Undergraduate Honors Posters
Document Type
Presentation
Publication Date
4-2014
Journal
Undergraduate Honors Posters
Abstract
This study is the first to investigate the extent to which environmental and genetic factors contribute to aspects of ownership reasoning. 65 pairs of adult monozygotic (MZ) twins, and 16 pairs of same-sex dizygotic (DZ) twins completed a 24-item ownership questionnaire, which included items on new ownership and appropriate transfers of ownership. MZ correlations were larger than DZ correlations for both aspects of ownership reasoning, and univariate model fitting indicated that genetic and non-shared environmental factors could account for all individual variation, with shared environmental factors contributing non-significantly. Heritabilities ranged from .36-.57 over both factors. The results support the notion that individual differences in ownership reasoning have a significant genetic basis.