Genetic and Environmental Influences on Personality: a Study of Twins Reared Together Using the Self- and Peer Report NEO-FFI Scales
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Genetic and Environmental Influences on Personality: A Study of Twins Reared Together Using the Self- and Peer Report NEO-FFI Scales Rainer Rlemann Alois Angleitner University of Bieleield, Germany Jan Strelau University of Warsaw, Poland ABSTRACT Previous behavior-genetic research on personality has been alniosi exclusively based tin self-report questionnaire measures. The purpose of this research was to measure personahty constructs via self- and peer reports on tbe items of tbe NEO Five-Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae. 1989). The sample included 660 monozygotic and 200 same sex and 104 opposite sex dizygoiic twin pairs. We collected self- and two independent peer reports for each of the twins. Our analysis of self-report data replicates earlier fmdings of a substantial genetic influence on the Big Five (/r = .42 to .56). We also found this influence for peer reports. Our results validate tindings based solely on self-reports. However, estimates of genetic contributions to phenotypic variance were substantially higher when based on peer reports (/i' = .57 to .81) or self- and peer reports (ir = .66 to .79) because these data allowed Preliminarj' analyses of the data were presented at the seventh meeting of the Interna- tional ScKiety for the Study of Individual Differences, Warsaw, Poland. July 15-19, 1995, and in Angleitner, Riemann, Spinath. Hempel. Thiel. and Strelau (1995). This research was supported in part hy funds from the Max Planck Forschungspreis (awarded by the Alexaiider von Huinboldt Stiftung and the M;ix-Planck Gesellschaft) 10 Alois Angleitner and Jan Strelau. We thank Peter BorkLMiau. Rainer Reisen/ein. and Frank M. Spinath for helpful comments, and Wolfgang Thiel for his assistance in ana- lyzing the data. CorrespKmdence conceming this article should he addressed to Rainer Riemann. Department of Psychology. University of Bielefeld. Postfach 100131, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany. E-mail may he sent to [email protected]. Joumal of PersonaUty 65:3, September 1997. Copyright © 1997 by Duke University Press. Riemann et al. us to separate error variance from variance due to nonshared environmental in- fluences. Correlations between self- and peer reports reflected the same genetic influences to a much higher extent than identical environmental effects. Humati behavior-genelic research has provided important itisights into the etiology of individual differences in personality traits (Loehlin, 1992; Plotnin & McClearn, 1993; Rose, 1995; Rowe, 1994). This re- search has focused most strongly on Extraversion and Neuroticism as the two major dimensions of personality. In recent years, however, the five-factor model has gained a prominent position within personality research (for reviews see Digman, 1990; John, 1990; John, Angleitner, & Ostendorf, 1988: McCrae, 1989). Ntimerous studies have shown that five broad factors—Extraversion or Surgency, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability or Neuroticism, and Culture/ Intellect or Openness to Experience—account for much of the com- mon variance in personality rating and questionnaire data. They are meaningful dimensions for the description of individual differences in personality and robustly found in various sources of data. The NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992) and the short version of the NEO-PI, the NEO Eive-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI; Costa & McCrae, 1989) are now standard questionnaire measures of the five-factor model. Four major research designs that are used in human behavior- genetic studies can be distinguished: (a) studies of twins reared to- gether in the same family, (h) studies of twins who have been reared in different families, (r) studies of adoptive families (ideally including measures of the adoptees' biological parents), and (d) family studies analyzing the data of participants who are genetically related to varying degrees. All of these designs have their particular strengths and weak- nesses, and firm conclusions regarding the etiology of individual dif- ferences are based on an integrative analysis of data based on all four designs (e.g., Bouchard & McGue, 1981; Loehlin, 1992). The most popular design, the comparison of monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins reared together, requires several assumptions to estimate genetic and environmental effects on traits: (a) There are only two types of twins (MZ and DZ) and DZ twins share on average 50% of their genes (i.e., there are no effects of assortative mating),' (b) twins 1. There is some evidence of assortative mating for Openness and Conscientiousness (see McCrae, 1996). A.ssortative mating increases the correlation of additive and TWin Study of NEO-FFI Scales 451 are a representative sample of the population to which one wishes to generalize, (c) the effects of environmental influences shared by twins is no greater for MZ than for DZ twins ("equal environments" assump- tion), and (d) gene-environment correlation and interaction have a neg- ligible effect on the trait under study. Finally, studies of twins reared together do not allow simultaneous estimation of environmental eflects shared by the twins and nonadditive genetic influences (e.g., due to genetic dominance). The validity of these assumptions is thoroughly dis- cussed in the behavior-genetic literature (see, e.g.. Eaves, Eysenck, & Martin. 