TY - JOUR T1 - Educational attainment and personality are genetically intertwined JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/078014 SP - 078014 AU - René Mõttus AU - Anu Realo AU - Uku Vainik AU - Jüri Allik AU - Tõnu Esko Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/10/13/078014.abstract N2 - It is possible that ubiquitous heritable variance in personality characteristics does not reflect (only) genetic and biological processes specific to personality per se. We tested the possibility that Five-Factor Model personality domains, facets and items, as rated by people themselves and their knowledgeable informants, reflect polygenic influences that have been previously associated with educational attainment. In a sample of over 3,000 adult Estonians, polygenic scores for educational attainment, based on small contributions from more than 150,000 genetic variants, were correlated with various personality traits, particularly from the Neuroticism and Openness domains. The correlations of personality traits with phenotypic educational attainment closely mirrored their correlations with educational attainment-related polygenic influences, across facets and individual items. Structural equation modeling of the associations between polygenic risk, personality and educational attainment lent strongest support to the possibility that the same additive genetic influences act independently on both educational attainment and related personality traits. ER -