Massive study reveals how much personality comes from DNA

Are you naturally outgoing, anxious, disciplined, or the kind of person who hears "let's go out" and immediately starts inventing excuses? Science has an explanation. Your personality may be partly written into your DNA, but your genes aren't running the entire show.

A massive new study involving genetic and personality data from more than 1 million people has identified over 1,000 genetic variants associated with major personality traits. The researchers found that genetics can account for up to roughly 13% of the differences in personality.

No, you can't blame absolutely everything on your DNA. Read on for more understanding of how it works.

More than a million people in the study

The study, published in Nature , examined genetic information alongside personality questionnaires from more than a million people. Researchers focused on psychology's famous "Big Five" personality traits: extraversion, openness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness.

Think of them as the basic stats on your character sheet. But unlike a video game, you don't simply inherit a single "extraversion gene" from your parents and suddenly become the life of every party. That is not how this works.

Nothing like an extrovert gene

One of the study's most important findings is that personality appears to be influenced by lots and lots of genetic variants, each with a tiny effect. For decades, scientists searching for a clear genetic explanation for personality kept running into a problem. They were often looking for one or two major genes that controlled a specific trait.

However, the new research suggests personality is far more complicated. There isn't one gene that makes you love parties or one that turns you into someone who color-codes their calendar.

Instead, potentially thousands of tiny genetic influences interact with each other and with your environment to help shape who you become. In other words, your personality isn't a single setting hidden somewhere in your DNA. It is more like an incredibly complicated playlist with thousands of tracks, environmental remixes, and several years' worth of unexpected life experiences thrown in.

Your personality may influence where you live, too

The researchers also found some fascinating connections between genetic profiles associated with personality traits and people's real-world behavior. People with genetic profiles linked to greater openness to new experiences, for example, were more likely to end up living in cosmopolitan cities during middle age.

Meanwhile, those with genetic profiles associated with higher levels of neuroticism were more likely to live in affluent suburbs.

Another particularly pandemic-era finding is that people with genetic profiles linked to extraversion were more likely to get COVID earlier in the pandemic. When social restrictions began easing, people who had desperately missed interacting with other humans were probably more eager to get back out there.

The DNA is only part of the story

Before anyone runs out for a genetic test hoping to discover whether they're secretly destined to become an introvert, scientist, or chaotic group-chat menace, there is an important catch. The study found that genetics explains only a relatively small, though statistically significant, portion of personality differences—up to around 13%.

The rest involves an enormous combination of environmental factors, experiences, relationships, culture, upbringing, and probably that one incredibly embarrassing thing that happened to you in seventh grade and somehow still influences your behavior today. Genes can influence personality, but they don't determine your destiny.

An extremely outgoing parent isn't guaranteed to have an extremely outgoing child, for example. Human beings, after all, are complicated.

Source: TIME

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