the
top. Other people describe a world where everyone is basically on the same page, trying to be nice to everyone else but
getting stuck in communication difficulties and honest disagreements over values.
I think both groups are right. Some people experience worlds of basically-good people who treat them nicely. Other
people experience worlds of awful hypocritical backstabbers. This can be true even if they live in the same area as each
other, work the same job as each other, et cetera.
To return to a common theme: nothing makes sense except in light of inter-individual variation. Variation in
people’s internal
experience. Variation in people’s basic beliefs and assumptions. Variation in level of abstract thought. And
to all of this I would add a variation in our experience of other people.
Neuroticism is a stable personality trait 1; twin studies report heritability between 30% and 50%
2, and SNP-based heritability is about 15%
3. Higher levels of neuroticism are associated with poorer mental and physical health 4,5, and the
economic burden of neuroticism for societies is high 6. To date, genome-wide association (GWA) studies of neuroticism have identified up to 11 genetic loci 3,7.
Here we report 116 significant independent genetic loci from a GWA of
neuroticism in 329,821 UK Biobank participants, with replication available in a
GWA meta-analysis of neuroticism in 122,867 individuals. Genetic
signals for neuroticism were enriched in neuronal genesis and differentiation pathways, and substantial genetic
correlations were found between neuroticism and depressive symptoms (rg = 0.82, SE=.03), major depressive
disorder (rg = 0.69, SE=.07) and subjective wellbeing (rg = -.68, SE=.03) alongside other mental health traits.
These discoveries significantly advance our understanding of neuroticism and its association with major depressive
disorder.
Psychological studies have shown that personality traits are associated with book preferences. However, past findings
are based on questionnaires focusing on conventional book genres and are unrepresentative of niche content. For a more
comprehensive measure of book content, this study harnesses a massive archive of content labels, also known as ‘tags’,
created by users of an online book catalogue, Goodreads.com. Combined with data on preferences and personality scores
collected from Facebook users, the tag labels achieve high accuracy in personality prediction by psychological standards.
We also group tags into broader genres, to check their validity against past findings. Our results are robust across both
tag and genre levels of analyses, and consistent with existing literature. Moreover, user-generated tag labels reveal
unexpected insights, such as cultural differences, book reading behaviors, and other non-content factors affecting
preferences. To our knowledge, this is currently the largest study that explores the relationship between personality and
book content preferences.
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 GWASs of unrelated individuals.
In our models, genetic variants in low LDwith 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.
Prior research investigating the mate preferences of women and their parents reveals 2 important findings with regard to
physical attractiveness. First, daughters more strongly value mate characteristics connoting genetic quality (such as
physical attractiveness) than their parents. Second, both daughters and their parents report valuing characteristics other
than physical attractiveness most strongly (eg., ambition/industriousness, friendliness/kindness). However, the prior
research relies solely on self-report to assess daughters’ and parents’ preferences.
We assessed mate preferences among 61 daughter-mother pairs using an experimental design varying target men’s physical
attractiveness and trait profiles. We tested 4 hypotheses investigating whether a minimum level of physical attractiveness
was a necessity to both women and their mothers and whether physical attractiveness was a more important determinant of
dating desirability than trait profiles.
These hypotheses were supported. Women and their mothers were strongly influenced by the physical attractiveness of the
target men and preferred the attractive and moderately attractive targets. Men with the most desirable personality profiles
were rated more favorably than their counterparts only when they were at least moderately attractive. Unattractive men were
never rated as more desirable partners for daughters, even when they possessed the most desirable trait profiles.
We conclude that a minimum level of physical attractiveness is a necessity for both women and their mothers and that
when women and their parents state that other traits are more important than physical attractiveness, they assume potential
mates meet a minimally acceptable standard of physical attractiveness.
Online media use has become an increasingly important behavioral domain over the past decade. However, studies into the
etiology of individual differences in media use have focused primarily on pathological use. Here, for the first time, we
test the genetic influences on online media use in a UK representative sample of 16 year old twins, who were assessed on
time spent on educational (n = 2,585 twin pairs) and entertainment websites (n = 2,614 twin pairs), time
spent gaming online (n = 2,635 twin pairs), and Facebook use (n = 4,333 twin pairs). Heritability was
substantial for all forms of online media use, ranging from 34% for educational sites to 37% for entertainment sites and
39% for gaming. Furthermore, genetics accounted for 24% of the variance in Facebook use. Our results support an active
model of the environment, where young people choose their online engagements in line with their genetic propensities.
The complex nature of human cognition has resulted in cognitive genomics lagging behind many other fields in terms of
gene discovery using genome-wide association study (GWAS) methods. In an attempt to overcome these barriers, the current study
utilized GWAS meta-analysis to examine the association of common
genetic variation (~8M single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) with
minor allele frequency ⩾1%) to general cognitive function in a sample of 35 298 healthy individuals of European ancestry
across 24 cohorts in the Cognitive Genomics Consortium (COGENT). In addition, we
utilized individual SNP lookups and polygenic
score analyses to identify genetic overlap with other relevant neurobehavioral phenotypes. Our primary
GWAS meta-analysis identified two novel SNPloci (top SNPs: rs76114856
inthe CENPO gene on chromosome 2 and rs6669072 near LOC105378853 on chromosome 1) associated with cognitive performance at the genome-wide
statistical-significance level (p<5 × 10−8). Gene-based analysis identified an additional three
Bonferroni-corrected statistically-significant loci at chromosomes 17q21.31, 17p13.1 and 1p13.3. Altogether, common
variation across the genome resulted in a conservatively estimated SNP heritability of 21.5% (s.e. = 0.01%) for general cognitive function.
Integration with prior GWAS of cognitive performance and educational
attainment yielded several additional statistically-significant loci. Finally, we found robust polygenic correlations
between cognitive performance and educational attainment, several psychiatric disorders, birth length/weight and smoking
behavior, as well as a novel genetic association to the personality trait of Openness. These data provide new insight into the genetics of neurocognitive function with
relevance to understanding the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric illness.
Heterogeneity of household financial outcomes emerges from various individual and environmental factors, including
personality, cognitive ability, and socioeconomic status (SES), among
others.
Using a genetically informative data set, we decompose the variation in financial management behavior into genetic,
shared environmental and non-shared environmental factors.
We find that about half of the variation in financial distress is genetically influenced, and personality and cognitive
ability are associated with financial distress through genetic and within-family pathways. Moreover, the genetic influences
of financial distress are highest at the extremes of SES, which in part can be
explained by neuroticism and cognitive ability being more important predictors of financial distress at low
and high levels of SES, respectively.
It is possible that heritable variance in personality characteristics does not reflect (only) genetic and biological
processes specific to personality per se. We tested the possibility that Five-Factor Model personality domains and
facets, as rated by people themselves and their knowledgeable informants, reflect polygenic influences that have been
previously associated with educational attainment. In a sample of over 3,000 adult Estonians, polygenic scores for educational attainment, based on small contributions from more than 150,000
genetic variants, were correlated with various personality traits, mostly from the Neuroticism and Openness domains. The correlations of personality characteristics with educational
attainment-related polygenic influences reflected almost entirely their correlations with phenotypic educational
attainment. Structural equation modeling of the associations between polygenic risk,
personality (a weighed aggregate of education-related facets) and educational attainment lent relatively strongest support
to the possibility of educational attainment mediating (explaining) some of the heritable variance in personality
traits.
The pathophysiology of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) remains
unclear. Although the most consistent biological finding is reduced grey matter volume in the frontal cortex, about 50% of
the total liability to developing ASPD has been attributed to genetic
factors. The contributing genes remain largely unknown. Therefore, we sought to study the genetic background
of ASPD. We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) and a replication analysis of Finnish criminal offenders fulfilling
DSM-IV criteria for ASPD (n = 370,
n = 5850 for controls, GWAS; n = 173, n =
3766 for controls and replication sample). The GWAS resulted in
suggestive associations of two clusters of single-nucleotide polymorphisms at 6p21.2 and at 6p21.32 at the human
leukocyte antigen (HLA) region. Imputation of HLAalleles revealed an independent association with DRB1*01:01 (odds ratio (OR) = 2.19 (1.53–3.14), p = 1.9 × 10-5). Two
polymorphisms at 6p21.2 LINC00951–LRFN2 gene
region were replicated in a separate data set, and rs4714329 reached genome-wide statistical-significance (OR = 1.59
(1.37–1.85), p = 1.6 × 10−9) in the meta-analysis. The risk allele also associated with antisocial
features in the general population conditioned for severe problems in childhood family (β = 0.68, p =
0.012). Functional analysis in brain tissue in open access GTEx and Braineac
databases revealed eQTL associations of rs4714329with LINC00951 and LRFN2 in cerebellum. In humans, LINC00951 and LRFN2 are both expressed in the brain,
especially in the frontal cortex, which is intriguing considering the role of the frontal cortex in behavior and the
neuroanatomical findings of reduced gray matter volume in ASPD. To our knowledge,
this is the first study showing genome-wide statistically-significant and
replicable findings on genetic variants associated with any personality disorder.
A previous genome-wide association study (GWAS) of more than 100,000 individuals identified molecular-genetic predictors of
educational attainment.
We undertook in-depth life-course investigation of the polygenic score derived from this GWAS using the 4-decade Dunedin Study (N = 918). There were 5 main
findings.
polygenic scores predicted adult economic outcomes even after accounting for educational attainments.
genes and environments were correlated: Children with higher polygenic scores were born into better-off homes.
children’s polygenic scores predicted their adult outcomes even when analyses
accounted for their social-class origins; social-mobility analysis showed that children with higher polygenic scores were
more upwardly mobile than children with lower scores.
polygenic scores predicted behavior across the life course, from early acquisition of speech and reading skills
through geographic mobility and mate choice and on to financial planning for retirement.
polygenic-score associations were mediated by psychological characteristics, including intelligence, self-control,
and interpersonal skill. Effect sizes were small.
Factors connecting GWAS sequence with life outcomes may provide
targets for interventions to promote population-wide positive development.
Empathy is the drive to identify the mental states of others and respond to these with an appropriate emotion.
Systemizing is the drive to analyse or build lawful systems. Difficulties in empathy have been identified in different
psychiatric conditions including autism and schizophrenia. In this study, we conducted genome-wide association studies of
empathy and systemizing using the Empathy Quotient (EQ) (n = 46,861) and the Systemizing Quotient-Revised (SQ-R)
(n = 51,564) in participants from 23andMe, Inc. We confirmed significant sex-differences in performance on both
tasks, with a male advantage on the SQ-R and female advantage on the EQ. We found highly significant heritability
explained by single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for both the traits (EQ:
0.11±0.014; p = 1.7 × 10-14 and SQ-R: 0.12±0.012; p = 1.2 × 10-20) and these were
similar for males and females. However, genes with higher expression in the male brain appear to contribute to the male
advantage for the SQ-R. Finally, we identified statistically-significant genetic
correlations between high score for empathy and risk for schizophrenia (p =
2.5 × 10-5), and correlations between high score for systemizing and higher educational attainment (p =
5 × 10-4). These results shed light on the genetic contribution to individual differences in empathy and
systemizing, two major cognitive functions of the human brain.
