TY - JOUR
T1 - On the sources of the height-intelligence correlation
T2 - New insights from a bivariate ACE model with assortative mating
AU - Beauchamp, Jonathan P.
AU - Cesarini, David
AU - Johannesson, Magnus
AU - Lindqvist, Erik
AU - Apicella, Coren
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements We are grateful to Bill Dickens, James Lee, Joe Rodgers, Peter Visscher and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. We are also grateful to The Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelis Foundation, the Swedish Research Council, and the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research for financial support. Jonathan Beauchamp also thanks the Trudeau Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support.
PY - 2011/3
Y1 - 2011/3
N2 - A robust positive correlation between height and intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, has been established in the literature. This paper makes several contributions toward establishing the causes of this association. First, we extend the standard bivariate ACE model to account for assortative mating. The more general theoretical framework provides several key insights, including formulas to decompose a cross-trait genetic correlation into components attributable to assortative mating and pleiotropy and to decompose a cross-trait within-family correlation. Second, we use a large dataset of male twins drawn from Swedish conscription records and examine how well genetic and environmental factors explain the association between (i) height and intelligence and (ii) height and military aptitude, a professional psychogologist's assessment of a conscript's ability to deal with wartime stress. For both traits, we find suggestive evidence of a shared genetic architecture with height, but we demonstrate that point estimates are very sensitive to assumed degrees of assortative mating. Third, we report a significant within-family correlation between height and intelligence (ρ̂=0.10),suggesting that pleiotropy might be at play.
AB - A robust positive correlation between height and intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, has been established in the literature. This paper makes several contributions toward establishing the causes of this association. First, we extend the standard bivariate ACE model to account for assortative mating. The more general theoretical framework provides several key insights, including formulas to decompose a cross-trait genetic correlation into components attributable to assortative mating and pleiotropy and to decompose a cross-trait within-family correlation. Second, we use a large dataset of male twins drawn from Swedish conscription records and examine how well genetic and environmental factors explain the association between (i) height and intelligence and (ii) height and military aptitude, a professional psychogologist's assessment of a conscript's ability to deal with wartime stress. For both traits, we find suggestive evidence of a shared genetic architecture with height, but we demonstrate that point estimates are very sensitive to assumed degrees of assortative mating. Third, we report a significant within-family correlation between height and intelligence (ρ̂=0.10),suggesting that pleiotropy might be at play.
KW - Assortative mating
KW - Bivariate ACE model
KW - Genetic correlation
KW - Height
KW - IQ
KW - Intelligence
KW - Within-family correlation
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U2 - 10.1007/s10519-010-9376-7
DO - 10.1007/s10519-010-9376-7
M3 - Article
C2 - 20603722
AN - SCOPUS:79952484708
SN - 0001-8244
VL - 41
SP - 242
EP - 252
JO - Behavior Genetics
JF - Behavior Genetics
IS - 2
ER -