Scientific studies cannot agree on the relative importance of genes and environment on how we turn out as adults
The eternal mystery of how much we are shaped by our parents – or how much we shape our children – was stirred again last week with the publication of a study that suggests that we are less like our parents than we had previously thought.
Led by René Mõttus of Edinburgh University’s department of psychology, the study looked at more than 1,000 pairs of relatives to establish how likely children are to inherit what psychologists call the “big five” or “Ocean” personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
About Author
More Stories
Male mosquitoes to be genetically engineered to poison females with semen in Australian research
Memo to Trump: US telecoms is vulnerable to hackers. Please hang up and try again | John Naughton
Bizarre Australian mole even more unusual than first thought, new research reveals