One of the clearest results in previous studies on social trust is the robust positive relationship with educational
attainment. The most common interpretation is that education has a causal effect on social trust. The theoretical argument
and empirical results in this article suggest a different interpretation. We argue that common pre-adult factors such as
cognitive abilities and personality traits rooted in genes and early-life family environment may confound the relationship
between educational attainment and social trust. We provide new evidence on this question by utilizing the quasi-experiment
of twinning. By looking at the relationship between education and social trust within monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs, we are
able to avoid potential confounders rooted in genetic factors and common environmental influences because the monozygotic
twins share both. The results suggest that when controlling for such familial factors the estimated effects of education on
social trust are close to zero and far from reaching statistical-significance.
Further analyses show that the relationship between education and social trust largely is driven by common genetic
factors.
Background: Poorer self-rated health (SRH) predicts worse
health outcomes, even when adjusted for objective measures of disease at time of rating. Twin studies indicate
SRH has a heritability of up to 60% and that its genetic architecture may
overlap with that of personality and cognition.
Methods: We carried out a genome-wide association study
(GWAS) of SRH on 111 749
members of theUK Biobank sample. Univariate genome-wide complex trait
analysis (GCTA)-GREML analyses were used to estimate the
proportion of variance explained by all common autosomal SNPs for SRH.Linkage Disequilibrium (LD) score regression and polygenic risk scoring, two complementary methods, were used to
investigate pleiotropy between SRH inUK
Biobank and up to 21 health-related and personality and cognitive traits from published GWAS consortia.
Results: The GWAS identified 13 independent
signals associated with SRH, including several in regions previously associated
with diseases or disease-related traits. The strongest signal was on chromosome 2 (rs2360675, p =
1.77×10−10) close to KLF7, which has previously been associated
with obesity and type 2 diabetes. A second strong peak was identified on chromosome 6 in the major histocompatibility
region (rs76380179, p = 6.15×10−10). The proportion of variance in SRH that was explained by all common genetic variants was 13%. Polygenic scores for the following traits and disorders were associated with SRH: cognitive ability, education, neuroticism, BMI, longevity, ADHD, major depressive disorder,
schizophrenia, lung function, blood pressure, coronary artery disease, large vessel disease stroke, and type 2
diabetes.
Conclusion: Individual differences in how people respond to a single item on SRH are partly explained by their genetic propensity to many common psychiatric and physical
disorders and psychological traits.
Key Messages
Genetic variants associated with common diseases and psychological traits are associated with self-rated health.
The SNP-based heritability of self-rated health is 0.13 (SE
0.006).
There is pleiotropy between self-rated health and psychiatric and physical diseases and psychological traits.
Evolutionary forces that maintain genetic variance in traits can be inferred from their genetic architecture and
fitness correlates.
A substantial amount of new data on the genomics and reproductive success associated with personality traits and
intelligence has recently become available.
Intelligence differences seem to have been selected for robustness against mutations.
Human tendencies to select, create and adapt to environments might support the maintenance of personality traits
through balancing selection.
Like all human individual differences, personality traits and intelligence are substantially heritable. From an
evolutionary perspective, this poses the question what evolutionary forces maintain their genetic variation. Information
about the genetic architecture and associations with evolutionary fitness permit inferences about these evolutionary
forces. As our understanding of the genomics of personality and its associations with reproductive success have grown
considerably in recent years, it is time to revisit this question. While mutations clearly affect the very low end of the
intelligence continuum, individual differences in the normal intelligence range seem to be surprisingly robust against
mutations, suggesting that they might have been canalized to withstand such perturbations. Most personality traits, by
contrast, seem to be neither neutral to selection nor under consistent directional or stabilizing selection. Instead
evidence is in line with balancing selection acting on personality traits, probably supported by human tendencies to seek
out, construct and adapt to fitting environments.
Neuroticism is a personality trait of fundamental importance for psychological well-being and public health. It is
strongly associated with major depressive disorder (MDD) and several other
psychiatric conditions. Although neuroticism is heritable, attempts to identify the alleles involved in previous
studies have been limited by relatively small sample sizes. Here we report a combined meta-analysis of genome-wide association study (GWAS) of
neuroticism that includes 91 370 participants from the UK Biobank cohort, 6659
participants from the Generation Scotland: Scottish Family Health Study (GS:SFHS)
and8687 participants from a QIMR (Queensland Institute of MedicalResearch) Berghofer Medical Research Institute (QIMR) cohort. All
participants were assessed using the same neuroticism instrument, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised
(EPQ-R-S) Short Form’s Neuroticism scale. We found a single-nucleotide polymorphism-based heritability estimate for neuroticism of ~15% (s.e. =
0.7%). Meta-analysis identified nine novel loci associated with neuroticism. The strongest evidence for association was at
a locus on chromosome 8 (P = 1.5 × 10−15) spanning 4 Mb and containing at least 36 genes. Other
associated loci included interesting candidate genes on chromosome 1 (GRIK3
(glutamate receptor ionotropic kainate 3)), chromosome 4 (KLHL2
(Kelch-like protein 2)), chromosome 17 (CRHR1
(corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor 1) and MAPT
(microtubule-associated protein Tau)) and on chromosome 18 (CELF4
(CUGBP elav-like family member 4)). We found no evidence for
genetic differences in the common allelic architecture of neuroticism by sex. By comparing our findings with those of the
Psychiatric Genetics Consortia, we identified a strong genetic correlation between
neuroticism and MDD and a less strong but statistically-significant
genetic correlation with schizophrenia, although not with bipolar disorder.
Polygenic risk scores derived from the primary UK Biobank sample captured ~1%
of the variance in neuroticism in the GS:SFHS andQIMR samples, although most of the genome-wide statistically-significant alleles identified
within a UK Biobank-only GWAS of
neuroticism were not independently replicated within these cohorts. The identification of nine novel
neuroticism-associated loci will drive forward future work on the neurobiology of neuroticism and related phenotypes.
Finding 7. Most measures of the “environment” show substantial genetic influence
Although it might seem a peculiar thing to do, measures of the environment widely used in psychological science—such as
parenting, social support, and life events—can be treated as dependent measures in genetic analyses. If they are truly
measures of the environment, they should not show genetic influence. To the contrary, in 1991, Plomin and Bergeman
conducted a review of the first 18 studies in which environmental measures were used as dependent measures in genetically
sensitive designs and found evidence for genetic influence for these measures of the environment. Substantial genetic
influence was found for objective measures such as videotaped observations of parenting as well as self-report measures of
parenting, social support, and life events. How can measures of the environment show genetic influence? The reason appears
to be that such measures do not assess the environment independent of the person. As noted earlier, humans select, modify,
and create environments correlated with their genetic behavioral propensities such as personality and psychopathology
(McAdams, Gregory, & Eley, 2013). For example, in studies of twin children, parenting has been found to reflect genetic
differences in children’s characteristics such as personality and psychopathology (Avinun & Knafo, 2014; Klahr & Burt,
2014; Plomin, 1994).
Since 1991, more than 150 articles have been published in which environmental measures were used in genetically
sensitive designs; they have shown consistently that there is substantial genetic influence on environmental measures,
extending the findings from family environments to neighborhood, school, and work environments. Kendler and Baker (2007)
conducted a review of 55 independent genetic studies and found an average heritability of 0.27 across 35 diverse
environmental measures (confidence intervals not available). Meta-analyses of
parenting, the most frequently studied domain, have shown genetic influence that is driven by child characteristics (Avinun
& Knafo, 2014) as well as by parent characteristics (Klahr & Burt, 2014). Some exceptions have emerged. Not surprisingly,
when life events are separated into uncontrollable events (eg., death of a spouse) and controllable life events (eg.,
financial problems), the former show nonsignificant genetic influence. In an example of how all behavioral genetic results
can differ in different cultures, Shikishima, Hiraishi, Yamagata, Neiderhiser, and Ando (2012) compared parenting in Japan
and Sweden and found that parenting in Japan showed more genetic influence than in Sweden, consistent with the view that
parenting is more child centered in Japan than in the West.
Researchers have begun to use GCTA to replicate these findings
from twin studies. For example, GCTA has been used to show
substantial genetic influence on stressful life events (Power et al 2013) and on variables often used as
environmental measures in epidemiological studies such as years of schooling (C. A. Rietveld, Medland, et al 2013). Use of
GCTA can also circumvent a limitation of twin studies of children.
Such twin studies are limited to investigating within-family (twin-specific) experiences, whereas many important
environmental factors such as socioeconomic status (SES) are the same for
two children in a family. However, researchers can use GCTA to
assess genetic influence on family environments such as SES that differ
between families, not within families. GCTA has been used to show
genetic influence on family SES (Trzaskowski et al 2014) and an
index of social deprivation (Marioni et al 2014).
Because the worldwide demand for sperm donors is much higher than the actual supply available through fertility clinics,
an informal online market has emerged for sperm donation. Very little empirical evidence exists, however, on this newly
formed market and even less on the characteristics that lead to donor success. This article therefore explores the
determinants of online sperm donors’ selection success, which leads to the production of offspring via informal donation.
We find that donor age and income play a statistically-significant role in donor
success as measured by the number of times selected, even though there is no requirement for ongoing paternal investment.
Donors with less extroverted and lively personality traits who are more intellectual, shy and systematic are more
successful in realizing offspring via informal donation. These results contribute to both the economic literature on human
behaviour and on large-scale decision-making.
The “Dark Tetrad” of
personality traits has received increasing attention.
There is no typological study among high-school students based on these traits.
Cluster analysis yielded 4 groups.
The “Dark Tetrad” cluster constituted 15% of the total sample.
Psychopathic, narcissistic, Machiavellian, and sadistic traits constitute the Dark Tetrad of personality traits. While
this construct has received increasing attention, to our knowledge, there is no typological study aiming to identify
homogeneous groups of high-school students based on these traits. The aim of this study was (a) to identify a typology of
high-school students based on the Dark Tetrad traits in a community sample and (b) to examine whether these profiles differ
on psychopathological variables known to be associated with personality traits.
Participants were 615 high-school students who completed self-report questionnaires. Psychopathic, narcissistic, Machiavellian, and sadistic traits were moderately correlated
suggesting they may be overlapping but distinct constructs. Cluster analysis yielded 4 groups: a Low Traits group, a
Sadistic-Machiavellian group, a Psychopathic-Narcissistic group, and a high traits
group called the Dark Tetrad cluster which was high on all traits. The Dark Tetrad cluster constituted 15% of the total
sample and was characterized by the highest levels of antisocial behaviors and suicidal ideations.
