Abstract
Genome-wide polygenic scores (GPS) can be used to predict individual genetic risk and resilience. For example, a GPS for years of education (EduYears) explains substantial variance in cognitive traits such as general cognitive ability and educational achievement. Personality traits are also known to contribute to individual differences in educational achievement. However, the association between EduYears GPS and personality traits remains largely unexplored. Here, we test the relation between GPS for EduYears, neuroticism, and well-being, and 6 personality and motivation domains: Academic Motivation, Extraversion, Openness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Agreeableness. The sample was drawn from a U.K.-representative sample of up to 8,322 individuals assessed at age 16. We find that EduYears GPS was positively associated with Openness, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Academic Motivation, predicting between 0.6% and 3% of the variance. In addition, we find that EduYears GPS explains between 8% and 16% of the association between personality domains and educational achievement at the end of compulsory education. In contrast, both the neuroticism and well-being GPS significantly accounted for between 0.3% and 0.7% of the variance in a subset of personality domains. Furthermore, they did not significantly account for any of the covariance between the personality domains and achievement, with the exception of the neuroticism GPS explaining 5% of the covariance between Neuroticism and achievement. These results demonstrate that the genetic effects of educational attainment relate to personality traits, highlighting the multifaceted nature of EduYears GPS. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Highlights
Education is one of society’s most expensive intervention programmes
To test the predictive validity of the polygenic score for years of education (EduYears Genome-wide polygenic scores (GPS)) and the six personality and motivation domains that contribute to educational success, we performed association analyses
Our results show that a genome-wide polygenic score (GPS) for educational attainment predicts a number of personality and motivation domains, including Agreeableness, Openness, Conscientiousness and Academic Motivation
Summary
Education is one of society’s most expensive intervention programmes. Among the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), education accounts for between 6-15% of annual gross domestic product (OECD, 2017) and the average young person in these countries will stay in education until the age of 22 (OECD, 2007). Work showed that ‘cognitive capacity’ played a substantial role in education performance (Binet & Simon, 1916), a term that many refer to as general cognitive ability or ‘g’. Around the same time, Webb (1915) proposed that in addition to g, academic performance was influenced by a ‘w’ or ‘will’ factor, representing drive or motivation (Webb, 1915) This led the way for ‘psychological’ explanations of educational success. Most accept a more complex model of academic performance that comprises both what a person can do (general cognitive ability) and how a person will do it (personality, motivation and other psychosocial influences)
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