Genetic and environmental inXuences on the positive traits of the values in action classiWcation, and biometric covariance with normal personality

Virtually all human individual diVerences have been shown to be moderately heritable. Much of this research, however, focuses on measures of dysfunctional behavior and relatively fewer studies have focused on positive traits. The values in action (VIA) project is a comprehensive and ambitious classiWcation of 24 positive traits, also known as character strengths (Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classiWcation. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association), the majority of which have received no behavior genetic attention. Using a sample of 336 middle-aged twins drawn from the Minnesota Twin Registry who completed the VIA inventory of strengths, we detected signiWcant genetic and non-shared environmental eVects for 21 of 24 character strengths with little evidence of shared environmental contributions. Associations with a previously administered measure of normal personality found moderate phenotypic overlap and that genetic inXuences on personality traits could account for most, but not all, of the heritable variance in character strengths. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author. Fax: +1 502 852 0629. E-mail address: [email protected] (M.F. Steger). 0092-6566/$ see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Inc. Alll rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2006.06.002 2 M.F. Steger et al. / Journal of Research in Personality xxx (2006) xxx–xxx ARTICLE IN PRESS