1989; Loehlin, 1992). From this discussion it can be concluded that studies of twins reared together provide a valuable tool for behavior- genetic research. The strength of this design is that large samples are available representing the whole range of genotypes and environments. Combining data from twin, adoption, and family studies into an extremely large data set, Loehlin (1992) thoroughly reviewed the then available behavior-genetic research on the five-factor model of person- ality. All of the studies summarized by Loehlin used self-report question- naires that, with one exception (Bergeman et al., 1993), had not been constructed with the goal of measuring the Big Five. Instead, Extra- version and Neuroticism were frequently measured by the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1964), the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975), the EPQ- Revised (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1991), or short versions of one of these questionnaires. Measures related to Agreeableness comprised scales developed to measure masculinity versus femininity, aggression, altru- ism, empathy, and related constructs. Conscientiousness was indexed by measures of, for example, socialization, task orientation, and con- formity. Finally, Culture/Openness was assessed, among others, by scales for flexibility, artistic interests, science interests, and achieve- ment via independence. Two behavior-genetic models could reasonably be fitted to this exten- sive data collection. One of these models involved effects of additive genes (A), genetic epistasis (I), shared twin or sibling environments (C), nonadditive genetic effects for DZ twitis. Thus, the failure to take assortative mating into account results in an overestimation of effects due to etivironmental influences shiired hy sihiings and an underestimation of nonadditive genetic effects. Because we neither have appropriate estimates of assortative mating for otjr sample nor a thorough tinderstanding of its etiology (see Nealc & Cardon, 1992). we did not correct the cor- relations of genetic effects for DZ twins in our models. Kiemannetal. and a combination of specific (not shared by siblings) environmental, genotype-environment interaction, and measurement error (E). The other model included effects of A, C, and E, and of a special MZ twin environment (contributing to the similarity of MZ twins reared together). Given the evidence on the "equal environments" assumption, we focus on the data for the first model here. Several conclusions can be drawn from Loehlin's (1992) meta-analysis. For all five factors, additive genetic effects were the strongest source of the phenotypic variance, explaining 43% of the variance in Culture/Openness, 32% of Extraversion, 27% of Neuroticism, 24% of Agreeableness, and 22% of Conscientiousness. Conversely, shared sibling environment effects contributed little to phenotypic variance. They were negligible for Extraversion (2%) and small for Culture/Openness (6%), Conscien- tiousness (7%). Neuroticism (7%), and Agreeableness (11%). Nonaddi- tive genetic effects had a noticeable influence on all dimensions (11% to 17%) except Culture/Openness (2%). Highly similar results are reported by Bouchard (1994) for the Min- nesota study of twins reared apart and twins reared together using scales or factors of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ; Tellegen et al., 1988) to measure the five factors, although for these data a model involving A and E effects provide the most appro- priate description of the data. Earlier studies of twins reared together, however, yielded heritability estimates that were somewhat higher and indicated less influence of nonadditive genetic factors. Two studies of twins reared together (Beer & Rose, 1995; Jang. Livesley, & Vemon, 1996) that used direct measures of the five-factor model, the NEO-PI and the NEO-FFI (Costa & McCrae, 1985) yielded results similar to those reported by Loehlin (1992). The esti- mates of genetic effects on the phenotypic variance of the NEO-PI scales reported by Jang et al. (1996) were 61% for Openness, 53% for Extraversion, 44% for Conscientiousness, 41% for Neuroticism, and 41% for Agreeableness. However,