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The heritability of self-control: A meta-analysis
- blakesterz 7y agoOne of the results from the abstract were interesting: "The heritability did differ across informants, with stronger heritability estimates based on parent report versus self-report or observations." Parents see their kids differently than the kids see them selves I guess? I wonder if we tend to compare our kids to their siblings when we report on things like this. I wonder if only children would have different parent reported traits on things like this? I guess we all see ourselves different than others see us.
- carbocation 7y agoWe are probably not the most accurate observers of our external behaviors, since it’s too easy for us to mix memories of those with our internal state.
- yosefk 7y agoI think this quote basically says that "a parent's self-control correlates strongly with the parent's perception of a child's self-control" and this somewhat undermines the conclusion wrt heritability.
- Mirioron 7y agoI've wondered for a long time whether being hardworking is a "talent" that some people naturally have more of. Self-control being heritable would be some support for that idea.
- stri8ed 7y agoI always thought it erroneous when people say somebody "has the genes to be a great X" but made nothing of it. The ability to actualize those genes, itself, requires good genes for "executing" (motivation, discipline etc..). So if somebody is lazy, but with "great genes", then those genes are in fact not great.
- Mirioron 7y agoI think the idea many people have is that being hardworking is something you decide on your own and not related to your genes. Being lazy is seen as a character flaw that a person could change rather than something more innate. I think they're right to a degree, but I'm also guessing that it's easier for some people to not be lazy than others.
- sixplusone 7y agoBut if you factor in environmental influence, such as having a tiger parent, then the great genes for X would still be activated without requiring the complimentary execution genes. Nurture nurtures nature.
- stri8ed 7y agoNo doubt, like all things genes, environment has a non-negligible impact.
- dr_dshiv 7y agoHave you heard of "learned industriousness"?
- Mirioron 7y agoI had not heard of the term, but the ideas behind it are what I've considered. My own guess is that it's a mix of both genes and behavior. If being hardworking was based purely on the environment then I suspect that we would see a lot more success in treatment of ADHD without drugs. But it does make intuitive sense to me that it is something you can build up as well.
- jawns 7y agoThis line of research has interesting implications for moral philosophy. If the degree to which we are able to resist our impulses is partly determined by our genetics, does that affect our level of moral responsibility for our impulse-driven actions? Or does it merely mean that people who are more "at risk" of having poor impulse control because of their genetics have a moral obligation to recognize that fact and take measures to combat the deficiency? For instance, if I know that I have relatively poor impulse control, should I ask my spouse to handle our finances so I don't blow all of our money? And if I fail to do so, is that the moral failing I'm responsible for, rather than the moral failing related to making impulsive purchases?
- m3kw9 7y agoThe everything happens for a reason line of thinking always holds, sort of in a form of a question: is there such a thing as free will?
- dabbledash 7y agoThe questions are the same, whether you think traits are caused mostly by genes or mostly environment. Either way, everything has a cause.
- criddell 7y agoEverything has a cause but the morality changes depending on the cause. If a person has a heart attack while driving and runs over a pedestrian, that's a tragedy all around. If a person runs over a pedestrian because they were texting while driving that's irresponsible.
- keiferski 7y agoTo paraphrase Nietzsche: the concept of free will was only invented [by subjugated group] in order to assign blame to [person/group in power] for their actions, and to do the inverse - justify one's (undesirable) position, i.e. "I'm in a subservient position because I choose to be, and not because I lack power / knowledge / ability." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche_and_free_will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche_and_free_w... In the end, I think it probably leads to a form of consequentialism. It doesn't matter if you are more or less inclined to certain actions, but simply what the consequences are.
- IIAOPSW 7y agoOf course it is heritable. The uncomfortable question is if its genetic.
- yasp 7y agoWith the monozygotic twin correlation being twice the dizygotic twin correlation, what other explanations are there?
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- oldgradstudent 7y agoIs been fairly well established empirically that monozygotic twins are treated differently than dizygiyic twins. Specifically, they share a much more similar environment than dizgoyic twins. In other words, the equal environment assumption does not hold in reality.
- username90 7y agoHow do you prove that? Environment are in large parts shaped by your genes. If you are an easy to please baby then your parents will like you more. If you sit quietly and study in class your teacher will like you more. If you are good looking people will want to be your friend. Basically the environment adapts to your natural traits and makes them stronger. This variance gets attributed to your genes and not nurture, since the environment was shaped by genes and not by artificial means like parental intervention.
- oldgradstudent 7y agoEven if we accept this argument (I don't, to be clear), it could well be that what's heritable is the way MZ twins are treated versus the way DZ twins are treated, not self-control. In that case, the fact that twin studies conclude that self-control is heritable is an artifact of the twin method.
- oyebenny 7y agoIt's scary if we found this to be genetic. Only because you know the potential consequences humans using this information. Fast forward to clone wars.
