Carey G, DiLalla D L
Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado, Boulder 80309-0447.
J Abnorm Psychol. 1994 Feb;103(1):32-43. doi: 10.1037//0021-843x.103.1.32.
Genetic factors exert an important influence on adult personality traits, accounting for anywhere between 30% and 60% of the variance. Heredity is also important for most forms of psychopathology and plays a major role in several theories that relate personality to psychopathology. Despite this, there has been surprisingly little multivariate genetic research reported on joint analyses of personality and psychopathology. The small amount of available data suggests that genes may account for over 50% of the observed correlation between neuroticism and state symptoms of anxiety and depression. The mechanisms behind such strong genetic correlations are crucial for understanding the causal relationship between a personality trait and a disorder because genetically influenced biological systems may operate as exogenous "third-party" factors that are responsible for what appear to be phenotypic cause-effect relationships. We illustrate how recent analytical advances in behavior genetics can use multivariate family data to address questions about the causal role of personality in psychopathology.
遗传因素对成人个性特质有着重要影响，占变异的30%至60%。遗传因素对大多数精神病理学形式也很重要，并且在将个性与精神病理学联系起来的几种理论中发挥着重要作用。尽管如此，令人惊讶的是，关于个性与精神病理学联合分析的多变量遗传研究报告很少。少量现有数据表明，基因可能占神经质与焦虑和抑郁状态症状之间观察到的相关性的50%以上。这种强遗传相关性背后的机制对于理解个性特质与疾病之间的因果关系至关重要，因为受遗传影响的生物系统可能作为外源性“第三方”因素起作用，这些因素导致了看似表型的因果关系。我们说明了行为遗传学中最新的分析进展如何利用多变量家庭数据来解决个性在精神病理学中的因果作用问题。
