The findings are based on a large sample of siblings of varying degrees of kinship.
Psychologists from the University of Pennsylvania conducted a study that examined the moral qualities of siblings of varying degrees of kinship and concluded that a tendency towards moral principles can be inherited. The work was published in the journal Behavior Genetics.
A total of 720 pairs of siblings participated in the study, including twins, blood relatives, and half-brothers. This diversity helped to separate the influence of genetics and parenting, the authors say. The volunteers were monitored for 13 years. At the beginning of the experiment, their average age ranged from 12 to 14 years, at the end - from 25 to 27 years.
Using the questionnaires, the researchers collected the following data. The positive impact of parents is responsiveness and praise; negative - swearing and conflicts. In addition, young people were tested for various moral qualities, such as responsibility (during adolescence) and conscientiousness (after adulthood).
To analyze the results, the researchers used the Cholesky expansion. As a result, they saw a relationship: positive parenting was associated with higher levels of responsibility and conscientiousness in children. This correlation was more pronounced between brothers and sisters who were related by consanguinity. According to the authors, this dependence suggests that the moral characteristics of a person may depend on both hereditary factors and external ones associated with the environment.
“Most people assume that the character of children is shaped solely by upbringing. However, this information suggests that there is also a genetic influence. This does not mean that conscientious parents will necessarily have a conscientious child, but it does mean that children inherit a tendency to behave in a certain way. We must not ignore this,”said psychologist Jenae Neiderhiser, who participated in the study.
The authors acknowledge that there are gaps in the work. For example, they did not take into account the environmental factors that surrounded the volunteers for 13 years, or that the inherited traits of the parents influence their way of raising.
Earlier, Oxford University researchers found that all cultures are bound by a common moral code of seven different general rules and patterns of behavior. The in-depth study used over 600 records of cultures from 60 societies around the world, making it the largest sample in this area.
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