Review article
Genetics of personality: a brief overview of recent research

The article presents a brief overview of research from the years 2009-2011 on the genetic basis of personality. Studies based on the paradigm of behaviour genetics and association studies are presented. Behavioural genetic analysis of the significant impact of genetic and environmental factors on behaviour, both normal and pathological, was performed. The studies also provide knowledge about the genetic and environmental relationship between traits and disorders. In recent years, high genetic correlations between mental toughness components (control, commitment, challenge and confidence) have been established, as well as genetic correlations between the components of mental toughness and humour styles and the Big Five personality traits. Other data inform about genetic correlations between PEN dimensions and risky sexual behaviour. It has also been shown that conduct disorder shared genetic influence with prosociality, negative emotionality and daring. Negative emotionality also proved to be genetically correlated with symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Genetic correlation coefficients are usually accompanied by environmental correlations between traits and behaviours under study. Association studies inform about the relationship between personality traits and genetic polymorphisms within candidate genes. In addition to polymorphisms in genes related to dopaminergic and serotonergic systems, some associations between personality traits and other new genes were established. Many of these associations relate to the features described in the model of the Big Five. In these studies two groups of biological markers were used: single nucleotide polymorphisms, and polymorphisms of variable number tandem repeats.