Commentary by Dr. David Duke — Our genes affect our personalities and learning abilities more than environment. We know this by comparing large number of identical twins who share all their genes and fraternal twins who share half of them.
They grow up in obviously a very similar environment, same parents, schools, and way of being raised, but identical twins are far closer in personality traits. This is simply a fact of nature, and just as genes have a huge impact on the individual, so they also effect the character or personality of groups that share common genes.
This is not a bad thing, this is precisely what gives humanity its diversity and its distinctions in cultural, artistic, and other expressions. And it affords a reason why a society in preserving its ethnic makeup is in effect helping to preserve its particular character. As nations change in their demographic composition, the character of the country changes. As Sherlock Holmes would say, “It is elementary my dear Watson!”
Article from the UK Telegraph:
It’s nature, not nurture: personality lies in genes, twins study shows
Nature rather than nurture is responsible for creating your personality, according to a study of twins which found that character is something you are born with.
Genes play a greater role in determining key personality traits like social skills and learning ability than the way we are brought up by our parents, researchers claimed.
The findings contradict the existing belief among psychologists that the environment we grow up in plays a larger role than genetics in shaping our personality.
Researchers from Edinburgh University studied more than 800 sets of identical and non-identical twins to learn whether genetics or upbringing has a greater effect on how successful people are in life.
Twins are useful in such studies because almost all twins share the same home environment as each other, but only identical twins share exactly the same genetics.
Participants were asked a series of questions about how they perceive themselves and others, such as “are you influenced by people with strong opinions?”
By applying their answers to a well-established scale of psychological scale, researchers could assess and categorise different personality traits for each person.
Writing in the Journal of Personality, the researchers found that identical twins were twice as likely as non-identical twins to share the same personality traits, suggesting that their DNA was having the greatest impact.
Genetics were most influential on people’s sense of self-control and also affected their social and learning abilities and their sense of purpose.
Prof Timothy Bates, who led the study, said: “Previously, the role of family and the environment around the home often dominated people’s ideas about what affected psychological wellbeing. However, this work highlights a much more powerful influence from genetics.”
The study was focused on personality traits which contribute to our chances of success in life by dictating whether, for example, how determined we are to overcome challenges.
Prof Bates said: “If you think of things that people are born with you think of social status or virtuoso talent, but this is looking at what we do with what we’ve got.
“The biggest factor we found was self control. There was a big genetic difference in [people’s ability to] restrain themselves and persist with things when they got difficult and react to challenges in a positive way.”
