The University of British Columbia Twin Project: Personality is Something and Personality Does Something

Abstract

Twin Project is a registry of approximately 1500 pairs of reared-together twins recruited from Vancouver, British Columbia and surrounding municipalities. The focus of the project is to examine personality and its disorders from a behavioral genetic perspective. The primary measures include self-report measures of variables from the major models of personality and personality disorders. Subsamples of the study have also been surveyed on a wide range of psychiatric conditions and symptoms, including, for example, substance use, mood, anxiety, coping, posttraumatic stress disorder, schizotypy, and several measures of the environment and experience. Also surveyed are general health and basic psychological processes including cognitive ability. This broad assessment has enabled us to examine not only the structure of personality, but also its potential role in psychopathology and other psychological processes. A feature of the project is that the measures selected reflect current thinking in the field as opposed to traditional psychiatric diagnostic criteria. The UBC Twin Project has been used in a number of collaborative projects on personality and psychopathology with other worldwide twin registries. At the present time, no DNA has been collected; however the facility to collect these data is available. Collaborative projects on this and future questionnaire studies are welcome.

Biopsychosocial etiology of obsessions and compulsions: An integrated behavioral–genetic and cognitive–behavioral analysis.

“…Previous research on twins recruited for the UBC Twin Project indicates that the early environments (prior to age 18) of MZ twins are not significantly different from those of DZ twins (Taylor, Jang, Stewart, & Stein, 2(X)8), thereby fulfilling the assumption of equal MZ and DZ environments, which underlies the methodology of twin studies such as the present investigation. Consistent with other twin studies (e.g., Johnson, Krueger, Bouchard, & McGue, 2002), twins from the UBC Twin Project have been shown to be representative of the general population in terms of demographics, personality traits, and various clinical variables (see e.g., Jang et al, 2006),…”

“…A community sample of 167 MZ and 140 DZ twin pairs was recruited across Canada as part of the University of British Columbia (UBC) Twin Project (Jang, Taylor, & Livesley, 2006). The sample consisted of 33 MZ male-male pairs, 134 MZ female-female pairs, 14 DZ male-male pairs, 86 DZ female-female pairs, and 40 DZ male-female pairs.…”

Personality characteristics below facets: A replication and meta-analysis of cross-rater agreement, rank-order stability, heritability, and utility of personality nuances.

“…The Australian sample, drawn from the borderline personality disorder Study and the Genetics of Laterality, Smell, Taste, and Reading Study at QIMR Berghofer Medical Institute (Distel et al, 2008; Gillespie et al, 2013), consisted of 866 twins, who had completed the personality inventory (with no more than 40 missing responses for either twin). The Canadian sample, drawn from the University of British Columbia Twin Project and described in Jang, Livesley, and Vernon (2002) and Jang, Taylor, and Livesley (2006), consisted of 900 twins. The Danish sample is described in Schousboe and colleagues (2004) and Makransky, Mortensen, and Glas (2013); here, we use data from 1,190 Danish twins.…”