This study suggests that a substantial minority of non-clinical high-school students is characterized by the presence of
high levels of the Dark Tetrad traits and self and other-aggression.
[Keywords: Dark Tetrad, Dark
Triad, high-school students, personality traits, profiles]
Individual animals frequently exhibit repeatable differences from other members of their population, differences now
commonly referred to as ‘animal personality’. Personality differences can arise, for example, from differences in permanent
environmental effects―including parental and epigenetic contributors―and the effect of additive genetic variation. Although
several studies have evaluated the heritability of behaviour, less is known about general patterns of heritability and
additive genetic variation in animal personality. As overall variation in behaviour includes both the
among-individual differences that reflect different personalities and temporary environmental effects, it is possible for
personality to be largely genetically influenced even when heritability of behaviour per se is quite low.
The relative contribution of additive genetic variation to personality variation can be estimated whenever both
repeatability and heritability are estimated for the same data.
Using published estimates to address this issue, we found that approximately 52% of animal personality variation was
attributable to additive genetic variation. Thus, while the heritability of behaviour is often moderate or low, the
heritability of personality is much higher.
Our results therefore (1) demonstrate that genetic differences are likely to be a major contributor to variation in
animal personality and (2) support the phenotypic gambit: that evolutionary inferences drawn from repeatability estimates
may often be justified.
…To test the contribution of additive genetic variance to personality variation, we obtained estimates of τ and
h2 from the literature in 2 ways. First, we used data sources previously collected by Stirling et
al. 19 in their review of heritabilities of behaviour. This previous search reviewed the behavioural
literature to the end of the year 2000 and yielded 70 articles. Second, we conducted a search of 12 leading behavioural
ecology, behavioural genetics and evolutionary ecology journals. The journals we included in our search were The
American Naturalist, Evolution, Ecology, Behavioral Ecology, Animal Behaviour,
Behavior Genetics, Heredity, Behaviour, Ethology, Journal of Evolutionary
Biology, Journal of Animal Ecology and Proceedings of the Royal SocietyB. For behavioural journals,
we used the keywords ‘heritability’ and ‘heritab*’, while for evolutionary ecology journals we used the keywords
‘heritab* AND behav*’ for all articles published in these journals between
January 2000 to September 2012. This yielded an additional 236 articles. Of these 306 total articles, only 12
reported both heritability and repeatability of at least one behaviour. The other 294 articles may have reported one
parameter or the other, or simply discussed both heritability and repeatability. From these 12 studies―which included 121
pairs of estimates―we extracted all reported estimates of τ and h2, species names, and traits
measured. We only included non-human animals in the dataset—thereby excluding one study and 13 pairs of estimates. We also
excluded h2 or τ estimates greater than 1 or less than 0,22 which removed 14 pairs
of estimates and one article entirely. From the remaining 10 articles and 94 estimates, we excluded all cases in which
h2 was estimated as greater than τ. While h2 can be greater than
τ under special circumstances,23 a review of available estimates did not suggest these circumstances
were met and suggested that these instances were instead a product of estimation error. This screening reduced the dataset
to 71 estimates. We removed an additional pair of estimates (i.e. one record in the dataset) as they showed up twice
in the dataset, once via mid-parent:son and once as mid-parent:mid-offspring (we retained the mid-offspring estimate).
These searches and inclusion criteria resulted in a dataset of 70 instances from 10 studies in which h2
and τ were jointly estimated for the same behaviour with the same data (electronic supplementary material, table
S1).
Data Analysis: To assess support for both the phenotypic gambit as it pertains to behaviours and the
degree to which personality variation can be attributed to additive genetic variation, we calculated the ratio of
heritability to repeatability for each of the 70 estimates from 10 studies. This ratio, as demonstrated in equations (1.5)
and (1.6), is key to both questions. First, as this ratio increases, the phenotypic gambit can be made more reliably.
Second, this ratio explicitly estimates the relative contribution of additive genetic variation to personality
variation.
To estimate this ratio, we used a linear random-effects model with the study from which estimates were drawn included as
a random effect. This model was fitted using restricted estimate maximum
likelihood. The intercept of this model provides an estimate of equations (1.5) and (1.6) after controlling for
non-independence of studies. We also estimated the 95% confidence interval (CoI)
around this estimate.
Finally, we qualitatively compared differences in the relative contribution of additive genetic variation to personality
variation based on the types of behaviours assayed.
Figure 1: Heritability relative to repeatability. The solid
line represents a 1:1 relationship between the heritability and repeatability. Large
circles are study-level means for heritability and repeatability. Smaller circles
are individual estimates from each study. Individual and mean estimates share the same colour by study. A point that
falls directly on the solid line would represent one in which all personality (i.e. repeatable) variation was
attributable to additive genetic variation. The slope of the relationship between any particular point and the origin
(0,0) estimates the proportion of personality variation for that behavioural measure attributable to additive genetic
variation. For example, the dashed and dotted lines
correspond, respectively, to behavioural responses where 66% and 21% of observed personality variation was attributable
to additive genetic effects.
…qualitatively it appears that personality variation in aggression and anti-predator behaviour may have a stronger
genetic component than for other types of behaviours included in our dataset (Figure 2). These
behaviours also tended towards having higher repeatabilities and higher heritabilities
(Figure 2).
Figure 2: Boxplots for estimates of heritability (narrowly
hatched), repeatability (grey fill) and the ratio between the 2 (widely hatched) by general behavioural classification.Horizontal lines
within box correspond to behavioural medians, box boundaries correspond to first
and third quartiles. When present, whiskers correspond to 10th and
90th percentiles, and points correspond to outliers. For parental effort,
only a single estimate was available.
…As an aside, our discussion of repeatability and heritability variance components (e.g. Equations (1.3)–(1.6)) has
excluded mention of measurement error as a source, of variation. Measurement error will be present in all studies, but will typically be conflated with
VTE, leading to underestimations of repeatability, heritability and the heritability of personality.
However, sources of error might occasionally be conflated with Vind, for example when different
recording methods or different observers are used on a particular subset of study subjects.
The primary assumption within the recent personality and political orientations literature is that personality traits
cause people to develop political attitudes. In contrast, research relying on traditional psychological and developmental
theories suggests the relationship between most personality dimensions and political orientations are either not
significant or weak. Research from behavioral genetics suggests the covariance between personality and political
preferences is not causal, but due to a common, latent genetic factor that mutually influences both. The contradictory
assumptions and findings from these research streams have yet to be resolved. This is in part due to the reliance on
cross-sectional data and the lack of longitudinal genetically informative data. Here, using two independent longitudinal
genetically informative samples, we examine the joint development of personality traits and attitude dimensions to explore
the underlying causal mechanisms that drive the relationship between these features and provide a first step in resolving
the causal question. We find change in personality over a ten-year period does not predict change in political attitudes,
which does not support a causal relationship between personality traits and political attitudes as is frequently assumed.
Rather, political attitudes are often more stable than the key personality traits assumed to be predicting them. Finally,
the results from our genetic models find that no additional variance is accounted for by the causal pathway from
personality traits to political attitudes. Our findings remain consistent with the original construction of the five-factor
model of personality and developmental theories on attitude formation, but challenge recent work in this area.
Language use is a psychologically rich, stable individual difference with well-established correlations to personality.
We describe a method for assessing personality using an open-vocabulary analysis of language from social media.
We compiled the written language from 66,732 Facebook users and their questionnaire-based self-reported Big Five
personality traits, and then we built a predictive model of personality based on their language. We used this model to
predict the 5 personality factors in a separate sample of 4,824 Facebook users, examining (a) convergence with self-reports
of personality at the domain-level and facet-level; (b) discriminant validity between predictions of distinct traits; (c)
agreement with informant reports of personality; (d) patterns of correlations with external criteria (eg., number of
friends, political attitudes, impulsiveness); and (e) test-retest reliability over 6-month intervals.
Results indicated that language-based assessments can constitute valid personality measures: they agreed with
self-reports and informant reports of personality, added incremental validity over informant reports, adequately
discriminated between traits, exhibited patterns of correlations with external criteria similar to those found with
self-reported personality, and were stable over 6-month intervals. Analysis of predictive language can provide rich
portraits of the mental life associated with traits.
This approach can complement and extend traditional methods, providing researchers with an additional measure that can
quickly and cheaply assess large groups of participants with minimal burden.
[Keywords: language, personality assessment, measurement, big data, social media]
The domestication process leads to a change in behavioural traits, usually towards individuals that are less attentive
to changes in their environment and less aggressive. Empirical evidence for a difference in cognitive performance, however,
is scarce. Recently, a functional linkage between an individual’s behaviour and cognitive performance has been proposed in
the framework of animal personalities via a shared risk-reward trade-off. Following this assumption, bolder and more
aggressive animals (usually the wild form) should learn faster. Differences in behaviour may arise during ontogeny due to
individual experiences or represent adaptations that occurred over the course of evolution. Both might singly or taken
together account for differences in cognitive performance between wild and domestic lineages. To test for such possible
linkages, we compared wild cavies and domestic guinea pigs, both kept in a university stock for more than 30 years under
highly comparable conditions. Animals were tested in three behavioural tests as well as for initial and reversal learning
performance. Guinea pigs were less bold and aggressive than their wild congeners, but learnt an association faster.
Additionally, the personality structure was altered during the domestication process. The most likely explanation for these
findings is that a shift in behavioural traits and their connectivity led to an altered cognitive performance. A functional
linkage between behavioural and cognitive traits seems to exist in the proposed way only under natural selection, but not
in animals that have been selected artificially over centuries.
Purpose: Population-based studies on violent crime and background factors may provide an understanding
of the relationships between susceptibility factors and crime. We aimed to determine the distribution of violent crime
convictions in the Swedish population 1973–2004 and to identify criminal, academic, parental, and psychiatric risk factors
for persistence in violent crime.
Method: The nationwide multi-generation register was used with many other linked nationwide registers
to select participants. All individuals born in 1958–1980 (2,393,765 individuals) were included. Persistent violent
offenders (those with a lifetime history of three or more violent crime convictions) were compared with individuals having
one or two such convictions, and to matched non-offenders. Independent variables were gender, age of first conviction for a
violent crime, nonviolent crime convictions, and diagnoses for major mental disorders, personality disorders, and substance
use disorders.
Results: A total of 93,642 individuals (3.9%) had at least one violent conviction. The distribution of
convictions was highly skewed; 24,342 persistent violent offenders (1.0% of the total population) accounted for 63.2% of
all convictions. Persistence in violence was associated with male sex (OR 2.5), personality disorder (OR 2.3),
violent crime conviction before age 19 (OR 2.0), drug-related offenses (OR 1.9), nonviolent criminality
(OR 1.9), substance use disorder (OR 1.9), and major mental disorder (OR 1.3).
