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The Social Genome of Friends and Schoolmates in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health

View ORCID ProfileBenjamin W. Domingue, View ORCID ProfileDaniel W. Belsky, View ORCID ProfileJason M. Fletcher, View ORCID ProfileDalton Conley, View ORCID ProfileJason D. Boardman, View ORCID ProfileKathleen Mullan Harris
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/107045
Benjamin W. Domingue
aStanford University Graduate School of Education
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Daniel W. Belsky
bDuke University School of Medicine & Social Science Research Institute
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Jason M. Fletcher
cLa Follette School of Public Affairs, Department of Sociology and Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Dalton Conley
dSociology Department, Princeton University
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Jason D. Boardman
eInstitute of Behavioral Science & Sociology Department, University of Colorado Boulder
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Kathleen Mullan Harris
fSociology Department and Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina
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Abstract

Humans tend to form social relationships with others who resemble them. Whether this sorting of like with like arises from historical patterns of migration, meso-level social structures in modern society, or individual-level selection of similar peers remains unsettled. Recent research has evaluated the possibility that unobserved genotypes may play an important role in the creation of homophilous relationships. We extend this work by using data from 9,500 adolescents from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine genetic similarities among pairs of friends. While there is some evidence that friends have correlated genotypes, both at the whole-genome level as well as at trait-associated loci (via polygenic scores), further analysis suggests that meso-level forces, such as school assignment, are a principal source of genetic similarity between friends. We also observe apparent social-genetic effects in which polygenic scores of an individual’s friends and schoolmates predict the individual’s own educational attainment. In contrast, an individual’s height is unassociated with the height genetics of peers.

Significance Our study reported significant findings of a “social genome” that can be quantified and studied to understand human health and behavior. In a national sample of more than 9,000 American adolescents, we found evidence of social forces that act to make friends and schoolmates more genetically similar to one another as compared to random pairs of unrelated individuals. This subtle genetic similarity was observed across the entire genome and at sets of genomic locations linked with specific traits—educational attainment and body-mass index—a phenomenon we term “social-genetic correlation.” We also find evidence of a “social-genetic effect” such that the genetics of a person’s friends and schoolmates influenced their own education, even after accounting for the person’s own genetics.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted October 30, 2017.
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The Social Genome of Friends and Schoolmates in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health
Benjamin W. Domingue, Daniel W. Belsky, Jason M. Fletcher, Dalton Conley, Jason D. Boardman, Kathleen Mullan Harris
bioRxiv 107045; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/107045
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The Social Genome of Friends and Schoolmates in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health
Benjamin W. Domingue, Daniel W. Belsky, Jason M. Fletcher, Dalton Conley, Jason D. Boardman, Kathleen Mullan Harris
bioRxiv 107045; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/107045

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