• Question: Is personality genetic?

    Asked by Mim to Angeline, Catherine, Luke, Philip, Shona on 9 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Angeline Burrell

      Angeline Burrell answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      I don’t know. I do know that my two younger sisters have completely different personalities than I do, so I think there must be something else to it.

    • Photo: Shona Whittam

      Shona Whittam answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      Nature vs nurture. I’d say personality is combination of genetics and a person’s environment. My brother and I are similar in some ways but also very different in other ways (he doesn’t like science for one).

    • Photo: Philip Moriarty

      Philip Moriarty answered on 13 Mar 2015:

      What a fantastic question. Some, particularly a guy called Oliver James, think that it’s entirely due to environment (i.e. purely “nurture”), whereas others think that it’s entirely due to genetics (i.e. nature). I agree with Shona — the true answer is almost certainly somewhere in-between.

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