Phrases such as ‘like father, like son’ suggest it’s not just looks that are passed down through the generations.
In fact, we’re commonly led to believe that personality traits are inherited from our mum or dad.
But a new study claims that there may actually be little truth to this.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh say we’re only slightly more likely to share personality traits with our parents than we are with a random stranger.
They report that it is ‘impossible to accurately predict a child’s personality traits from those of their mother or father’.
Like father like son? Experts say it is ‘impossible’ to accurately predict a child’s personality traits from those of their parent
‘In almost every language, there is a form of the English proverb “like father, like son”,’ lead author Dr René Mottus at the University of Edinburgh told MailOnline.
‘Many people believe this and sometimes make judgements about people based on their parents.
‘But it turns out this proverb is not very accurate when it comes to personality traits – our usual patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving.
‘There is only a small chance that people are more similar to their parents than to any random stranger.’
Working with experts at the University of Tartu in Estonia, Dr Mottus and colleagues recruited more than 1,000 pairs of relatives from the Estonian Biobank, a large collection of health information from volunteers in the country.
Participants reported their own levels of the ‘big five’ traits – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, as well as life satisfaction.
The ‘big five’ personality traits are the best accepted and most commonly used model of personality in academic psychology.
The ‘big five’ personality traits are the best accepted and most commonly used model of personality in academic psychology
Each person rated their own personality traits, but for more accurate results the researchers got a second opinion from an ‘informant’ – usually their partner.
‘Self-ratings alone are not very trustworthy, but when two people agree on someone’s traits, they must be onto something,’ Dr Mottus said.
The results put the heritability of personality traits and life satisfaction at around 40 per cent.
Although this is up from about the 25 per cent typical in self-report studies, it is not high enough to suggest we’re more likely to share personality traits with parents than we are with a random stranger.
The experts further explain their findings with a hypothetical scenario.
Suppose a group of parents and their adult offspring completed a personality test and and were placed in either the bottom, middle or top third of the population based on their results.
In this scenario, only 39 per cent of offspring would receive feedback like that of their parent for any given trait – up from 33 per cent in the case of random strangers.
In other words, more than 60 per cent of children are in a different group to their parents in any given personality trait.
Dr Mottus stresses that the findings are ‘not to say that personality traits are not heritable at all’ – but that this heritability is not significant.
What’s more, they are most likely inherited through genes (‘nature’) rather than through upbringing (‘nurture’).
‘According to the most accurate estimates, about two thirds of the reasons that people have different personality traits have something to do with their genes,’ he told MailOnline.
‘But this is not enough to make parents and children much more similar than strangers.
Common phrases such as ‘like father like son’ or ‘like mother like daughter’ suggest it’s not just looks that are passed down between the generations (file photo)
‘Besides, there is no evidence that the experiences that come with sharing a family would make people more similar.
‘For example, there is no evidence that being adopted into a family makes people’s personality traits similar to their foster parents or other children in the family.’
Where exactly our personalities come from has long been a source of fascination for psychologists.
The theory that they’re passed down by our parents – either through are genes or external factors – is officially known as ‘familial transmission’.
Any similarities between a parent and child may be responsible for reinforcing the notion that familial transmission really does exist, along with proverbs such as ‘like father like son’ or ‘like mother like daughter’.
‘Similar proverbs also exist in many other languages, presumably because they are based on simple and abundant real-world observations,’ the team say.
‘And yet, these proverbs may exaggerate familial transmission’s magnitude, as current data suggests that parents and children differ only slightly less than strangers, on average.’
The study has been released as a pre-print on the PsyArXiv server, meaning it’s yet to be peer-reviewed.