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 believed that behaviors are caused by a few genes that have major effects." "It has been demonstrated that the entire concept is incorrect." Numerous genetic factors, including thousands of genetic variants with imperceptible effects each, are implicated in personality development, according to current research. Genetic differences account for roughly 47% of personality variation, according to a 2015 meta-analysis of more than 2,500 twin studies covering nearly 18,000 human traits. According to genome-wide association studies that look at millions of tiny genetic variations across the entirety of a person's genome, the Big Five personality traits of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism only have a heritability rate of 9 to 18 percent. Scientists must now investigate which environmental factors, such as life events, social interactions, and life situations, create the missing genetic potential because the research demonstrates that humans have less genetic potential than previously thought. Professor Brent Roberts, who teaches psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, receives a number of unexpected findings from the research. He explains that major traumatic events involving adults only have minor psychological effects and won't have significant long-term effects. Marriage, divorce, and financial success do not significantly alter a person's personality because they are individual factors that affect their core personality traits.