Conclusions: The majority of violent crimes are perpetrated by a small number of persistent violent
offenders, typically males, characterized by early onset of violent criminality, substance abuse, personality disorders,
and nonviolent criminality.
[Behavioral genetics discussion of eminence/genius: intelligence, developmental processes, psychopathology, and
creativity scales all contribute to accomplishment but leave much unexplained, in particular, the odd pattern of
inheritance where genius runs in families but highly sporadically and not following any standard Mendelian or polygenic
inheritance pattern.
The authors refer to the concept of ‘emergenesis’, where emergenic
traits are not additive combinations of subtraits (as is strongly the case for traits like intelligence) but rather are
multiplicative combinations, which are epistatic at the genetic level. Because all subtraits must be present to have a
chance of producing the overall trait, emergenic traits can be highly genetically influenced yet still rare and
sporadically appearing within families. (The Wiley Handbook of Genius 2014, chapter 14)]
Most psychiatric disorders are moderately to highly heritable. The degree to which genetic variation is unique to
individual disorders or shared across disorders is unclear. To examine shared genetic etiology, we use genome-wide genotype
data from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) for cases and controls
inschizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, autism spectrum disorders
(ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We apply univariate and bivariate methods for the estimation of genetic
variation within and covariation between disorders. SNPs explained 17–29%
of the variance in liability. The genetic correlation calculated using common SNPs was high betweenschizophrenia and bipolar
disorder (0.68 ± 0.04 s.e.), moderate between schizophrenia and major depressive disorder (0.43 ± 0.06 s.e.), bipolar
disorder and major depressive disorder (0.47 ± 0.06 s.e.), and ADHD
and major depressive disorder (0.32 ± 0.07 s.e.), low between schizophrenia and
ASD (0.16 ± 0.06 s.e.) and non-significant for other pairs of disorders as
well as between psychiatric disorders and the negative control of Crohn’s disease. This empirical evidence of shared
genetic etiology for psychiatric disorders can inform nosology and encourages the investigation of common pathophysiologies
for related disorders.
In 1998, Robert Plomin and his Colorado Adoption Project (CAP)
colleagues published the results of a longitudinal adoption study of personality. They found an average personality test
score correlation of only 0.01 between birth-parents and their 240 adopted-away 16-year-old biological offspring,
suggesting no genetic influences on personality. However, the researchers interpreted their results in the context of
previous twin studies, produced an average 14% heritability estimate, and concluded that nonadditive genetic factors
underlie personality traits. The author challenges these conclusions and notes that the near-zero correlation stands in
contrast to other types of behavioral genetic methods, such as twin studies, that are more vulnerable to environmental
confounds and other biases. The author shows that authoritative psychology texts frequently fail to mention this 1998
CAP study. When it is mentioned, the original researchers’ conclusions are
usually accepted without critical analysis. The author also assesses the results in the context of the 20-year failure to
discover the genes that behavioral geneticists believe underlie personality traits. He concludes that this 1998
investigation is a “lost study” in the sense that, although it is one of the most methodologically sound behavioral genetic
studies ever performed, its results are largely unknown.
Personality psychology aims to explain the causes and the consequences of variation in behavioural traits. Because of
the observational nature of the pertinent data, this endeavour has provoked many controversies. In recent years, the
computer scientist Judea Pearl has used a graphical approach to extend the innovations in causal inference developed by
Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright. Besides shedding much light on the philosophical notion of causality itself, this
graphical framework now contains many powerful concepts of relevance to the controversies just mentioned. In this article,
some of these concepts are applied to areas of personality research where questions of causation arise, including the
analysis of observational data and the genetic sources of individual differences.
Libertarians are an increasingly prominent ideological group in U.S. politics, yet they have been largely unstudied.
Across 16 measures in a large web-based sample that included 11,994 self-identified libertarians, we sought to
understand the moral and psychological characteristics of self-described libertarians. Based on an intuitionist view of
moral judgment, we focused on the underlying affective and cognitive dispositions that accompany this unique worldview.
Compared to self-identified liberals and conservatives, libertarians showed (1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty
as their foremost guiding principle, and weaker endorsement of all other moral principles; (2) a relatively cerebral as
opposed to emotional cognitive style; and (3) lower interdependence and social relatedness. As predicted by intuitionist
theories concerning the origins of moral reasoning, libertarian values showed convergent relationships with libertarian
emotional dispositions and social preferences. Our findings add to a growing recognition of the role of personality
differences in the organization of political attitudes.
Although freedom of speech is a fundamental value in the United States, individuals vary in the importance they place on
it. The purpose of this study was to examine personality and attitudinal factors that may influence an individual’s
judgments of the importance of freedom of speech and, secondarily, the harm of hate speech. As expected, the importance of
freedom of speech was positively related to intellect, individualism, separate knowing, and negatively related to
right-wing authoritarianism. Men rated freedom of speech more important than did women. The perceived harm of hate speech
was positively related to intellect and liberalism, and women perceived a greater harm of hate speech than did men.
Some have argued that belief in God is intuitive, a natural (by-)product of the human mind given its cognitive structure
and social context. If this is true, the extent to which one believes in God may be influenced by one’s more general
tendency to rely on intuition versus reflection. Three studies support this hypothesis, linking intuitive cognitive style
to belief in God. Study 1 showed that individual differences in cognitive style predict belief in God.
Participants completed the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Frederick,
2005), which employs math problems that, although easily solvable, have intuitively compelling incorrect answers.
Participants who gave more intuitive answers on the CRT reported stronger belief
in God. This effect was not mediated by education level, income, political orientation, or other demographic
variables. Study 2 showed that the correlation between CRT scores and belief
in God also holds when cognitive ability (IQ) and aspects of personality were controlled. Moreover, both
studies demonstrated that intuitive CRT responses predicted the degree to which
individuals reported having strengthened their belief in God since childhood, but not their familial religiosity during
childhood, suggesting a causal relationship between cognitive style and change in belief over time. Study 3 revealed such a
causal relationship over the short term: Experimentally inducing a mindset that favors intuition over reflection increases
self-reported belief in God.
[On why Henry Darger, a elderly, solitary
dishwasher, wrote and illustrated a 15,000+ page unpublished fantasy novel.]
I’m here today to tell you about a book I read recently, namely Henry Darger: In The Realms Of The Unreal, by
John MacGregor. It’s a study of Henry Darger,
a man I instantly became obsessed with upon encountering his Wikipedia entry sometime last fall.
Here’s a quick sketch of who Darger was, which will hopefully give you an idea of why I find him so fascinating. He was
a reclusive man who worked various dishwashing jobs for most of his life. He only had one real friend in the course of his
life, and although he occasionally interacted with the other residents of his apartment complex, they just saw him as a
peculiar, taciturn eccentric. But when Darger was on his deathbed, his landlord Nathan Lerner began to clean out his room
and discovered something incredible. Unknown to everyone around him, Darger had been writing and painting. Writing and
painting a lot. Among the objects Lerner discovered were fifteen massive volumes comprising one continuous
fictional work entitled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the
Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. In total, the typed, single-spaced text was 15,145
pages long—one of the longest fictional works ever produced by a human being, if not the longest. (Whether it is the
longest or not depends on what counts as a single work; there are some long works of serial pulp fiction that, in total,
are longer, but that’s only if you add up the length of hundreds of installments.) This was not Darger’s only writing
project. There was also a sort of sequel, Crazy House, which ran to around 10,000 pages, and the 5000-page
autobiography The History of My Life, as well as numerous journals and other miscellany. And then there were the
paintings, hundreds of huge, odd-looking, compositions depicting battles, scenes of torture, and heroic adventures. (You
can see some of Darger’s art thanks to Google Image Search here).
It turned out that the paintings were illustrations for Darger’s 15,145-page masterwork, called In The Realms Of The
Unreal for short. In The Realms Of The Unreal is, in some very broad sense, a fantasy novel. It takes place
on a planet far larger than Earth, which Earth is said to orbit as a moon. This planet is mostly composed of Catholic
nations, of which the most important to the plot are Angelinia, Calverinia and Abbieannia. (Protestants do not appear to
exist in this world, though—confusingly enough—one of the Catholic nations is called Protestantia.) The story is about a
war between the Catholic nations and the atheist nation Glandelinia, which is inhabited by evil, sadistic people who practice institutionalized child slavery. Shortly before the time period
described in the text, some of the child slaves mounted a rebellion, led by a heroic 10-year-old named Annie Aronburg. The
Glandelineans quashed the rebellion and killed Aronburg, but this started a chain of events that led to a Glandelinean
invasion of Calverinia and eventually a full-scale war between the Catholic nations and Glandelinia. In The Realms Of
The Unreal tells the story of this war, an incredibly long succession of huge battles, espionage missions, scenes of
torture in the Glandelinean slave camps, and so on. The protagonists, curiously enough, are a set of seven prepubescent
sisters—the titular Vivian girls—who follow the Christian armies, spy on the Glandelineans, and narrowly escape mortal
danger on innumerable occasions. The battles are mostly realistic in nature—though they involve millions of combatants—but
the world is an enchanted one, filled with chimeric beasts called “Blengiglomenean creatures” (or “Blengins”, for short)
which assist and protect the Vivian girls.
…The problem comes when MacGregor tries to interpret the text psychologically, which happens often. MacGregor is a
Freudian analyst—he studied with Anna Freud, in fact—and he is mainly interested in Darger as a psychological subject. Now,
this is not the time or place to hash out whether Freudian psychology does or doesn’t succeed, generally speaking, at
explaining the human mind. But even if I withhold judgment on MacGregor’s Freudian premises, his account of Darger’s
psychology is just really, really bad and frustrating…So, without further ado, here are some interesting things about Henry
Darger:
In the Realms, there are numerous characters named after Darger…These Dargers do not all seem to be distinct
in the author’s mind, and it’s often confusing which one is being referred to in any given instance.
Darger’s paintings are filled with prepubescent girls—usually the Vivian girls, but there are also sometimes
anonymous child slaves, etc. They are usually depicted naked, even when there is no good reason for this…The little girls
usually, but not always, have penises…
Darger collected lots of random junk in the course of his menial job. He was particularly fond of photographs of
children…
The inspiration for writing the Realms was the loss of a particular newspaper clipping, a photo of Elsie
Paroubek, a little girl who had been murdered, and whose murder was all over the Chicago papers for a short time.
Darger’s journals express no particular interest in this picture until he discovered that he had lost it. After
that, he spent much of the rest of his life in a profound state of anger at God, who he believed had taken the picture
from him. He saw the fictional war between Christians and Glandelineans as a way of punishing God for taking the picture
by causing harm to millions of (fictional?) Christians.
