title: Heritability of acquiescence bias and item keying response style associated with the HEXACO personality scale.
abstract: The current research investigates the heritability of two of the most common response styles: acquiescence bias (tendency to agree or disagree with survey items regardless of the items' actual content) and item keying (differential responding related to the use of regular- and reverse-keyed items). We estimated response styles from a common personality measure (HEXACO) and examined the heritability of each with univariate genetics analyses. The results show item keying effect was heritable but acquiescence bias was not. Neither response style was strongly influenced by the shared environment of the twins. Unique environmental effects were found to be substantial for response styles. The current findings have important implications for future research of response behaviors that are often overlooked by behavioral geneticists.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Education, The University of Macau, Macau SAR, China. chesterkam@umac.mo
authors.forename: Chester
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kam
authors.forename: Julie Aitken
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Schermer
authors.forename: Juliette
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.forename: Philip A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Vernon
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D015982:Bias; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D004777:Environment; D005260:Female; D005824:Genetics, Behavioral; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D014427:Twins / Q000235:genetics*; D055815:Young Adult