This news seems consistent with what I've heard in general about the genetic influence on behavior (and most other traits we care about, like height): They are often very genetically influenced (on the order of 50%), but this influence is usually spread over a huge number of genes and variants. Possibly over every gene. I remember a study about height where about half the genetic influence was only captured when they considered the literal whole genome (vs. SNPs), and even then a huge amount were unique variations.
So, yes "trait X" likely has a strong genetic component. But don't hold your breath that you'll be able to control it by CRISPERing it or something. And don't hold your breath that we'll even be able to model and predict the effects of any particular genomic sequence. This is part of why I'm less worried about fertility eugenics creating a dystopia. Several other dystopia's will beat it to the punch.
marojejian•42m ago
But this is just the influence of "common" 1000 markers they looked at. Overall Big Five personality is >40% genetically heritable:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8776880/
(Found this via NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/science/genes-personality... )
This news seems consistent with what I've heard in general about the genetic influence on behavior (and most other traits we care about, like height): They are often very genetically influenced (on the order of 50%), but this influence is usually spread over a huge number of genes and variants. Possibly over every gene. I remember a study about height where about half the genetic influence was only captured when they considered the literal whole genome (vs. SNPs), and even then a huge amount were unique variations.
So, yes "trait X" likely has a strong genetic component. But don't hold your breath that you'll be able to control it by CRISPERing it or something. And don't hold your breath that we'll even be able to model and predict the effects of any particular genomic sequence. This is part of why I'm less worried about fertility eugenics creating a dystopia. Several other dystopia's will beat it to the punch.