The heritability of personality and how parenting has little influence on personality

[La Sagna]

The Minnesota Family Twin Studies have found that 50% to 70% of personality traits are inherited. They did this by comparing identical twins who grew up in different families. The similarities in personality were striking, correlated at 50% when studying their self-perceptions but up to 70% when also combined with their best friend's description of their personality.

The other striking finding is that there is 0% correlation to parenting, because there is no difference in personality similarity correlation in twins raised together and twins raised with different parents. What is believed is that parenting in general has little influence but unique experiences overall including unique parenting experiences probably makes up the rest of the personality. So, in the case of parenting, the unique dynamic between a particular child and parent probably has more of an influence, so if there is a child that is high in neuroticism and low in agreeableness then the dynamic with its parent would be different than with a child that is low in neuroticism and high in agreeableness.

This last part about the dynamics between a parent and child is something that I have observed myself. I have believed for a long time that the particular combination of personalities between a parent and child makes a huge difference in family dynamics and the development of healthy relationships. Siblings can have very different personalities and they can have very different relationships with the same parent. Sometimes one sibling gets along well with a parent and the other one has a really negative view of the same parent, or the same parent has the same situation with their two children. It's the combination of the particular personality dynamics of the two individuals, parent and child.

The correlation between non identical twins is 25% and for other siblings it is 10%. It is believed that something called emergenesis takes the 50% genes from each parent and recombines them to create a very different personality that is not necessarily similar to the siblings who also have 50% each from the same parents.

 

[Scientia]

Thanks for sharing this. I am familiar with the study and always believed this to be the case.

 

[Cornerstone]

What is parenting if not the relationship between the parent and the child?

I agree that we have a core of personality though and that a lot of the way we act is due to unconscious leakages or just being blind to the fact that we pile on extra and break up the parts of ourselves during childhood.

 

[La Sagna]

What is parenting if not the relationship between the parent and the child?

True, but what they found is that it is not parenting generally that has much influence but the unique experiences of the individual. Identical twins raised separately had the same correlation of personality traits as those raised apart. The theory then is the rest of the difference in personality is the unique experiences of the individual in their life, which would include parenting. This means that parenting has a lot less influence on basic personality traits than was believed, but that doesn't mean there is no influence otherwise, it's specific to the Big Five personality traits.

 

[drummergirlbk]

Is there any way you can post the link to this study? I'm very interested in learning more about this. Over the past couple of days I've figured out how it might be possible for the s/n and the j/p of one's type to be genetic, but I need more data to confirm my theory. I'd say someone else has probably already thought of this but I would really like to check it out

 

[La Sagna]

My information is from the documents of a university course I'm taking so I can't post that info but here is a link to the website for the Minnesota Center for Twin Studies. There's actually quite a lot of information about the findings online.

https://mctfr.psych.umn.edu/

 

[Gaze]

This last part about the dynamics between a parent and child is something that I have observed myself. I have believed for a long time that the particular combination of personalities between a parent and child makes a huge difference in family dynamics and the development of healthy relationships.

Agree. I think it almost entirely determines how someone's personality develops based on parent's personality and parenting style. Attachment style theory would help to clarify some of the effects of differing parenting styles on a child's development to adulthood. But how much of it is based on perception? If a child is given too much attention in one area but an overabundance of attention in another, depending on those areas, is a child's personality more likely to sway in one direction more than another?