Using Behavior Genetics Methods to Understand the Structure of Personality

Ganiban, Jody M.; Chou, Cindi; Haddad, Suzanne K.; Lichtenstein, Paul; Reiss, David; Spotts, Erica L.; Neiderhiser, Jenaè M.

doi:10.3233/dev-2009-3208

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…In the interest of data reduction, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted with the TCI and KSP subscales (Ganiban et al, in press). Common factor analysis with an oblique rotation was used to determine how the personality scales clustered.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the role of personality in explaining associations between marital quality and parenting.

Ganiban

Ulbricht

Spotts

et al. 2009

Journal of Family Psychology

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This study examined the contributions of personality to the emotional and behavior dynamics of families. Analyses assessed the degrees to which personality accounts for associations between marital quality and parenting, and mediates genetic contributions to these relationships. Participants included 318 male and 544 female same-sex twin pairs from the Twin and Offspring Study in Sweden. All twins completed self-report measures of marital quality and personality (anxiousness, aggression, sociability). Composite measures of parent negativity and warmth were derived from the twins' and their adolescent children's ratings of the twins' disciplinary styles and the emotional tone of the parent-child relationship. Observational ratings of marital quality and parenting were also obtained for a subset of twins. Analyses indicated that personality characteristics explain 33% to 42% of the covariance between reported marital quality and parenting, and 26% to 28% of the covariance between observed marital quality and parenting. For both sets of analyses personality accounted for more than half of the genetic contributions to covariance between marital quality and parenting. Results indicate that personality significantly contributes to associations between marital quality and parenting, and that personality is an important path through which genetic factors contribute to family relationships.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the role of personality in explaining associations between marital quality and parenting.

Ganiban

Ulbricht

Spotts

et al. 2009

Journal of Family Psychology

Self Cite

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“…Theories and previous research link both personality characteristics to effortful control and/or self‐regulation. For example, the two components of emotion dysregulation—negative affectivity and self‐regulation—are intertwined during adulthood (Digman, 1997) and throughout development (Cioffi, Griffin, et al, 2021; Ferrier et al, 2014) and share common genetic influences (Ganiban et al, 2009). Likewise, agreeableness is correlated with measures of self‐regulation during adulthood (Digman, 1997; Laursen et al, 2002), adolescence (Kochanska & Kim, 2020), and childhood (Cumberland‐Li et al, 2004).…”

Section: Using Measures Of Temperament As Indices Of Genetic Influencementioning

confidence: 99%

Parenting in the Context of the Child: Genetic and Social Processes

Reiss

Ganiban

Leve³

et al. 2022

Monographs Society Res Child

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The focus on the role of parenting in child development has a long‐standing history. When measures of parenting precede changes in child development, researchers typically infer a causal role of parenting practices and attitudes on child development. However, this research is usually conducted with parents raising their own biological offspring. Such research designs cannot account for the effects of genes that are common to parents and children, nor for genetically influenced traits in children that influence how they are parented and how parenting affects them. The aim of this monograph is to provide a clearer view of parenting by synthesizing findings from the Early Growth and Development Study (EGDS).EGDS is a longitudinal study of adopted children, their birth parents, and their rearing parents studied across infancy and childhood. Families (N = 561) were recruited in the United States through adoption agencies between 2000 and 2010. Data collection began when adoptees were 9 months old (males = 57.2%; White 54.5%, Black 13.2%, Hispanic/Latinx 13.4%, Multiracial 17.8%, other 1.1%). The median child age at adoption placement was 2 days (M = 5.58, SD = 11.32). Adoptive parents were predominantly in their 30s, White, and coming from upper‐middle‐ or upper‐class backgrounds with high educational attainment (a mode at 4‐year college or graduate degree). Most adoptive parents were heterosexual couples, and were married at the beginning of the project. The birth parent sample was more racially and ethnically diverse, but the majority (70%) were White. At the beginning of the study, most birth mothers and fathers were in their 20s, with a mode of educational attainment at high school degree, and few of them were married. We have been following these family members over time, assessing their genetic influences, prenatal environment, rearing environment, and child development.Controlling for effects of genes common to parents and children, we confirmed some previously reported associations between parenting, parent psychopathology, and marital adjustment in relation to child problematic and prosocial behavior. We also observed effects of childrenʼs heritable characteristics, characteristics thought to be transmitted from parent to child by genetic means, on their parents and how those effects contributed to subsequent child development. For example, we found that genetically influenced child impulsivity and social withdrawal both elicited harsh parenting, whereas a genetically influenced sunny disposition elicited parental warmth. We found numerous instances of children's genetically influenced characteristics that enhanced positive parental influences on child development or that protected them from harsh parenting. Integrating our findings, we propose a new, genetically informed process model of parenting. We posit that parents implicitly or explicitly detect genetically influenced liabilities and assets in their children. We also suggest future research into factors such as marital adjustment, that favor parents responding with appropriate protection or enhancement. Our findings illustrate a productive use of genetic information in prevention research: helping parents respond effectively to a profile of child strengths and challenges rather than using genetic information simply to identify some children unresponsive to current preventive interventions.

