The Biological Roots of Complex Thinking: Are Heritable Attitudes More Complex?

ABSTRACT Are highly heritable attitudes more or less complex than less heritable attitudes? Over 2,000 participant responses on topics varying in heritability were coded for overall integrative complexity and its 2 subcomponents (dialectical complexity and elaborative complexity). Across different h...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of personality 2011-02, Vol.79 (1), p.101-134
Main Authors: Conway III, Lucian Gideon, Dodds, Daniel P., Towgood, Kirsten Hands, McClure, Stacey, Olson, James M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitude
Attitude change
Attitudes
Complex societies
Dialectics
Female
Heredity
Heritability
Humans
Integrative complexity
Male
Measurement
Personality psychology
Personality traits
Social Environment
Surveys and Questionnaires
Thinking
Twins
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Summary:ABSTRACT Are highly heritable attitudes more or less complex than less heritable attitudes? Over 2,000 participant responses on topics varying in heritability were coded for overall integrative complexity and its 2 subcomponents (dialectical complexity and elaborative complexity). Across different heritability sets drawn from 2 separate prior twin research programs, the present results yielded a consistent pattern: Heritability was always significantly positively correlated with integrative complexity. Further analyses of the subcomponents suggested that the manner in which complexity was expressed differed by topic type: For societal topics, heritable attitudes were more likely to be expressed in dialectically complex terms, whereas for personally involving topics, heritable attitudes were more likely to be expressed in elaboratively complex terms. Most of these relationships remained significant even when controlling for measurements of attitude strength. The authors discuss the genetic roots of complex versus simple attitudes, implications for understanding attitude development more broadly, and the contribution of these results to previous work on both heritability and complexity.
ISSN:0022-3506
1467-6494
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2010.00690.x