The Character Code
Turhan Canli
In Brief
Scientists are identifying specific genes that contribute to human personality traits. For instance, they have discovered genetic variants that may influence anxiety, curiosity, attention deficits and impulsive violence.
The roots of anxiety and emotional resilience reside partly in a gene that affects brain levels of serotonin, a chemical messenger that regulates sleep, thought and mood, among other functions. This gene is now thought to influence the arousal of the amygdala, a brain region that helps to process emotions such as fear.
This “anxiety gene” can also increase a person’s susceptibility to depression—but only in the aftermath of adverse experiences, illustrating the importance of gene-environment interactions in shaping mood and personality.
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You are diagnosed with a crippling illness. You lose your job. Someone close to you suddenly dies. Some people recover rapidly from life’s calamities and disappointments, whereas others are devastated by minor setbacks, becoming depressed and even suicidal.
The roots of such emotional differences have fascinated psychologists and nonspecialists alike. Environmental factors, such as a person’s upbringing, exert a tremendous influence on his or her resilience in the face of misfortune or failure. But as biologists (and parents) have long suspected, genes lay much of the groundwork for individual personality traits. Studies that compare the traits of identical twins, who have all the same genes, with those of fraternal twins, who share just half their DNA, suggest that genes account for 40 to 60 percent of the individual variation in anxiety levels and susceptibility to depression.
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