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The Majority of Genetic Variation in Orangutan Personality and Subjective Well-Being is Nonadditive

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An Erratum to this article was published on 01 August 2012

Abstract

The heritability of human personality is well-established. Recent research indicates that nonadditive genetic effects, such as dominance and epistasis, play a large role in personality variation. One possible explanation for the latter finding is that there has been recent selection on human personality. To test this possibility, we estimated additive and nonadditive genetic variance in personality and subjective well-being of zoo-housed orangutans. More than half of the genetic variance in these traits could be attributed to nonadditive genetic effects, modeled as dominance. Subjective well-being had genetic overlap with personality, though less so than has been found in humans or chimpanzees. Since a large portion of nonadditive genetic variance in personality is not unique to humans, the nonadditivity of human personality is not sufficient evidence for recent selection of personality in humans. Nonadditive genetic variance may be a general feature of the genetic structure of personality in primates and other animals.

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Notes

  1. Both personality and subjective well-being questionnaires can be obtained from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006322311008572.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Jarrod Hadfield for useful advice about genetic modeling and the personnel at the zoos for rating the orangutans. This work has made use of the resources provided by the Edinburgh Compute and Data Facility (ECDF).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, 7 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9JZ, UK

    Mark James Adams & Alexander Weiss

  2. Scottish Primate Research Group, Scotland, UK

    Mark James Adams & Alexander Weiss

  3. Department of Psychology, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    James E. King

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  1. Mark James Adams
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Correspondence to Mark James Adams.

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Edited by Eric Turkheimer.

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Adams, M.J., King, J.E. & Weiss, A. The Majority of Genetic Variation in Orangutan Personality and Subjective Well-Being is Nonadditive. Behav Genet 42, 675–686 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-012-9537-y

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