Scientists have discovered more than 1,200 DNA variants that help shape human beings’ personality traits, according to a newly-published study. What are “personality traits,” exactly? The researchers characterize them as “stable differences in how people think, feel and behave, and how they interact with and experience their social and physical environments.”
In other words: us.
As the New York Times puts it,
“The findings … reaffirmed scientists’ understanding that temperament and disposition are shaped not by a few particular genes, but by thousands of tiny variants that can be expressed in different circumstances. The sheer scale of the project also brought new statistical power to the study of personality genetics, giving researchers a tool kit to investigate the biological mechanisms behind how we think, feel and behave.”
It’s an important study, but one that lends itself to misinterpretation. Our environment and experiences shape our personalities, too—through epigenetics, the process that (simplistically) turns these DNA “switches” on and off—and perhaps in other ways as well.
I also suspect this will lead to a new round of heated debates about topics like free will and the question of whether consciousness can ever be separated from the physical body. In the short monologue above, I concluded with a somewhat more immediate concern.
