14 DAY TRIAL // In the case of zebra finches, core personality traits are largely determined by nurture and not nature, shows one study published in a recent issue of the journal Biology Letters.
This suggests that, contrary to what some might assume, personality is not so much the result of genetics as it is the result of the environmental conditions one is exposed to during the first days or years of life.
The University of Exeter and University of Hamburg researchers now saying that nature trumps nurture when it comes to their ability to build personality base their claim on data collected while monitoring several zebra finch offspring.
The researchers made the birds live with foster families, and found that they did not delay in borrowing several personality traits (i.e. shyness, outgoing behavior) from their adoptive parents.
EurekAlert quotes Dr. Nick Royle, who commented on the findings of these experiments as follows:
“This is one of the first experiments to show that behavior can be non-genetically transmitted from parents to offspring.”
“Our study shows that in zebra finches, personality traits can be transmitted from one generation to another through behavior not just genetics.”
Despite the fact that this investigation solely focused on analyzing the behavior of zebra finches, specialists are confident that information gathered in this manner might shed new light on how personality emerges in the case of humans.
They plan to carry out several other experiments to see how it is that certain personality traits are transmitted from one generation to another in the case of other species.
“Although this study considers personality inheritance in zebra finches, it raises questions about the inheritance of personality in other species, including humans,” Dr. Nick Royle wished to stress.
“Do adopted children inherit the personality characteristics of their birth parents or their adoptive parents? Is the environment more important than genetic inheritance in the development of personality?” he went on to say.