How Genes Shape Personality Traits: New Links Are Discovered. By combining their results with previously published data, researchers performed a meta-analysis to identify over 200 genetic loci across the five personality traits.

Your DNA has long been known to play a role in shaping your personality. Now, researchers at Yale School of Medicine (YSM) have taken another step in determining exactly how by identifying a number of new genetic sites associated with specific personality traits. They published their findings in Nature Human Behavior on August 12.

Using data from the Million Veteran Program, researchers performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to identify genetic variations, called “loci,” associated with each of the “Big Five” personality traits: extraversion, openness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness. The researchers then combined these data with previous GWAS to perform a meta-analysis with almost 700,000 individuals, marking the largest GWAS for personality traits to date.

“We are a step closer in that process of increasing the sample size to be able to more clearly understand which variants are truly related to these personality traits,” says Daniel Levey, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at YSM and principal investigator of the study.

The Big Five and novel loci
The Big Five personality traits are a scientifically based measure of personality that can be studied using self-reported assessments that indicate whether people score high or low in each of the five traits. Participants in the Million Veteran Program, a national research program that collects data including genetic information from veterans to better understand genes and health, completed these assessments in addition to providing a blood sample for genetic analysis.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01951-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01951-3)