…Darger’s 5000-page work The History Of My Life is putatively an autobiography. However, that word does not
accurately describe the vast majority of its contents. The first several hundred pages of the work are indeed an account
of Darger’s early life. However, after describing a scene in which his younger self is entranced by the sight of a
powerful storm, he apparently gets distracted by the storm and spends the remaining 4000-some pages of the text
describing the wake of destruction caused by a fictional twister called “Sweetie Pie”, with no further mention of his own
life whatsoever.
…Near the end of his life, Darger apparently spent a lot of time playing with string. In his journal he recounts
collecting string and coiling and uncoiling it, and huge amounts of string were found in his room after his death.
…Any account of Darger’s psychology is going to have to explain this weirdness. This is what, I contend, John
MacGregor’s account fails to do. Fails pretty massively, in fact—massively enough that Darger seems less, rather than more,
comprehensible after you read MacGregor try to “explain” him…But MacGregor also tells us that the battles sometimes lasted
for hundreds of pages, and that they include vast amounts of bureaucratic detail (about particular regiments, commanders,
tactical maneuvers, etc.—lots and lots of proper names), but that none of this detail is in any way self-consistent (so
that it is impossible, for instance, to form a mental picture of the shape of the battlefield that does not distort over
time). And that Darger is obsessed with what some might consider the more “boring” details of war—he spends huge amounts of
time describing the way the supply lines work, for instance. It’s still conceivable that this sort of ridiculously long
bureaucratic catalogue could be an expression of pent-up rage, but if so, it’s a very odd one, and naturally raises the
question of just what sort of guy would deal with his frustrations by going home from his job every night and
writing about the tedious technical details of a fictional war. But that’s exactly the question MacGregor does not want to
answer…If writing this stuff was somehow pornographic for Darger, then how is it that so much of the text is composed of
moralizing about the glorious Christians and the wicked Glandelineans, describing military maneuvers in mind-numbing
detail, and so on, rather than talking about anything that smacks in any way of overt sexuality? Remember that this is a
15,000-page text in which no one ever gets it on; if we’re looking at a sexual fantasy, it must be the coyest sexual
fantasy ever produced by the human race.
This paper estimates the internal rate of return (IRR) to education for
men and women of the Terman sample, a 70-year long prospective cohort study of
high-ability individuals. The Terman data is unique in that it not only provides full working-life earnings
histories of the participants, but it also includes detailed profiles of each subject, including IQ and measures of latent
personality traits. Having information on latent personality traits is important as it allows us to measure the importance
of personality on educational attainment and lifetime earnings.
Our analysis addresses two problems of the literature on returns to education: First, we establish causality of the
treatment effect of education on earnings by implementing generalized matching on a full set of observable individual
characteristics and unobserved personality traits. Second, since we observe lifetime earnings data, our estimates of
the IRR are direct and do not depend on the assumptions that are usually made in
order to justify the interpretation of regression coefficients as rates of return.
For the males, the returns to education beyond high school are sizeable. For example, the IRR for obtaining a bachelor’s degree over a high school diploma is 11.1%, and for a
doctoral degree over a bachelor’s degree it is 6.7%. These results are unique because they highlight the returns to
high-ability and high-education individuals, who are not well-represented in regular data sets.
Our results highlight the importance of personality and intelligence on our outcome variables. We find that personality
traits similar to the Big Five personality traits are statistically-significant
factors that help determine educational attainment and lifetime earnings. Even holding the level of education constant,
measures of personality traits have statistically-significant effects on earnings.
Similarly, IQ is rewarded in the labor market, independently of education. Most of the effect of personality and IQ on
life-time earnings arise late in life, during the prime working years. Therefore, estimates from samples with shorter
durations underestimate the treatment effects.
One of the most important findings that has emerged from human behavioral genetics involves the environment rather than
heredity, providing the best available evidence for the importance of environmental influences on personality,
psychopathology, and cognition. The research also converges on the remarkable conclusion that these environmental
influences make two children in the same family as different from one another as are pairs of children selected randomly
from the population. The theme of the target article is that environmental differences between children in the same family
(called “nonshared environment”) represent the major source of environmental variance for personality, psychopathology, and
cognitive abilities. One example of the evidence that supports this conclusion involves correlations for pairs of adopted
children reared in the same family from early in life. Because these children share family environment but not heredity,
their correlation directly estimates the importance of shared family environment. For most psychological characteristics,
correlations for adoptive “siblings” hover near zero, which implies that the relevant environmental influences are not
shared by children in the same family. Although it has been thought that cognitive abilities represent an exception to this
rule, recent data suggest that environmental variance that affects IQ is also of the nonshared variety after adolescence.
The article has three goals: (1) To describe quantitative genetic methods and research that lead to the conclusion that
nonshared environment is responsible for most environmental variation relevant to psychological development, (2) to discuss
specific nonshared environmental influences that have been studied to date, and (3) to consider relationships between
nonshared environmental influences and behavioral differences between children in the same family. The reason for
presenting this article in BBS is to draw attention to the far-reaching
implications of finding that psychologically relevant environmental influences make children in a family different from,
not similar to, one another.
Standardized measures of intelligence, ability, or achievement are all measures of acquired knowledge and skill and have
consistent relationships with multiple facets of success in life, including academic and job performance.
Five persistent beliefs about ability tests have developed, including:
that there is no relationship with important outcomes like creativity or leadership,
that there is predictive bias,
that there is a lack of predictive independence from socioeconomic status,
that there are thresholds beyond which scores cease to matter, and
that other characteristics, like personality, matter as well.
We present the evidence and conclude that of these 5 beliefs, only the importance of personality is a fact; the other 4
are fiction.
Quantification and description of individual differences in behavior, or personality differences, is now
well-established in the working dog literature. What is less well-known is the predictive relationship between particular
dog behavioral traits (if any) and important working outcomes.
Here we evaluate the validity of a dog behavioral test instrument given to military working dogs (MWDs) from the 341st Training Squadron, USA Department of Defense (DoD); the test instrument has been used historically to select
dogs to be trained for deployment.
A 15-item instrument was applied on three separate occasions prior to training in patrol and detection tasks, after
which dogs were given patrol-only, detection-only, or dual-certification status. On average, inter-rater reliability for
all 15 items was high (mean = 0.77), but within this overall pattern, some behavioral items showed lower inter-rater
reliability at some time points (<0.40). Test-retest reliability for most (but not all) single item behaviors was strong
(>0.50) across shorter test intervals, but decreased with increasing test interval (<0.40). Principal components
analysis revealed four underlying dimensions that summarized test behavior, termed here ‘object focus’, ‘sharpness’, ‘human
focus’, and ‘search focus’. These four aggregate behavioral traits also had the same pattern of short-term, but not
long-term test-retest reliability as that observed for single item behaviors.
Prediction of certification outcomes using an independent test data set revealed that certification outcomes could not
be predicted by breed, sex, or early test behaviors. However, prediction was improved by models that included two aggregate
behavioral trait scores and three single item behaviors measured at the final test period, with 1 unit increases in these
scores resulting in 1.7–2.8 increased odds of successful dual-certification and patrol-only certification outcomes. No
improvements to odor-detection certification outcomes were made by any model. While only modest model improvements in
prediction error were made by using behavioral parameters (2–7%), model predictions were based on data from dogs that had
successfully completed all three test periods only, and therefore did not include data from dogs that were rejected during
testing or training due to behavioral or medical reasons.
Thus, future improvements to predictive models may be more substantial using independent predictors with less
restrictions in range. Reports of the reliability and validity estimates of behavioral instruments currently used to
select MWDs are scarce, and we discuss these results in terms of improving the
efficiency by which working dog programs may select dogs for patrol and odor-detection duties using behavioral
pre-screening instruments.
[Keywords: military dog, personality, reliability, predictive validity, behavioral instrument]
The current research investigated the psychological differences between protagonists and antagonists in literature and
the impact of these differences on readers. It was hypothesized that protagonists would embody cooperative motives and
behaviors that are valued by egalitarian hunter-gatherers groups, whereas antagonists would demonstrate status-seeking and
dominance behaviors that are stigmatized in such groups.
This hypothesis was tested with an online questionnaire listing characters from 201 canonical British novels of the
longer nineteenth century. 519 respondents generated 1470 protocols on 435 characters. Respondents identified the
characters as protagonists, antagonists, or minor characters, judged the characters’ motives according to human life
history theory, rated the characters’ traits according to the five-factor model of personality, and specified their own
emotional responses to the characters on categories adapted from Ekman’s seven basic emotions.
As expected, antagonists are motivated almost exclusively by the desire for social dominance, their personality traits
correspond to this motive, and they elicit strongly negative emotional responses from readers. Protagonists are oriented to
cooperative and affiliative behavior and elicit positive emotional responses from readers. Novels therefore apparently
enable readers to participate vicariously in an egalitarian social dynamic like that found in hunter-gatherer
societies.
We infer that agonistic structure in novels simulates social behaviors that fulfill an adaptive social function and
perhaps stimulates impulses toward these behaviors in real life.
[Keywords: egalitarian groups, literature, social dominance, stigmatization]
Students completed 4 psychometric tests soon after arriving at university: the NEO-PI-R measure of the Big Five personality traits (Costa & McCrae 1992); the Study
Process Questionnaire, which measures approaches to learning (Biggs 1978); and 2 measures of cognitive ability: the
Wonderlic IQ Test (Wonderlic, 1992) and the Baddeley Reasoning Test (Baddeley 1968) of fluid intelligence
(gf). A year later they completed comprehensive essay-based exams and received a mean score based on 6
examinations.
Academic performance (AP) correlated with ability, achieving and deep learning approaches, Openness and Conscientiousness. Together, these variables explained 40% of the variance in AP.
Path analyses indicated that the effects of ability on AP were mediated by personality and learning approaches.
Genetic influences on personality differences are ubiquitous, but their nature is not well understood. A theoretical
framework might help, and can be provided by evolutionary genetics.
We assess three evolutionary genetic mechanisms that could explain genetic variance in personality differences:
selective neutrality, mutation-selection balance, and balancing selection. Based on evolutionary genetic theory and
empirical results from behaviour genetics and personality psychology, we conclude that selective neutrality is largely
irrelevant, that mutation-selection balance seems best at explaining genetic variance in intelligence, and that balancing
selection by environmental heterogeneity seems best at explaining genetic variance in personality traits. We propose a
general model of heritable personality differences that conceptualises intelligence as fitness components and personality
traits as individual reaction norms of genotypes across environments, with different fitness consequences in different
environmental niches. We also discuss the place of mental health in the model.
This evolutionary genetic framework highlights the role of gene-environment interactions in the study of personality,
yields new insight into the person-situation-debate and the structure of personality, and has practical implications for
both quantitative and molecular genetic studies of personality.
