Open AccessPolygenic score for educational attainment captures DNA variants shared between personality traits and educational achievement.
Author(s) -
Emily SmithWoolley,
Saskia Selzam,
Robert Plomin
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of personality and social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.455
H-Index - 369
eISSN - 1939-1315
pISSN - 0022-3514
DOI - 10.1037/pspp0000241
Subject(s) - agreeableness , conscientiousness , big five personality traits , psychology , hierarchical structure of the big five , neuroticism , personality , openness to experience , big five personality traits and culture , developmental psychology , extraversion and introversion , educational attainment , alternative five model of personality , academic achievement , social psychology , clinical psychology , economics , economic growth
Genome-wide polygenic scores (GPS) can be used to predict individual genetic risk and resilience. For example, a GPS for years of education ( EduYears ) explains substantial variance in cognitive traits such as general cognitive ability and educational achievement. Personality traits are also known to contribute to individual differences in educational achievement. However, the association between EduYears GPS and personality traits remains largely unexplored. Here, we test the relation between GPS for EduYears , neuroticism, and well-being, and 6 personality and motivation domains: Academic Motivation, Extraversion, Openness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Agreeableness. The sample was drawn from a U.K.-representative sample of up to 8,322 individuals assessed at age 16. We find that EduYears GPS was positively associated with Openness, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Academic Motivation, predicting between 0.6% and 3% of the variance. In addition, we find that EduYears GPS explains between 8% and 16% of the association between personality domains and educational achievement at the end of compulsory education. In contrast, both the neuroticism and well-being GPS significantly accounted for between 0.3% and 0.7% of the variance in a subset of personality domains. Furthermore, they did not significantly account for any of the covariance between the personality domains and achievement, with the exception of the neuroticism GPS explaining 5% of the covariance between Neuroticism and achievement. These results demonstrate that the genetic effects of educational attainment relate to personality traits, highlighting the multifaceted nature of EduYears GPS. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).