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Genetics of personality: are we making progress?

Molecular Psychiatry volume 8, pages 840–852 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

For centuries, scientists are intrigued by the differences in personality between individuals. As early as in the ancient Greek civilization, people tried to formulate theories to systematize this diversity. With the increased interest in behavior genetics, personality was also considered a challenging phenotype. From the early start, studies suggested a heritable component in personality. After the successes of molecular genetic studies in unraveling the genetic basis of (mostly) monogenic diseases, the focus shifted towards complex traits, including psychiatric disorders. It was observed in several studies that personality measures differed between patients with psychiatric disorders and healthy controls. Therefore, normal personality was considered a viable endophenotype in the search for genes involved in psychiatric disorders such as affective disorders, ADHD and substance dependence. Genes that were to be found in studies on personality could be candidate genes for particular psychiatric disorders. In the course of time, however the study of genes for personality turned out to be at least as hard as the search for genes involved in other complex disorders. In this review, past studies, present problems and future directions concerning the study of personality genetics are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Jurgen Del-Favero and Stephan Claes for critical reading of the manuscript, and the VIB Genetic Service Facility (http://www.vibgeneticservicefacility.be/) for their skillful genetic analyses. The research in the author's laboratory is funded by the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (FWO-F), the Special Research Fund of the University of Antwerp and the Interuniversity Attraction Poles (IUAP) program P5/19 of the Federal Office of Scientific, Technical and Cultural Affairs (OSTC), Belgium. SVG is a PhD fellow of the FWO-F.

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  1. Department of Molecular Genetics, Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB8), University of Antwerp (UIA), Antwerpen, Belgium

    S Van Gestel & C Van Broeckhoven

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  1. S Van Gestel
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  2. C Van Broeckhoven
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Correspondence to C Van Broeckhoven.

Appendix

Appendix

Overview of studies testing association between a candidate gene and personality in healthy subjects are given in the following Table A1.

Table 3 Table a1
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Van Gestel, S., Van Broeckhoven, C. Genetics of personality: are we making progress?. Mol Psychiatry 8, 840–852 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4001367

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Keywords

  • personality
  • temperament
  • character
  • genetics
  • candidate genes
  • polymorphisms
  • susceptibility

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