Genetic and Environmental Effects on Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness: An Adoption/Twin Study

ABSTRACT Previous research has indicated that extraversion and neuroticism are substantially affected both by genotype and environment. This study assesses genetic and environmental influences on the other three components of the five-factor model of personality: Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. An abbreviated version of the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI) was administered to 82 pairs of identical twins and 171 pairs of fraternal twins reared apart and 132 pairs of identical twins and 167 pairs of fraternal twins reared together. Estimates of genetic and environmental effects for Openness and Conscientiousness were similar to those found in other studies of personality: Genetic influence was substantial and there was little evidence of shared rearing environment. Results for Agreeableness were different: Genetic influence accounted for only 12% of the variance and shared rearing environment accounted for 21% of the variance. Few significant gender or age differences for genetic and environmental parameters were found in model-fitting analyses.     

Psychological resilience, positive emotions, and successful adaptation to stress in later life

In 3 studies, the authors investigated the functional role of psychological resilience and positive emotions in the stress process. Studies 1a and 1b explored naturally occurring daily stressors. Study 2 examined data from a sample of recently bereaved widows. Across studies, multilevel random coefficient modeling analyses revealed that the occurrence of daily positive emotions serves to moderate stress reactivity and mediate stress recovery. Findings also indicated that differences in psychological resilience accounted for meaningful variation in daily emotional responses to stress. Higher levels of trait resilience predicted a weaker association between positive and negative emotions, particularly on days characterized by heightened stress. Finally, findings indicated that over time, the experience of positive emotions functions to assist high-resilient individuals in their ability to recover effectively from daily stress. Implications for research into protective factors that serve to inhibit the scope, severity, and diffusion of daily stressors in later adulthood are discussed.     

QUAL and the dynamics of evolution

The emergence of the first structures that are capable of “replication” is a mysterious problem of evolution. The majority of the scientists dealing with evolution agree on the point that this is the very property that differenciate animate and inanimate beings. The main purpose of the present paper is to prove that the phenomenon of replication cannot be forced into frames of the Bios, but is an inherent attribute of the material, and the biological replication is a more advanced and perfect manifestation of this attribute.

The cohesion and resistance, in a general sense, is the attribute of any material system, i.e. it is an attribute of coexistence that makes possible its life. This may be the property that was identified as Jacob Böhme's mystic concept “Qual”. The self‐preservation, the cohesion in a general sense is manifested against the different destructive effects by scattering the “attacked” system into successor systems. This process makes possible for the different successive systems to get among other, differing circumstances than they were before the destructive forces began to exercise their impact. These other circumstances however include the possibility of the emergence of other systems of interrelatedness, and the successive system may become different from the parent system. The multiplication and scattering, due to the impact of destruction, at the same time increase the system's surface of interaction, and this leads to an organization of higher level.     

Dimensions of control: Mediational analyses of the stress–health relationship

Multiple dimensions of control are examined in relations with stress and physical health outcomes. Factor analysis of six measures of control from 187 elderly individuals yielded two factors: Self-Efficacy, people’s beliefs about their ability to exercise control over themselves and their environment, and Need for Power and Autonomy, the desire to control others and exercise self-determination. Various hypotheses regarding the process by which control impacts the relationship between stress and health were then tested. Self-Efficacy partially mediated and moderated the relationship between stress and physical health, whereas the Need for Power and Autonomy served neither function. Self-efficacy appears to be a lens through which older adults view stress, affecting the way it is interpreted and managed, ultimately impacting health outcomes.     

EAS temperaments during the last half of the life span: twins reared apart and twins reared together

In this first behavioral genetic study of personality in the last half of the life span, results are reported using the powerful adoption/twin design that compares identical and fraternal twins reared apart and identical and fraternal twins reared together. Traits studied were the EAS temperaments (emotionality, activity level, and sociability), traits that show substantial genetic influence in childhood. It was hypothesized that the EAS traits would also show significant genetic influence later in life and that most of the environmental variation would be nonshared--that is, twins reared together would show no greater resemblance for the EAS traits than twins reared apart. Both hypotheses are supported.     

Social support as a predictor of variability: an examination of the adjustment trajectories of recent widows

The variability pattern of emotional well-being in recent widows across a 98-day period beginning in the first month post-loss has previously been modeled by dynamical systems and shown to be an oscillating process that damps across time. The goal of the present study was to examine how variables that comprise the social support network predict characteristics of these emotional shifts in 28 recent widows. In the present study, emotional support seeking led to a steeper overall trend, whereas perceived control for social support led to a shallower overall trend. When examining intraindividual variability, instrumental support seeking predicted a slower damping rate. Understanding the individual differences in the variability patterns of recent widows is a necessary step in identifying the etiology of adjustment to widowhood.     

Modeling Individual Damped Linear Oscillator Processes with Differential Equations: Using Surrogate Data Analysis to Estimate the Smoothing Parameter

Among the many methods available for modeling intraindividual time series, differential equation modeling has several advantages that make it promising for applications to psychological data. One interesting differential equation model is that of the damped linear oscillator (DLO), which can be used to model variables that have a tendency to fluctuate around some typical, or equilibrium, value. Methods available for fitting the damped linear oscillator model using differential equation modeling can yield biased parameter estimates when applied to univariate time series. The degree of this bias depends on a smoothing–like parameter, which balances the need for increasing smoothing to minimize error variance but not smoothing so much as to obscure change of interest. This article explores a technique that uses surrogate data analysis to select such a parameter, thereby producing approximately unbiased parameter estimates. Furthermore the smoothing parameter, which is usually researcher-selected, is produced in an automated manner so as to reduce the experience required by researchers to apply these methods. Focus is placed on the damped linear model; however, similar issues are expected with other differential equation models and other techniques in which parameter estimates depend on a smoothing parameter. An example using affect data from the Notre Dame Longitudinal Study of Aging (2004) is presented, which contrasts the use of a single smoothing parameter for all individuals versus use of a smoothing parameter for each individual.