Intelligence and a large part of the personality traits that influence our success or failure in school are determined by our genes, according to a new study from Kings College London (United Kingdom) and collected in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Getting good or bad grades, self-confidence or behavior problems, all have an inescapable genetic component, according to the study in which 13,306 twins participated (both identical twins – they share 100% of their genes – and non-identical twins -share 50% of their genes) of 16 years and that were examined both in relation to aspects of their personality and their cognitive performance.
Taking into account also the academic records of the adolescents, the researchers established some parameters: intelligence , self-efficacy (confidence in one’s own academic ability), well-being , the home environment , the student’s personality , the school environment and the conduct or behavior problems.
“Previous research has already established that educational achievement is heritable. In this study, we wanted to find out why it happens. What we show is that the heritability of school performance is much more than intelligence, it is the combination of many traits that are all inherited to different degrees, “says Eva Krapohl, co-author of the study.
Comparison of the results of identical and non-identical twins showed that the academic differences between the two groups were marked by genetics and not by the environment in which they lived . Specifically, the researchers found that the influence of genetics on school grades was 62%. Regarding individual traits, these varied between 35% and 58% heritable, intelligence being the most important agent. By taking into account all the traits under study, they found that they accounted for 75% of the heritability (the importance of genetics in a person) of the scores in the grades of the young people.
