Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2008 Feb;11(1):12-27.
doi: 10.1375/twin.11.1.12.

Sex differences in the heritability of resilience

Jason D Boardman  1 , Casey L Blalock, Tanya M M Button
Affiliations

Sex differences in the heritability of resilience

Jason D Boardman et al. Twin Res Hum Genet. 2008 Feb.

Abstract

We examine the heritability of psychological resilience among US adults aged 25 to 74 years. Using monozygotic and same sex dizygotic twin pairs from the National Survey of Mid-Life Development in the United States (MIDUS) we show that positive affect is equally heritable among men (h2 = .60) and women (h2 = .59). We then estimate the heritability of positive affect after controlling for an exhaustive list of social and inter-personal stressors, and we operationalize the residual for positive affect as resilience. According to this specification, the heritability of resilience is higher among men (h2 = .52) compared to women (h2 = .38). We show that self-acceptance is one of the most important aspects of psychological functioning that accounts for the heritability of resilience among both men and women. However, compared to women, men appear to derive additional benefits from environmental mastery that may enable otherwise sex-neutral resilient tendencies to manifest.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Male standardized path coefficients for the bivariate Cholesky. Decomposition between strain and resilience. Note: A1 = Genetic variance common to Strain and Resilience; C1 = Shared environment variance common to Strain and Resilience; E1 = Non-shared environment variance common to Strain and Resilience; A2 = Genetic variance unique to Resilience; C2 = Shared environment variance unique to Resilience; E2 = Non-shared environment variance unique to Resilience.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Female standardized path coefficients for the bivariate Cholesky. Decomposition between strain and resilience. Note: A1 = Genetic variance common to Strain and Resilience; C1 = Shared environment variance common to Strain and Resilience; E1 = Non-shared environment variance common to Strain and Resilience; A2 = Genetic variance unique to Resilience; C2 = Shared environment variance unique to Resilience; E2 = Non-shared environment variance unique to Resilience.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Allen DB, Farell PM. Newborn screening: Principles and practice. Advances in Pediatrics. 1996;43:231–270. - PubMed
    1. Bosma H, Marmot MG. Low job control and risk of coronary heart disease in Whitehall II (prospective cohort) study. British Medical Journal. 1997;314:7090. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Brim OG, Baltes PB, Bumpass LL, Cleary PD, Featherman DL, Hazzard WR, Kessler RC, Lachman ME, Markus HR, Marmot MG, Rossi AS, Ryff CD, Shweder RA. National Survey of Midlife Development in the United State (MIDUS), 1995–1996 [Computer file]. 2nd ICPSR version. Ann Arbor, MI: DataStat, Inc/Boston, MA: Harvard Medical School, Dept of Health Care Policy [producers], 1996. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2003 1996
    1. Carey JR, Liedo P, Orozco D, Vaupel JW. Slowing of mortality rates at older ages in large medfly cohorts. Science. 1992;258:457–461. - PubMed
    1. Caspi A, Sugden K, Moffitt T, Taylor A, Craig IW, Harrington HL, McClay J, Mill J, Martin J, Braithwaite A, Poulton R. Influence of life stress on depression: Moderation by a polymorphism in the 5-htt gene. Science. 2003;301:386–389. - PubMed

Publication types