Relationship of Heritability to Personality Development

Personality Development
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Personality Development
Heritability
Heritability refers to the measure of how different genes can define different traits in people. The traits in this regard could be physical or inherent. Research has shown that in normal circumstances, different people might react differently to the same reactant or environment. However, in some instances, behavioral traits could be defined entirely by the environment (Mai et al., 2021). In such a situation, heritability is said to be zero. Heritability can also be used to measure the ability of different people to resist infections under the same environmental conditions (Mai et al., 2021). In addition, heritability can be a determinant factor of how different people react to the same medication or even certain types of foods even if they are twins (Allen, 1998). It can also be the difference in appearance and expression of different people subject to the same environment (Olson et al., 2019). Research has also shown that heritability varies with gender. For instance, a boy and a girl who are siblings may not respond the same way to a given situation even if they have been brought up the same way.
Cattell’s Study on Twins and Siblings
From his many studies on personality, Cattell concluded that traits are the building blocks of personality. In his theory, he categorized traits into two groups: surface and source traits (Olson et al., 2019). Surface traits only appear on the surface and can, therefore, not tell much about a person. Source traits, on the other hand, are the causes of behavior and make the most important part of a person’s personality structure. As such, they are responsible for one’s consistent behavior. In that regard, Cattell concluded that surface traits are defined by source traits.
In his study on twins, he researched identical twins raised together and separately. He also studied fraternal twins and siblings raised together and separately. The study showed that some traits are hereditary and cannot be altered by the surroundings. For instance, he concluded that general intelligence among identical twins has a high probability of being similar whether they are raised together o...