In Japan, approximately 30% of dogs that enter training programs to become drug detection dogs successfully complete
training. To clarify factors related to the aptitude of drug detection dogs and develop an assessment tool, we evaluated
genotypes and behavioural traits of 197 candidate dogs. The behavioural traits were evaluated within 2 weeks from the start
of training and included general activity, obedience training, concentration, affection
demand, aggression toward dogs, anxiety, and interest in target. Principal components
analysis of these ratings yielded two components: Desire for Work and Distractibility. Desire for Work was
statistically-significantly related to successful completion of training (p < 0.001). Since 93.3% of dogs that
passed training and 53.3% of the dogs that failed training had Desire for Work scores of 45 or higher, we will be able to
reject about half of inappropriate dogs before 3 months of training by adopting this cut-off point. We also surveyed eight
polymorphic regions of four genes that have been related to human personality dimensions. Genotypes were not related to
whether dogs passed, but there was a weak relationship between Distractibility and a 5HTThaplotype
(p < 0.05).
The authors examined relations between the Big Five personality traitsand academic outcomes, specifically SAT scores andgrade-point average (GPA).
Openness was the strongest predictor of SAT verbal scores, and
Conscientiousness was the strongest predictor of both high school and college GPA. These relations replicated across 4 independent samples and across 4 different
personality inventories. Further analyses showed that Conscientiousness predicted college GPA, even aftercontrolling for high school GPA
and SAT scores, and that the relationbetween Conscientiousness and
college GPA was mediated, both concurrently and longitudinally, by increased
academic effort and higher levels of perceived academic ability. The relation between Openness and SAT verbal scores was independent of academic achievement and was mediated, both
concurrently and longitudinally, by perceived verbal intelligence.
Together, these findings show that personality traits have independent and incremental effects on academic outcomes,
even after controlling for traditional predictors of those outcomes.
Table 1: Previous Findings on Personality and Academic Outcomes in College
Table 3: Big Five Correlates of SAT Verbal and Math
Scores
Table 5: Big Five Correlates of GPA
When presented with the option to use a new instructional technology, students often face an approach-avoidance
conflict. This study explored promotion and prevention orientations, concepts linked to approach and avoidance in Higgins’s
regulatory focus theory, in the choice to attend lectures or watch them online. Openness, a core disposition in the Big Five Model of personality, and positive attitudes
towards the utility of the Internet, reflect promotion orientations that are potentially related to the choice to watch
lectures online. By contrast, neuroticism, another core disposition in the Big Five Model, and anxiety about the Internet
as a computer technology, reflect a prevention orientation that is potentially related to the choice of attending lectures
in class. The results illustrate that both promotion and prevention are at work in the choice to attend lectures or to
watch them online. Neuroticism and anxiety about the Internet as a computer technology were related to the choice to attend
lectures in class, whereas the perceived utility of the Internet was related to the choice to watch lectures online.
Instructional mode choice was not related to examination performance, suggesting that the choice to attend lectures or
watch them online has more to do with individual differences in promotion and prevention orientations than with pedagogical
characteristics that impact learning.
A comprehensive evolutionary framework for understanding the maintenance of heritable behavioral variation in humans is
yet to be developed. Some evolutionary psychologists have argued that heritable variation will not be found in important,
fitness-relevant characteristics because of the winnowing effect of natural
selection. This article propounds the opposite view. Heritable variation is ubiquitous in all species, and there are
a number of frameworks for understanding its persistence. The author argues that each of the Big Five dimensions of human
personality can be seen as the result of a trade-off between different fitness costs and benefits. As there is no
unconditionally optimal value of these trade-offs, it is to be expected that genetic diversity will be retained in the
population.
Personality has consequences. Measures of personality have contemporaneous and predictive relations to a variety of
important outcomes. Using the Big Five factors as heuristics for organizing the research literature, numerous consequential
relations are identified. Personality dispositions are associated with happiness, physical and psychological health,
spirituality, and identity at an individual level; associated with the quality of relationships with peers, family, and
romantic others at an interpersonal level; and associated with occupational choice, satisfaction, and performance, as well
as community involvement, criminal activity, and political ideology at a social institutional level.
[Keywords: individual differences, traits, life outcomes, consequences]
Previous research has shown that variation in sex-specific personality traits in women can be predicted by measures of
physical masculinisation (second to fourth digit ratio and circulating testosterone). This study aimed to test the
hypothesis that certain sex-specific traits in women (maternal tendencies and career orientation) could be predicted by one
index of masculinisation, height. Data was collected via online questionnaires. In pre-reproductive women (aged 20–29,
n = 679), increasing height related to decreasing maternal personality (lower importance of having children, lower
maternal/broodiness) and decreasing reproductive ambition (fewer ideal number of children, older ideal own age to have
first child). Increasing height also related to increasing career orientation (higher importance of having a career, and
higher career competitiveness). In post-reproductive women (aged over 45, n = 541), increasing height related to
decreased reproductive events (fewer children, had first child at older age) and increased career orientation. Results
provide further support for previous studies that show physical masculinisation is associated with psychological
masculinisation.
Some polygenic traits—eg. stature, IQ, harm avoidance, negative emotionality, interest in sports—are polygenic-additive,
so pairs of relatives resemble one another on the given trait in proportion to their genetic similarity.
But the existence and the intensity of other important psychological traits seem to be emergent properties of gene configurations (or configurations of independent and partially
genetic traits) that interact multiplicatively rather than additively. Monozygotic (MZ) twins may be strongly correlated on
such emergenic traits, while the similarity of dizygotic (DZ) twins, sibs or parent-offspring pairs may be much less than
half that of MZ pairs. Some emergenic traits, although strongly genetic, do not appear to run in families.
MISTRA has provided at least two examples of traits for which MZAtwins are strongly correlated, and DZA pairs
correlate near zero,while DZ pairs reared together (DZTs) are about half
as similar asMZTs.
These findings suggest that even more traits may be emergenic than those already identified. Studies of adoptees reared
together (who are perhaps more common than twins reared apart) may help to identify traits that are emergenic, but that
also are influenced by a common rearing environment.
The present study examined whether therapist access to the Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory(MMPI-2) predicted favorable treatment outcome,
above and beyond other assessment measures.
A manipulated assessment design was used, in which patients were randomly assigned either to a group in which therapists
had access to their MMPI-2 data or to a group without therapist access to
such information. Illness severity, improvement ratings, number of sessions attended, and premature termination were
indicators of therapy outcome.
Results: indicated that therapist access to the MMPI-2 data
did not add to the prediction of positive treatment outcome beyond that predicted by other measures in this setting.
Findings from this initial study suggest that, compared with other resources, perhaps in clinical settings with an emphasis
on diagnosis-based and evidence-based treatment, the MMPI-2 may not provide
incrementally valid information.
However, these effects warrant replication across different settings and samples. Guidelines for future studies are
discussed.
Previous research has found that introverts’ performance on complex cognitive tasks is more negatively affected by
distracters, e.g. music and background television, than by extraverts’ performance. This study extended previous
research by examining whether background noise would be as distracting as music.
In the presence of silence, background garage music and office noise, 38 introverts and 38 extraverts carried out a
reading comprehension task, a prose recall task and a mental arithmetic task. It was predicted that there would be an
interaction between personality and background sound on all 3 tasks: introverts would do less well on all of the tasks than
extraverts in the presence of music and noise but in silence performance would be the same.
A statistically-significant interaction was found on the reading comprehension
task only, although a trend for this effect was clearly present on the other 2 tasks. It was also predicted that there
would be a main effect for background sound: performance would be worse in the presence of music and noise than silence.
Results confirmed this prediction.
These findings support the Eysenckian hypothesis of the difference in optimum cortical arousal in introverts and
extraverts.
How can we account for the sudden appearance of such dazzling artists and scientists as Mozart, Shakespeare, Darwin, or
Einstein? How can we define such genius? What conditions or personality traits seem to produce exceptionally creative
people? Is the association between genius and madness really just a myth? These and many other questions are brilliantly
illuminated in The Origins of Genius.
Dean Simonton convincingly argues that creativity can best be understood as a Darwinian process of variation and
selection. The artist or scientist generates a wealth of ideas, and then subjects these ideas to aesthetic or scientific
judgment, selecting only those that have the best chance to survive and reproduce. Indeed, the true test of genius is the
ability to bequeath an impressive and influential body of work to future generations. Simonton draws on the latest research
into creativity and explores such topics as the personality type of the genius, whether genius is genetic or produced by
environment and education, the links between genius and mental illness (Darwin himself was emotionally and mentally
unwell), the high incidence of childhood trauma, especially loss of a parent, amongst Nobel Prize winners, the importance
of unconscious incubation in creative problem-solving, and much more.
Simonton substantiates his theory by examining and quoting from the work of such eminent figures as Henri Poincare, W. H.
Auden, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Charles Darwin, Niels Bohr, and many others. For anyone intrigued by the spectacular feats of
the human mind, The Origins of Genius offers a revolutionary new way of understanding the very nature of
creativity.
This study evaluated the personality characteristics of senior enlisted and occupationally successful Navy submarine
personnel. One hundred subjects completed the Schedule for Nonadaptive and Adaptive Personality (SNAP). Results indicated that the traits of detachment, propriety, and workaholism were most
descriptive of the sample. 37% met SNAP criteria for a personality disorder,
typically antisocial, obsessive-compulsive, or avoidant. The results are discussed in terms of adaptation to
environmental demands aboard submarines. Suggestions for further research are offered.
…How do we develop the talents of gifted children while maintaining equity? Based upon the long and celebrated history
of individual differences research (Dawis 1992) from educational and vocational counseling (Brayfield 1950; Dawis
& Lofquist 1984; Patterson 1938; Williamson 1939; 1965), we believe that optimal utilization of talent
depends upon responding to individual differences in personalities. Specifically, children must be placed in educational
environments that are congruent with, and build upon, their most salient abilities and preferences (Benbow &
Lubinski 1994; in press; Lubinski & Benbow 1994; Lubinski, Benbow, and Sanders 1993; Stanley 1977).
This approach, which is advocated by the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) (Benbow & Lubinski 1994; in press; Stanley 1977), serves as the focus of
this article.
