Pedigree analysis of Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) scores in monozygotic (MZ) twin families.
MZ twins with spouses and children, altogether 811 subjects, completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ). For extraversion (E), neuroticism (N), and lying (L), models including only additive genetic effects fitted well to the observed sex-specific correlations for the various sets of relationships. There was no evidence of sex differences for any parameter estimate for E, N, and L. The fit for E improved significantly after including dominance, and the fit for L improved significantly after including assortative mating. A model specifying genetic additive and dominance effects and assortative mating fitted well to the Psychoticism (P) data, but the fit improved significantly when a parameter for cultural transmission from fathers to daughters were included. Except for this, there was no evidence of cultural transmission for any scores. The heritabilities for the best-fitting models were .53 (E), .36 (N), .43 (L), and .39 (P). The latter includes almost only nonadditive, and no additive, variance, suggesting an overestimation of this effect due to random fluctuation or environmental sibling effect misinterpreted as dominance.
Tambs
K
K
Department of Behavioural Sciences in Medicine, University of Oslo, Norway.
Sundet
J M
JM
Eaves
L
L
Solaas
M H
MH
Berg
K
K
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010375:Pedigree; D010551:Personality / Q000235:genetics*; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011594:Psychometrics; D012931:Social Environment; D014430:Twins, Monozygotic / Q000235:genetics* / Q000523:psychology