Abstract
A method is proposed for fitting heredity-environment models simultaneously to data from several groups on multiple measures. The procedure is shown to be computationally practicable by applying it to the 18-scale California Psychological Inventory (CPI), using data from 17 subgroups from two twin studies and an adoption study. A number of models involving different assumptions about heredity and environment were tested. Overall, the genes appeared to contribute about 40% of the personality test variance; shared family environment, 5% or less; and other factors, presumably including idiosyncratic experiences, gene-environment interaction, and measurement error, the remaining 55%. On the whole, making distinctions among genetic parameters improved the fits of models more often than did making distinctions among environmental parameters, and models that allowed for differences across traits fit significantly better than models that did not.
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This work was supported in part by Grant BNS-7902918 from the National Science Foundation.
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Loehlin, J.C. Fitting heredity-environment models jointly to twin and adoption data from the California Psychological Inventory. Behav Genet 15, 199–221 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01065978
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01065978