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Genetic and Environmental Mediation Between Measures of Personality and Family Environment in Twins Reared Together

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Abstract

In this study we analyzed the etiology of the relationship between personality traits and retrospectively recalled family environment. The data of 226 identical and 168 fraternal twin pairs reared together from the Jena twin study of social attitudes were available. Personality traits were measured using the self- and peer report versions of the German NEO-personality inventory-revised. A German version of Blocks Environmental Questionnaire was applied to measure two broad dimensions of the family environment retrospectively: support and organization. We could replicate earlier findings that retrospective reports of these family environment dimensions were in part genetically influenced. A total of 66% of the genetic variance in support and 24% in organization could be accounted for by heritable variance in self-rated personality. That was replicated by using peer reports of personality, 41% explained genetic variance in support and 17% in organization. Environmental mediations were negligible. This indicates that the relationship between personality and retrospectively recalled family environment is largely genetically mediated.

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Notes

  1. In a sample of twins reared together, naturally only one biological mother and one biological father were available to assess rearing environments of both twins and reports of them are genetically correlated with reports of their offspring because of their genetic kinship. Thus, parental reports of twins reared together are not useful and informative to address a differentiation between the genetic perception and the genotype-environment correlation hypothesis, and hence we did not use parental reports in our present analyses.

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Acknowledgment

This research was supported by a grant from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Grant FOR 481/1-1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Bielefeld, Universitätsstr. 25, 33615, Bielefeld, Germany

    Christian Kandler & Rainer Riemann

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Jena, Jena, Germany

    Nicole Kämpfe

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  1. Christian Kandler
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  2. Rainer Riemann
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  3. Nicole Kämpfe
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Correspondence to Christian Kandler.

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Edited by Richard Rose.

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Kandler, C., Riemann, R. & Kämpfe, N. Genetic and Environmental Mediation Between Measures of Personality and Family Environment in Twins Reared Together. Behav Genet 39, 24–35 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-008-9238-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-008-9238-8

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