RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The winding roads to adulthood: a twin study
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.02.16.431456
DO 10.1101/2021.02.16.431456
A1 Kaili Rimfeld
A1 Margherita Malancini
A1 Amy E. Packer
A1 Agnieszka Gidziela
A1 Andrea G. Allegrini
A1 Ziada Ayorech
A1 Emily Smith-Woolley
A1 Andrew McMillan
A1 Rachel Ogden
A1 Philip S. Dale
A1 Thalia C. Eley
A1 Robert Plomin
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/02/17/2021.02.16.431456.abstract
AB In the 21st century, emerging adulthood has stretched from the late teens through the twenties. Although this extended transition to adulthood can create stress, it can also offer opportunities to explore vocations and relationships that provide a better fit to individuals’ proclivities, including their genetic propensities.Here we report the results of the first systematic investigation of genetic and environmental influences on 57 psychological traits covering major issues in emerging adulthood such as aspirations, thoughts and attitudes, relationships and personality. We also investigate how these traits relate to physical and mental health, educational attainment and wellbeing using a sample of nearly 5000 pairs of UK twins aged 21-25 from the Twins Early Development Study.All 57 traits showed significant genetic influence, with an average heritability of 34% (SNP heritability ∼10%). Most of the variance (59% on average) was explained by non-shared environmental influences. These diverse traits were associated with mental health (average correlation .20), wellbeing (.16), physical health (.12) and educational attainment (.06). Shared genetic factors explained the majority of these correlations (∼50%). Together, these emerging adulthood traits explained on average 30% of the variance in the outcomes (range = 8 to 69%), suggesting that these traits relate to the outcomes additively.We conclude that the environmental uncertainties of emerging adulthood in the 21st century do not diminish the importance of genetics. As adolescents travel down long and winding roads to adulthood, their trip is substantially influenced by genetic proclivities that nudge them down different paths leading to different destinations.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.