Veselka Livia, Schermer Julie Aitken, Just Caroline, Hur Yoon-Mi, Rushton J Philippe, Jeong Hoe-Uk, Vernon Philip A
Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
Twin Res Hum Genet. 2012 Oct;15(5):668-71. doi: 10.1017/thg.2012.21. Epub 2012 Jun 13.
The mothers of 603 pairs of 3- to 13-year-old twins in Korea completed the Emotionality, Activity, Sociability (EAS) Temperament Survey and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in reference to their twins. Principal factor analysis of the seven scales comprising these measures yielded a general factor on which all the scales had moderate to large loadings. Univariate behavioral genetic analyses showed that individual differences on this general factor could best be accounted for by additive genetic and non-shared environmental effects, with a heritability of 53%. The results strengthen the construct validity of the general factor of personality (GFP) by extracting this higher-order dimension from disparate measures, and have implications regarding social desirability criticisms applied to the GFP theory.
