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How nonshared environmental factors come to correlate with heredity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2020

Christopher R. Beam*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Patrizia Pezzoli
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Åbo Akademi University, Abo, Finland
Jane Mendle
Affiliation:
Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
S. Alexandra Burt
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
Michael C. Neale
Affiliation:
Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA
Steven M. Boker
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA
Pamela K. Keel
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
Kelly L. Klump
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
*
Author for Correspondence: Christopher R. Beam, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Gerontology, Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, 3620 McClintock Ave, Seeley G. Mudd, Room 501, Los Angeles, CA90089; E-mail: beamc@usc.edu

Abstract

Conventional longitudinal behavioral genetic models estimate the relative contribution of genetic and environmental factors to stability and change of traits and behaviors. Longitudinal models rarely explain the processes that generate observed differences between genetically and socially related individuals. We propose that exchanges between individuals and their environments (i.e., phenotype–environment effects) can explain the emergence of observed differences over time. Phenotype–environment models, however, would require violation of the independence assumption of standard behavioral genetic models; that is, uncorrelated genetic and environmental factors. We review how specification of phenotype–environment effects contributes to understanding observed changes in genetic variability over time and longitudinal correlations among nonshared environmental factors. We then provide an example using 30 days of positive and negative affect scores from an all-female sample of twins. Results demonstrate that the phenotype–environment effects explain how heritability estimates fluctuate as well as how nonshared environmental factors persist over time. We discuss possible mechanisms underlying change in gene–environment correlation over time, the advantages and challenges of including gene–environment correlation in longitudinal twin models, and recommendations for future research.

Type
Regular Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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