Robust inference and correlates from genetic associations with personality
Abstract
Summary Paragraph Personality traits describe stable differences in how people think, feel, and behave and how they interact with and experience their social and physical environments1,2. Many questions remain unanswered about associations between DNA and personality traits, such as their robustness, generalizability, and the biological and social pathways through which they act. Here we meta-analyze data across 46 cohorts comprising 611K-1.14M participants with European-like and African-like genomes for genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of the Big Five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience), and data from 51K participants for within-family GWAS. We identify 1,260 lead genetic variants associated with personality, including 824 novel variants3. Common genetic variants explain a moderate 4.8%−9.3% of the variance in measures of each trait, and 9.3%−13.3% among instruments with typical measurement reliability. Genetic associations with personality are highly consistent but not identical across geography, reporter (self vs. close other), age group, and measurement instrument, and we find minimal spousal assortment for personality in recent history. In contrast to many other social and behavioral traits4,5, within-family GWAS and polygenic index analyses indicate that genetic associations with personality are minimally confounded by the shared family environment. Polygenic prediction, genetic correlation, and Mendelian randomization analyses indicate that personality traits have widespread, potentially causal associations with consequential behaviors and life outcomes. Overall, we find that the genetic architecture of personality is robustly generalizable, minimally confounded, and widely relevant to human experience.