Genetic Epidemiology, Translational Neurogenomics, Psychiatric Genetics and Statistical Genetics Laboratories investigate the pattern of disease in families, particularly identical and non-identical twins, to assess the relative importance of genes and environment in a variety of important health problems.
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PMID
22784459
TITLE
The heritability and genetic correlates of mobile phone use: a twin study of consumer behavior.
ABSTRACT
There has been almost no overlap between behavior genetics and consumer behavior research, despite each field's importance in understanding society. In particular, both have neglected to study genetic influences on consumer adoption and usage of new technologies -- even technologies as important as the mobile phone, now used by 5.8 out of 7.0 billion people on earth. To start filling this gap, we analyzed self-reported mobile phone use, intelligence, and personality traits in two samples of Australian teenaged twins (mean ages 14.2 and 15.6 years), totaling 1,036 individuals. ACE modeling using Mx software showed substantial heritabilities for how often teens make voice calls (.60 and .34 in samples 1 and 2, respectively) and for how often they send text messages (.53 and. 50). Shared family environment - including neighborhood, social class, parental education, and parental income (i.e., the generosity of calling plans that parents can afford for their teens) -- had much weaker effects. Multivariate modeling based on cross-twin, cross-trait correlations showed negative genetic correlations between talking/texting frequency and intelligence (around -.17), and positive genetic correlations between talking/texting frequency and extraversion (about .20 to .40). Our results have implications for assessing the risks of mobile phone use such as radiofrequency field (RF) exposure and driving accidents, for studying adoption and use of other emerging technologies, for understanding the genetic architecture of the cognitive and personality traits that predict consumer behavior, and for challenging the common assumption that consumer behavior is shaped entirely by culture, media, and family environment.
DATE PUBLISHED
2012 Feb
HISTORY
PUBSTATUS PUBSTATUSDATE
entrez 2012/07/13 06:00
pubmed 2012/07/13 06:00
medline 2012/08/31 06:00
AUTHORS
NAME COLLECTIVENAME LASTNAME FORENAME INITIALS AFFILIATION AFFILIATIONINFO
Miller G Miller Geoffrey G Psychology Department, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-1161, USA. gfmiller@unm.edu
Zhu G Zhu Gu G
Wright MJ Wright Margaret J MJ
Hansell NK Hansell Narelle K NK
Martin NG Martin Nicholas G NG
INVESTIGATORS
JOURNAL
VOLUME: 15
ISSUE: 1
TITLE: Twin research and human genetics : the official journal of the International Society for Twin Studies
ISOABBREVIATION: Twin Res Hum Genet
YEAR: 2012
MONTH: Feb
DAY:
MEDLINEDATE:
SEASON:
CITEDMEDIUM: Print
ISSN:
ISSNTYPE:
MEDLINE JOURNAL
MEDLINETA: Twin Res Hum Genet
COUNTRY: England
ISSNLINKING: 1832-4274
NLMUNIQUEID: 101244624
PUBLICATION TYPE
PUBLICATIONTYPE TEXT
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Twin Study
COMMENTS AND CORRECTIONS
GRANTS
GENERAL NOTE
KEYWORDS
MESH HEADINGS
DESCRIPTORNAME QUALIFIERNAME
Adolescent
Australia
Cell Phones
Female
Genetics, Behavioral
Humans
Male
Personality genetics
Questionnaires genetics
Social Environment genetics
Twins, Dizygotic genetics
Twins, Monozygotic genetics
SUPPLEMENTARY MESH
GENE SYMBOLS
CHEMICALS
OTHER ID's