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“…As an added bonus, DeThorne and Hart also describe how the most simple of quantitative genetic analyses can be used to uncover sophisticated evocative gene-environment effects. The final paper in the issue (Ganiban et al, 2009) uses more complex quantitative genetic modelling. The paper is an excellent example of the way in which genetic designs can be used to inform mainstream developmental theory.…”

Section: Using Sibling Designs To Understand Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Sibling Designs to Understand Development

Pike¹

2009

International Journal of Developmental Science

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Although sibling relationships, and particularly sibling rivalry, have featured prominently in religious texts, literature, and the popular media (Bart Simpson would certainly not be the same without his foil of a sister Lisa), siblings are often neglected in scientific research. Even among family researchers, the prominence of the parentchild relationship in comparison to the sibling relationship is staggering. A perusal of this year's Society for Research in Child Development program yields a ratio of 20:1 for parent-child: sibling presentations. This is in spite of the fact that children's time spent with siblings often outstrips that spent with parents (Larson & Richards, 1994), and that in some cases the contribution of siblings is at least as great as that made by parents in fields as diverse as gender development (McHale, Updegraff, Helms-Erikson, & Crouter, 2001) and antisocial behaviour (Garcia, Shaw, Winslow, & Yaggi, 2000).As well as the sibling relationship being an important context for children's individual development-as some of the articles in the issue will demonstrate-data from siblings also allow for specialized analytic possibilities. When I was invited to guest edit a special issue about siblings, it was the opportunity to disseminate these methodological prospects that appealed to me. Therefore, I solicited contributions that would demonstrate the value of sibling designs, regardless of whether a researcher is interested in siblings per se.The crux of sibling designs is that they allow researchers to examine within-family processes as well as between-family processes. Arguably, we have behavioral geneticists to thank for our appreciation of within-family effects. In 1987, Robert Plomin and Denise Daniels published an article, "Why are children in the same family so different from each other?" which highlighted the fact that once genes are taken into account, most environmental influence works within families, making siblings different to one another, rather than between families (which would lead to sibling similarity). The articles that make up this special issue showcase different techniques that have been developed to understand children's development using sibling designs to pinpoint both between-and within-family processes.The first article by Richmond and Stocker (2009) uses a difference score approach to quantify within-family variation. Sibling differences in experience of marital conflict and parent-child hostility are shown to link with sibling differences in the children's externalizing problems. This elegant tool has stood the test of time because it is a simple, elegant, powerful method that is unsurpassed in terms of reader friendliness.In the second article Tina Kretschmer and I (Pike & Kretschmer, 2009) use structural equation modelling to quantify both shared (between-family) and nonshared (within-family) sources of correlation. This method is a simplification of models developed for twin and/or adoption data by behavioral geneticists. In our exemplar

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Using Behavior Genetics Methods to Understand the Structure of Personality

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Understanding the role of personality in explaining associations between marital quality and parenting.

Understanding the role of personality in explaining associations between marital quality and parenting.

Parenting in the Context of the Child: Genetic and Social Processes

Using Sibling Designs to Understand Development

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