The heritability of attitudes: a study of twins

The genetic basis of individual differences in attitudes was examined in a survey of 195 pairs of monozygotic twins and 141 pairs of same-sex dizygotic twins. A principal components analysis of the 30 attitude items in the survey identified 9 attitude factors, of which 6 yielded significant heritabi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of personality and social psychology Vol. 80; no. 6; p. 845
Main Authors Olson, J M, Vernon, P A, Harris, J A, Jang, K L
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.06.2001
Subjects
Achievement
Adult
Attitude
Female
Humans
Individuality
Male
Personality - genetics
Social Environment
Social Values
Twins, Dizygotic - genetics
Twins, Dizygotic - psychology
Twins, Monozygotic - genetics
Twins, Monozygotic - psychology
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Summary:The genetic basis of individual differences in attitudes was examined in a survey of 195 pairs of monozygotic twins and 141 pairs of same-sex dizygotic twins. A principal components analysis of the 30 attitude items in the survey identified 9 attitude factors, of which 6 yielded significant heritability coefficients. Nonshared environmental factors accounted for the most variance in the attitude factors. Possible mediators of attitude heritability were also assessed, including personality traits, physical characteristics, and academic achievement. Analyses showed that several of these possible mediators correlated at a genetic level with the heritable attitude factors, suggesting that the heritability of the mediator variables might account for part of the heritable components of some attitudes. There was also some evidence that highly heritable attitudes were psychologically "stronger" than less heritable attitudes.
ISSN:0022-3514
DOI:10.1037/0022-3514.80.6.845