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. 2009 Sep;65(9):906-24.
doi: 10.1002/jclp.20587.

Temperament and character associated with depressive symptoms in women: analysis of two genetically informative samples

Jongil Yuh  1 , Jenae M Neiderhiser, Paul Lichtenstein, Kjell Hansson, Marianne Cederblad, Olle Elthammer, David Reiss
Affiliations

Temperament and character associated with depressive symptoms in women: analysis of two genetically informative samples

Jongil Yuh et al. J Clin Psychol. 2009 Sep.

Abstract

Although previous research has explored associations between personality and depressive symptoms, a limited number of studies have assessed the extent to which genetic and environmental influences explain the association. This study investigated how temperament and character were associated with depressive symptoms in 131 pairs of twin and sibling women in early adulthood, as well as 326 pairs of twin women in middle adulthood. Results indicated that genetic influences accounted for a moderate to substantial percentage of the association between these personality features and depressive symptoms, emphasizing the role of genetic influences. Nonshared environmental influences made important contributions to the association between character and depressive symptoms, particularly in the sample of middle-aged twin women. These findings suggest that unique social experiences and relationships with a partner in adulthood may play an important role in these associations between character and depressive symptoms.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Bivariate Cholesky model for personality and depressive symptoms. Note. A, C, E represent genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental influences respectively. a, c, e represent genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental influences specific to depressive symptoms.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Bivariate model fitting from the best fitting model between personality features and depressive symptoms. Note. First value given is for the NEAD wave 3; second value is for the TM sample. A=genetic influences; E=nonshared environmental influences; a=genetic influences specific to depressive symptoms; g=nonshared environmental influences specific to depressive symptoms. Parenthetic values give the 95% intervals.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The contribution of common variables A and E to the phenotypic correlation between personality features and depressive symptoms by sample. Note. Bars represent strength of correlation. A=genetic influences; E=nonshared environmental influences.
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