The heritability of response styles and its impact on heritability estimates of personality: A twin study

Response styles (RS) are an important research matter in questionnaire research and have even been interpreted as implicit personality variables aside from explicit personality measurement. To better understand RS and their impact on explicit personality measurement, it is necessary to explore causes of variability in RS, including heritability. Therefore, the current study followed two aims: First, we investigated the heritability of two of the most common RS (acquiescence RS and extreme RS; ARS & ERS). Second, we tested whether correcting for RS affects the genetic component for and correlations among explicit personality measures. We used an extended classical twin design with twins (n = 464) and non-twin siblings (n = 242). Personality was measured administering the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS). Results indicated a heritability of 37% for ARS and 57% for ERS. This difference between the two RS might be explained by their genesis: ARS has been associated with social adaption, and thus might depend primarily on environmental experiences, while ERS has been related to anxiety and temperament, which are majorly hereditary. Correcting explicit personality for RS did not change estimations of heritability for the ANPS traits suggesting that RS does not majorly influence estimations of heritability for explicitly measured personality.