Only 9–18% of Your Personality Is Genetic, New Study Finds — Here’s What Really Shapes You
Only 9 to 18% of your personality is encoded in your DNA, according to a study. The "warrior gene" myth is being busted and our understanding of nature is being rewritten by recent large-scale personality genetics research. A defense attorney in Trieste, Italy, successfully argued in 2009 that his client's possession of the so-called "warrior gene," a variant of the MAOA gene linked to aggressive behavior, should result in a one-year reduction in his client's murder sentence. The argument paid off. It turns out that the science did not hold up nearly as well. After the 1990s, researchers found a link between the MAOA gene variant and violent behavior, which the media reported. However, according to Aysu Okbay, an assistant professor of psychiatry and complex trait genetics at Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands, the entire premise of behavior explanations based on a single gene has since vanished. Advertisement She states, "People ...