Genetics of personality

Despite the early promise of behavioral genetic research, efforts to disentangle the genetic contribution to individual differences in behavior (e.g., personality traits) have been slow. Early studies relied on a candidate gene approach to identify genes influencing these traits; however, many of these failed to replicate, despite having a plausible biological mechanism. More recent studies have used whole genome approaches to investigate the genetic architecture of behavioral traits. However, unlike many other complex traits such as height (Marouli et al., 2017; Wood et al., 2014) and schizophrenia (Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, 2014), relatively few genetic variants have been identified which are robustly associated with temperament and individual differences in personality.