title: Genetic and environmental contributions to prosocial behaviour in 2- to 9-year-old South Korean twins.
abstract: Although over 50 twin and adoption studies have been performed on the genetic architecture of antisocial behaviour, far fewer studies have investigated prosocial behaviour, and none have done so on a non-western population. The present study examined mothers' ratings of prosocial behaviour in 514 pairs of 2- to 9-year-old South Korean monozygotic and dizygotic twins. Correlational analyses showed a tendency of increasing genetic effects and decreasing shared environmental effects with age although shared family environment effects and the moderating effects of age did not attain statistical significance in model-fitting analyses. The best-fitting model indicated that 55% (95% CI: 45-64%) of the variance in the 2- to 9-year-olds' prosocial behaviour was due to genetic factors and 45% (95% CI: 36-55%) was due to non-shared environmental factors. It is concluded that genetic and environmental influences on prosocial behaviour in young South Koreans are mostly similar to those in western samples.
authors.affiliation: Chonnam National University, Kwangju, South Korea. maryhur@hanafos.com
authors.forename: Yoon-Mi
authors.initials: YM
authors.lastname: Hur
authors.forename: J Philippe
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Rushton
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D014644:Genetic Variation; D006801:Humans; D007723:Korea; D008297:Male; D012737:Sex Factors; D012919:Social Behavior; D014429:Twins, Dizygotic / Q000235:genetics / Q000523:psychology*; D014430:Twins, Monozygotic / Q000235:genetics / Q000523:psychology*