Behavioral genetics of temporal framing: Heritability of time perspective and its common genetic bases with major personality traits

Objective

The present study aimed to provide a seminal behavioral genetic analysis of time perspectives (TPs). Moreover, we intended to investigate the magnitude of genetic vs. environmental components of the well-established assocations between TPs and personality features.

Background

Individual differences in temporal framing processes, referred to as TPs, are vital psychological and behavioral outcomes. Although proponents of TP theory emphasize mainly environmental origins of the tendencies to adopt certain TPs, research provides evidence for marked associations between the temporal dimensions and major personality traits that are known to be heritable. Hence, it was essential to empirically verify these claims.

Method

The article reports an analysis of genetic and environmental components of variance in TPs based on a study adopting a twin design, conducted on a sample of 393 pairs of twins (135 monozygotic and 258 dizygotic).

Results

Multivariate Cholesky decomposition supported an EA model assuming impacts of both unshared environmental factors (E) and additive genetic factors (A) across all TP dimensions, suggesting that the effects of shared environment on TPs are plausibly negligible. Heritability indices of TPs ranged between 0.51 for Present-Fatalistic and 0.62 for Present-Hedonistic, suggesting that the majority of the variance in TPs stems from genetic influences. Substantial genetic correlations were found between TPs and the Big Five personality traits.

Conclusions

The findings provide further evidence for conceptualizing TPs as biologically based personality traits and challenge the claims that TP is mainly a product of culture, education, and personal experiences.