Personality Theory and Behavioral Genetics: Contributions and Issues

Personality psychologists can work in comfortable ignorance of behavioral genetics; without knowledge of this field, they can devise trait measures, validate them and show their practical utility, and the more ambitious can develop general theories of personality that identify fundamental traits. Who then is the usefulness of behavioral genetic methods and results for the personality psychologist? I find not one answer to this question, but several. In the first place, behavioral genetics is useful because it provides a comprehensive theory of personality traits. The theory of genetics can explain facts about the maintenance of traits, their interrelatedness, and their survival in a population. In addition, behavioral genetics offers methods for the investigation of some persisting problems in personality theory.

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