We argue and present evidence that individuals possess certain attributes that make them differentially suited for
excelling, with fulfillment, in contrasting educational and vocational tracks. That is, only a limited set of learning
environments is educationally optimal for anyone individual, even a gifted individual. Students, for example, put forth
their best effort when they intrinsically enjoy what they are doing, and world-class achievement is most likely to develop
when gifted individuals are allowed to pursue what they love at their desired pace. Indeed, learning can be optimized and
achievement motivation enhanced if students are presented with tasks that are not only challenging (i.e., slightly above
the level already mastered) but also personally meaningful to them (Lofquist & Dawis 1991)…
Beyond Terman: Contemporary Longitudinal Studies of Giftedness and
Talent is an important contribution to the literature in two fields—those of gifted education and educational
research. It is important for the former in terms of the insights and understandings it provides about giftedness and its
nurture. It is important for the latter for its elucidations of the methodology associated with longitudinal research. The
editors point out that “[the] volume presents recent collected works that demonstrate the fit between longitudinal
methodology and the central issues of gifted education. Collectively, the studies investigate the early determinants of
later academic and career achievement and creativity while employing varied identification practices, perspectives,
theoretical orientations, and populations.”
The studies described vary along many dimensions, including research problem, sample size and character, length of
study, data collection procedures and sources, and longitudinal orientation (ie., emergent/developmental or
retrospective). The studies deal with a variety of talent areas, such as academic achievement, science, technical
creativity, music, creative and productive thinking, and career development. The samples include gifted and talented
children, youths, and adults, both males and females. Although most of the studies deal with identified gifted/talented
individuals, one is a retrospective look at the achievements of graduate students in a university-level leadership
education program. Studies originating in Germany and Israel add an international flavor and, more importantly, remind us
that there is good research being conducted beyond the borders of the U.S.
As the premiere longitudinal investigation of a gifted population, the Terman study set a standard of comprehensiveness,
large study sample, and societal influence that is difficult to supersede. In spite of the Terman study’s large number of
research associates and rich sources of funding support, the data are still being organized for more accurate statistical
analysis and examined for more challenging research questions. Further, the Genetic Studies of Genius and its more
current follow-ups did not address key questions of concern in today’s social, political, and historical climate, or issues
of central importance in the future. The investigations in this book have established a groundwork for answering previously
unanswered questions: Are we identifying the “right” people? What are the outcomes associated with various forms of
identification and intervention?
Over the course of his long career, Terman’s perspective on high IQ as a source for potential genius changed to allow
personality, interest, special abilities, and opportunity to play a growing role in adult achievement. In filling a vacuum
left by Terman, this collection of contemporary studies can guide policy and program
development based on the conditions and interventions that contribute to the fulfillment of talent.
The authors administered inventories of vocational and recreational interests and talents to 924 pairs of twins who had
been reared together and to 92 pairs separated in infancy and reared apart.
Factor analysis of all 291 items yielded 39 identifiable factors and 11 superfactors. The data indicated that about 50%
of interests variance (about two thirds of the stable variance) was associated with genetic variation. The authors show
that heritability can be conservatively estimated from the within-pair correlations of adult monozygotic twins reared
together. Evidence for nonadditive genetic effects on interests may explain why heritability estimates based on family
studies are so much lower.
The authors propose a model in which precursor traits of aptitude and personality, in part genetically determined, guide
the development of interests through the mechanisms of gene-environment correlation and interaction.
[Further discussion of “emergenesis” and relationship to
genius: why are geniuses, while sometimes clearly affiliated with entire clans, so sporadic even within those? This is
difficult to explain on any environmental or simple additive genetic grounds, suggesting that it may require entire
complexes of exactly aligned genes and environmental factors.]
Human genius has always been a problem for both environmentalists and hereditarians to understand (Galton, 1869;
Kroeber, 1944; Simonton, 1988.) There have been families of genius, of course—the Bernoullis and the Baths, the Darwins and
the Huxleys, the musical Marsalis family—but it is the solitary genius, rising like a great oak in a forest of scrub and
bramble, who challenges our understanding. Carl Friedrich Gauss, ranked with Archimedes and Newton as one of the “princes
of mathematics”, had uneducated parents. His mother was illiterate, yet the boy had taught himself to read and to do simple
arithmetic by the time he was 3 years old (Buhler, 1981).
…Suppose that Gauss or Ramanujan had been born with a healthy MZ twin who was spirited away to be reared by some country
parson in Oxfordshire. Barring cholera or other accident, is it not likely that the parson’s surname too would now be
immortal? Ramanujan died young without offspring; his parents and one brother apparently were unexceptional. Although Gauss
provided rich stimulation and opportunity for his six offspring (by two different and highly cultivated wives), none of
them distinguished themselves.2 But if the genius of these men was prefigured in their genes, why was it never
manifested elsewhere in their lineage? The answer is, we think, that genius consists of unique configurations of attributes
that cannot be transmitted in half helpings.
Traits that are influenced by a configuration, rather than by a simple sum, of polymorphic genes may not be seen to be
genetic unless one studies monozygotic twins (who share all their genes and thus all gene configurations) because such
‘emergenic’ traits will tend not to run in families. Personal idiosyncrasies that have been
found to be surprisingly concordant among monozygotic twins separated in infancy and reared apart may be emergenic traits.
More speculatively, important human traits like leadership, genius in its many manifestations, being an effective therapist
or parent, as well as certain psychopathological syndromes may also be emergenic. These ideas reemphasize the importance of
the role played in human affairs by genetic variation.
Most of social psychology’s theories of the self fail to take into account the importance of social identification in
the definition of self. Social identities are self-definitions that are more inclusive than the individuated self-concept
of most American psychology.
A model of optimal distinctiveness is proposed in which social identity is viewed as a reconciliation of opposing needs
for assimilation and differentiation from others. According to this model, individuals avoid self-construals that are
either too personalized or too inclusive and instead define themselves in terms of distinctive category memberships. Social
identity and group loyalty are hypothesized to be strongest for those self-categorizations that simultaneously provide for
a sense of belonging and a sense of distinctiveness.
Results: from an initial laboratory experiment support the prediction that depersonalization and group
size interact as determinants of the strength of social identification.
Previous attempts to summarize the vehicular accident involvement literature have been non-quantitative. Outcomes of
these reviews have also reflected the equivocalness of research in this area. In an attempt to synthesize the diverse
research findings into a collective result, a meta-analysis procedure that controlled for sampling error was used.
4 classes of variables were identified as predictors of vehicular accident involvement. These were
information-processing, cognitive ability, personality, and demographic/biographical variables. Moderate-to-marginally
favorable overall meta-analysis results were obtained for selective attention, regard for authority, locus of control, and
cognitive ability as predictors of vehicular accident involvement.
Suggestions and directions for future research are discussed.
The present study deals with the relationship between blood uric acid level and human behavior. Subjects were 37 MZ and 7 DZ twins aged from 18 to 45 years. In
males, blood uric acid level increased with age, while it decreased with age in females. Blood uric acid level was
corrected and standardized using regression lines separately for males and females. The distribution of standardized uric
acid level corresponded well with the theoretical curve of normal distribution. The intraclass correlation coefficient for
standardized uric acid level was r = 0.370 (p < 0.05) for the 37 MZ twins, but not statistically-significant for the 7 DZ twins. These findings suggest that blood uric acid level
is genetically controlled. By the analysis of 12 personality traits in YG (Yatabe-Guilford) character test, it was revealed
that “General activity” was more controlled by genetically than environmentally. In the evaluation of the correlation
between standardized uric acid level and the YG 12 personality traits, statistically-significant correlation was
observed in “Lack of agreeableness” and “Rhathymia”. Since these two personality traits include the factor of “activity”,
it is concluded that the plasma uric acid level and activity in a broader sense are under genetic control. This conclusion
is consistent with the generally accepted view that persons with high uric acid level are more active and energetic than
those with low level.
The study reported here was conducted to determine the relationship between a 2-week Gifted Students Institute summer
program and the self-concepts of 37 gifted middle school students, ages 10 to 14.
To assess the relationship between the GSI program and the students’
self-concepts, the Me Scale (Feldhusen) and the Self-Esteem Inventory (Coopersmith) were administered on the first and
final days of the 2-week program. Students also completed a program evaluation, and writing samples describing their
personalities.
The results of the study indicated that it is possible to enhance gifted students’ self-concepts through provision of a
supportive educational and social environment of a summer program on a university campus.
Preliminary findings from an on-going study of monozygotic twins reared apart (MZA) and data from a larger sample of twins rearedtogether (MZT and DZT), indicate a surprisingly strong influence
of genetic variation on aptitudes, psychophysiological characteristics, personality traits and even dimensions of
attitude and interest. For some of these variables, MZT and MZA twins show high intra-classcorrelations while DZT twins are no more similar than pairs of unrelated persons.
It is suggested that such traits are ‘emergenic’, ie., that they are
determined by the interaction—rather than the sum—of genetic influences. Emergenic traits, although perhaps strongly
genetic, will not tend to run in families and for this reason have been neglected by students of behavior genetics.
For this and several other listed reasons, wider use of twins in psychological research is strongly recommended.
[Keywords: twins, behavior genetics, emergenesis, range correction, EEG spectra]
In an effort to explore some of the possible early-experiential and family variables involved in the achievement of
eminence we have developed a model of cognitive and personality development and have undertaken a longitudinal study of two
distinct groups of exceptionally gifted boys and their families. In this report, early similarities and differences between
two groups of exceptionally gifted boys and their families will be explored. Methodology: This is a longitudinal
study of two samples of healthy, exceptionally gifted boys and their families. One group consisted of 26 of the highest
scorers in the 1976 Math Talent Search conducted by Julian Stanley (1974, 1977); the second group of 26 boys living in
southern California were selected only on the basis of IQ’s of 150 or higher.
…Factors included for study were parents’ and grand-parents’ educational attainment, parents’ and subjects’ birth-order,
subjects’ and parents’ creative potential, and subjects’ cognitive giftedness.
Both samples were well-educated and had attained statistically-significantly more formal education than the national
norms.
The birth-orders of the two samples are what one would expect from the literature of gifted children and they are not
statistically-significantly different from one another.
A surprisingly remarkable similarity exists between the two samples of cognitively gifted boys, although they were
selected a year apart, a continent apart, and on the basis of distinctly different test performances. We expected them to
perform better on the figural and the math/science subtests of the Wallach-Kogan and BIC measures, respectively, and the high-IQ sample to perform statistically-significantly
better on the verbal and the art/writing subtests. Instead, the differences between the samples are slight and not
statistically-significant. At minimum, these results suggest that the two samples
are each made of highly talented, cognitively gifted boys in the ares of art/writing and math/science as measured
by standard instruments. Second, these results further indicate the versatility that accompanies exceptional
giftedness…Table 1 shows that the parents of both groups of exceptionally gifted boys are
themselves exceptionally creative. Parents of both groups outperformed Duke University subjects. Furthermore, the parents
definitely showed more creative potential than their children. It is the parents of the high-IQ boys who have the highest
creativity scores of all.
…We believe the results of the present study and those of Milgram et al. show that cognitive giftedness and creative
giftedness are very much related to one another and may be manifestations of the same complex, multi-faceted abilities.
Therefore, it should not surprise us that there is a large degree of family cognitive and creative similarity.