- lopmotr 7y agoNo because we already know IQ is largely genetic. Whatever fears you would have about impulse control, you should already have about IQ. In real life, people prefer to have inferior children that are their own, over superior children that aren't really their own.
- BurningFrog 7y agoThe `Three Laws of Behavior Genetics` need to be better known: 1. All human behavioral traits are heritable. 2. The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes. 3. A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families. http://humancond.org/papers/turkheimer00_three_laws_behavior_genetics http://humancond.org/papers/turkheimer00_three_laws_behavior...
- MrQuincle 7y ago2. How is two known? 3. Indeed. Birth order is for example one of them. This makes it even harder to know 2.
- BurningFrog 7y ago> 2. How is two known? The primary tool of the trade is twin studies. You compare (identical) twins, who have the same genes with siblings (shares half the genes) and unrelated people. Most wanted are twins who grew up separated, so you can discerns environment from genetics.
- throwawaylolx 7y agoAnd did they test all behavioral traits or how do you get to an unqualified "the effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes"?
- username90 7y agoThere have been twin studies like this done for basically every trait, yes. Even things like how religious you are as an adult has basically nothing to do with which family you grew up in.
- polski-g 7y agoBecause there hasn't been a single trait ever examined in which the shared environment influence is greater than that of the genetic one
- travisp 7y agoIt's important to understand that the way many people understand heritability usually isn't what most scientific researchers mean when they say "heritable." > Heritability is an important concept in quantitative genetics, particularly in selective breeding and behavior genetics (for instance, twin studies). It is the source of much confusion due to the fact that its technical definition is different from its commonly-understood folk definition. Therefore, its use conveys the incorrect impression that behavioral traits are "inherited" or specifically passed down through the genes. ... > Heritability measures the fraction of phenotype variability that can be attributed to genetic variation. This is not the same as saying that this fraction of an individual phenotype is caused by genetics. For example, it is incorrect to say that since the heritability of personality traits is about .6, that means that 60% of your personality is inherited from your parents and 40% comes from the environment. In addition, heritability can change without any genetic change occurring, such as when the environment starts contributing to more variation...High heritability of a trait, consequently, does not necessarily mean that the trait is not very susceptible to environmental influences. Heritability can also change as a result of changes in the environment, migration, inbreeding, or the way in which heritability itself is measured in the population under study. The heritability of a trait should not be interpreted as a measure of the extent to which said trait is genetically determined in an individual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability
- Gh0stRAT 7y agoThe example I heard that really drove this point home for me is that humans almost all have 10 fingers, and the ones who don't are almost entirely due to the environment (frostbite, table saw accidents, etc) so the number of fingers on a human hand is actually a low-heritability trait.
- username90 7y agoDid they actually do a twin study on finger count, or are you making things up? Otherwise you can't know for sure. For example, I'd bet that propensity to lose limbs correlate strongly with willingness to engage in risky activities, and risk taking has a significant genetic component according to other studies.
- johnvega 7y agoWould be great if we get more info on epigenetic or gene expression.
- afthonos 7y agoI think it's worth pointing out that "heritability" means something very unintuitive in the literature. It measure the fraction of the variability that can be attributed to genetic variation, as opposed to environmental factors. This does not mean what people think it means. In particular, the changes in environment can drastically affect the heritability of a trait. An example: suppose you measure how fast people can run. If you take people and forbid them from training (say, lock them in a room), the variability will be fully heritable, since no one is training and the environment is exactly the same. The difference will be whatever the genes say it is. Conversely, if you make some of them train and other not, the variability will include environmental components, namely, who trains. This has obvious implications for how to interpret this and similar results, depending on whether you find high heritability a good thing or a bad thing.
- username90 7y agoNo, the studies are very clear, we take the variance of nature and variance of nurture at a population level and see how much a standard deviation effects some observable trait. Of course if you look at extreme cases of nature or nurture like being locked up your entire life or being born with a birth defect then that part will dominate, but we can still look at the overall population distribution and say something relevant about heritability since most people have pretty normal genes and environments.
- lucienlecam 7y agoHeritability (i.e. narrow-sense heritability as typically used in most research articles) is not so clear-cut as to be split between nature and nurture. Even the GP is slightly incorrect when saying: > ...as opposed to environmental factors because for heritability, the distinction is between the variance explained by additive genetic effects versus the total variance of the trait of interest. There are other sources of phenotypic variance like epigenetics, non-additive genetic effects, or complex interactions that fall outside the scope of heritability.
- username90 7y ago
- username90 7y agoTo me it is obvious that self-control depends significantly on your genes. I have ADD, but lived a long time without medication. I could barely do get anything done at all before I got medication, and then when I'm on medication I become one of the most dedicated workers you've ever seen. If something as simple as dopamine can have such a profound effect on my self-control then I have a hard time seeing how the myriad of other effects genes have on our brain can't also significantly alter our self-control.