title: Exploring the Genetic Etiology of Trust in Adolescents: Combined Twin and DNA Analyses.
abstract: Behavioral traits generally show moderate to strong genetic influence, with heritability estimates of around 50%. Some recent research has suggested that trust may be an exception because it is more strongly influenced by social interactions. In a sample of over 7,000 adolescent twins from the United Kingdom's Twins Early Development Study, we found broad sense heritability estimates of 57% for generalized trust and 51% for trust in friends. Genomic-relatedness-matrix restricted maximum likelihood (GREML) estimates in the same sample indicate that 21% of the narrow sense genetic variance can be explained by common single nucleotide polymorphisms for generalized trust and 43% for trust in friends. As expected, this implies a large amount of unexplained heritability, although power is low for estimating DNA-based heritability. The missing heritability may be accounted for by interactions between DNA and the social environment during development or via gene-environment correlations with rare variants. How these genes and environments correlate seem especially important for the development of trust.
authors.affiliation: School of Experimental Psychology,University of Bristol,Bristol,UK.
authors.forename: Robyn E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Wootton
authors.affiliation: MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit,School of Social and Community Medicine,University of Bristol,Bristol,UK.
authors.forename: Oliver S P
authors.initials: OS
authors.lastname: Davis
authors.affiliation: School of Experimental Psychology,University of Bristol,Bristol,UK.
authors.forename: Abigail L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Mottershaw
authors.affiliation: School of Experimental Psychology,University of Bristol,Bristol,UK.
authors.forename: R Adele H
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Experimental Psychology,University of Bristol,Bristol,UK.
authors.forename: Claire M A
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Haworth
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D033062:Friends / Q000523:psychology; D014644:Genetic Variation; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010641:Phenotype; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide / Q000235:genetics; D012931:Social Environment; D035502:Trust / Q000523:psychology*; D014427:Twins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000523:psychology; D006113:United Kingdom; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: DNA-based heritability; heritability; trust; twin design