The concept of face is clarified and distinguished from other closely related constructs: authority, standards of
behavior, personality, status, dignity, honor, and prestige. The claim to face may rest on the basis of status, whether
ascribed or achieved, and on personal or non-personal factors; it may also vary according to the group with which a person
is interacting. Basic differences are found between the processes involved in gaining versus losing face. While it is not a
necessity for one to strive to gain face, losing face is a serious matter which will, in varying degrees, affect one’s
ability to function effectively in society. Face is lost when the individual, either through his action or that of people
closely related to him, fails to meet essential requirements placed upon him by virtue of the social position he occupies.
In contrast to the ideology of individualism, the question of face frequently arises beyond the realm of individual
responsibility and subjective volition. Reciprocity is inherent in face behavior, wherein a mutually restrictive, even
coercive, power is exerted upon each member of the social network. It is argued that face behavior is universal and that
face should be utilized as a construct of central importance in the social sciences.
This volume reports on a study of 850 pairs of twins who were tested to determine the influence of heredity and
environment on individual differences in personality, ability, and interests. It presents the background, research design,
and procedures of the study, a complete tabulation of the test results, and the authors’ extensive analysis of their
findings. Based on one of the largest studies of twin behavior ever conducted, the book challenges a number of traditional
beliefs about genetic and environmental contributions to personality development.
The subjects were chosen from participants in the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test of 1962 and were mailed a
battery of personality and interest questionnaires. In addition, parents of the twins were sent questionnaires asking about
the twins’ early experiences. A similar sample of nontwin students who had taken the merit exam provided a comparison
group. The questions investigated included how twins are similar to or different from non-twins, how identical twins are
similar to or different from fraternal twins, how the personalities and interests of twins reflect genetic factors, how the
personalities and interests of twins reflect early environmental factors, and what implications these questions have for
the general issue of how heredity and environment influence the development of psychological characteristics. In attempting
to answer these questions, the authors shed new light on the importance of both genes and environment and have formed the
basis for new approaches in behavior genetic research.
Aptitude × Treatment interactions are demonstrated with reference to G. Domino’s studies (1968 and 1971) of instructor
demand and student personality and J. K. Majasan’s (1972) study which found that achievement in college psychology was
greatest when the student’s position on a scale of beliefs regarding behaviorism and humanism were similar to his
instructor’s. Further evidence on interactions in social psychology, personality, learning, and experimental psychology is
cited. It is suggested that higher order interactions make it unlikely that social scientists will be able to establish
generalizations applicable beyond the laboratory or that generalizations established in the field work will be maintained.
Social research should be less concerned with hypothesis testing and more concerned with interpreting findings in local
contexts.
The collection represents the data that Anne
Roe (Mrs. George Gaylord Simpson) collected on 64 scientists for her 1953 book, The Making of a Scientist. The material for each scientist
includes transcripts of interviews, Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Tests, personal data, reprints of the scientist’s publications, and letters
several years afterward the interview asking for additional information.
[Some of the earliest direct studies of high IQ adults were conducted by Anne Roe, who, akin to SMPY’s use of the SAT, used specially-constructed
standardized test items to avoid ceiling effects and could appropriately measure her elite researcher-subjects’ (often
Nobel-tier) cognitive abilities, in addition to an intensive battery of other interviews & inventories. While focused more
on personality/psychiatry than psychometrics, Roe’s cross-sectional results are broadly similar to the later SMPY longitudinal results.]
The twin design for estimating proportions of hereditary and environmental sources of trait variation was presented and
applied to a national sample of 806 twin sets who took the National Merit Scholarship Test in 1962. Parental report of
differential treatment of their twins was used to test the assumption of equivalent within-family environments by
zygosity.
A comparison of the sum of items reflecting differential treatment reported by the parents showed that identical twins
are reported to be treated more alike than fraternal twins. Correlations of the treatment difference score with twin
differences on the NMSQT and CPI scores
showed a small but positive relationship between differential treatment and differences in measured achievement and
personality. Within each actual zygosity group, the treatment difference scores of twins whose parents were correct about
the zygosity diagnosis were compared to the scores of twins whose parents misdiagnosed them. These results indicated that
parental behavior towards their twins is determined largely by the degree of genetic relatedness of their twins. However,
the ordering of the treatment difference score means indicated that parental belief about zygosity also determined to some
small degree their treatment of their twins. Within each zygosity group, the score differences on the NMSQT and CPI scales of twins correctly and incorrectly
diagnosed by their parents were also compared, and the results showed that parental belief about zygosity has a small but
consistent relationship to twin differences on measured achievement and personality.
This series of analyses indicated that the assumption of equal between-family environments by zygosity cannot be made,
and that the environmental bias is greater for personality measures than for achievement measures. The assumption of
equivalent between-family environments by zygosity was also tested, and it was concluded that this assumption does not
introduce a serious bias in this sample.
Probable ranges of proportions of trait variance due to heredity, between-family and within-family environment were
computed for each measure. Hereditary variation generally accounted for the majority of the variation in the
NMSQT scales, and the between-family environmental component was generally
larger that the within-family component. The heritability estimates of the CPI
scales were quite varied, but in general the within-family environmental component was larger than the
between-family component.
A multivariate method by which trait covariation can be partitioned into hereditary and environmental sources was
presented and applied to the NMSQT scales. Matrices of cross twin correlations
and correlations among twin differences were manipulated to produce hereditary and within and between-family
environmental matrices.
The factor structures of these 3 component matrices were compared to the factor structure of the NMSQT. The verbal and math-science factorin the NMSQT were found in the hereditary and the within-family environmental matrices. Only a
general factor was apparent in the between-family environmental matrix. This indicated that the 2 factors in the
NMSQT are controlled by somewhat different hereditary mechanisms as well as
different within-family environmental influences.
Probably the first sustained attempt to explore the value of music as therapy was made by a group of psychiatrists at
the Walter Reed Hospital, during World War II, under the stimulus of the large number of psychiatric casualties requiring
treatment. This first pragmatic approach has fortunately been developed into a more permanent research organization by one
of the participants, Miss Paperte, in her creation of the Music Research Foundation. The present article proposes to review
very briefly the nascent research in this area and to set out the results of a 3-year research project supported partly by
the Music Research Foundation and partly by the Graduate School of the University of Illinois.
…The aim of the research report in this and 2 succeeding articles9, 10, sustained partly by the author’s
own research resources and partly by the Bonfils Fellowship and other assistance from the Musical Research Foundation, has
been to investigate relations between musical choice and personality, in normal and pathological subjects. Secondarily, it
aims to produce a music choice test for personality diagnosis11.
…A preliminary list of 200 musical excerpts, from different periods, countries, and styles was tried out with about 50
students and was cut down to 120 by eliminating any piece which seemed very similar to any other or which for some peculiar
reason of instrument or period was deemed likely to be unreliable. We then arranged for a skilled pianist to record the 120
excerpts on piano, since we wished to eliminate any chance effects which might be due to cultural attachments of the
subjects to particular instruments.
…Factorization of like and dislike reactions to 120 musical excerpts by a population of 196 “normal” men and women in
early maturity has yielded 12 factors, 8 of which are confirmed by 2 independent rotations of the material, one more
moderately confirmed, and 3 awaiting further research.
Although the definition and soundness of simple structure for these factors is of a high order, little attempt has been
made here to infer their nature from the particular association of musical likes and dislikes connected with them, though
in some cases “hunches” indicated by the data are mentioned. Our general hypothesis that these independent dimensions of
choice will turn out to be personality and temperament factors rather than patterns of specific musical content or school
seems sufficiently sustained.
Research leading to more extensive interpretation of the psychological meaning of the factors should be possible now
that I.P.A.T. has made the above excerpts available on a single, 12 ins. long-playing record11. Our own
interpretations will wait on our use of this instrument in research directed to relating these factors to measured
personality factors and pathological syndromes.
This paper describes the development of relatively independent measures for 3 types of Introversion-Extroversion:
Thinking. Social, and Emotional. The need for clarifying the concept of I-E and for devising new inventories can
best be understood by reviewing the confusion concerning its nature and measurement. In the effort to simplify the original
complex description of I-E by Jung, psychologists either have introduced new concepts or emphasized varying phases
of Jung’s definition. In this process of elaboration, they have actually complicated rather than clarified the idea of
I-E. The use of these terms in the popular literature has only added to the confusion. Unfortunately,
introversion, at least in the popular writings on psychology, has come to denote an undesirable personality tendency which
borders on a neurotic condition.
In general, the available I-E inventories purport to measure a general, undifferentiated trait. However, the
intercorrelations between the published inventories are surprisingly low. Only 5 of the 19 coefficients of intercorrelation
reported in the literature for nine inventories are above 0.40, and only 2 are above 0.80. The 2 coefficients above
0.80 are between 2 inventories and revised forms of these same inventories.
…This study has reduced the confusion in the field of measurement of I-E by getting away from the general
undifferentiated concept of I-E. An inventory was constructed to measure, not a general trait, but 3 types or
phases of I-E which were clearly defined. By a simple technique of item analysis, 3 homogeneous and relatively
independent I-E tests were developed. Each test seems to be sufficiently reliable for individual prediction. The
demonstrated ability of each test to discriminate between groups of college students which one would logically expect to be
characteristically different in a given type of I-E justifies the conclusion that each test is sufficiently valid
for the inventory to be employed in the diagnosis and counseling of college students.
“The present study approaches the problem by a comparison of two groups of children living in approximately identical
environments.” One group consists of adopted children and the other of “own” children. After surveying the records of 2449
children, 194 adopted children between the ages 5 and 14 (white, non-Jewish, north-European, and placed in their adoptive
homes at the age of 6 months or younger) were matched with 194 own children whose sex was the same, whose age was within 6
months, whose fathers’ occupations belonged to the same group on the Minnesota Occupational Scale, whose fathers’ school
attainments agreed within one school grade (mothers’ also), whose parents were white, non-Jewish, and north-European, and
whose residence had been in communities of 1000 or more. The children of both groups were given the Stanford-Binet and the
Woodworth-Mathews Personal Data Sheet; the parents were given the Otis Self-Administering Test and the Stanford-Binet
vocabulary.
“Variation in IQ is accounted for by variation in home environment to the extent of not more than 4%; 96% of the
variation is accounted for by other factors… · Measurable environment does not shift the IQ by more than 3 to 5 points
above or below the value it would have had under normal environmental conditions… · The nature or hereditary component in
intelligence causes greater variation than does environment. When nature and nurture are operative, shifts in IQ as great
as 20 points are observed with shifts in the cultural level of the home and neighborhood… · Variation in personality traits
other than intelligence may be accounted for less by variation in heredity than by variation in environment.”
Earlier studies are reviewed and 8 references are cited.
