• DOI:10.1037/a0020294
• Corpus ID: 9895212

Genetics, the Big Five, and the tendency to be self-employed.

@article{Shane2010GeneticsTB,
  title={Genetics, the Big Five, and the tendency to be self-employed.},
  author={Scott A. Shane and Nicos Nicolaou and Lynn Cherkas and Tim D. Spector},
  journal={The Journal of applied psychology},
  year={2010},
  volume={95 6},
  pages={
          1154-62
        }
}

• S. Shane, N. Nicolaou, +1 author T. Spector
• Published 1 November 2010
• Psychology
• The Journal of applied psychology

We applied multivariate genetics techniques to a sample of 3,412 monozygotic and dizygotic twins from the United Kingdom and 1,300 monozygotic and dizygotic twins from the United States to examine whether genetic factors account for part of the covariance between the Big Five personality characteristics and the tendency to be an entrepreneur. We found that common genes influenced the phenotypic correlations between only Extraversion and Openness to Experience and the tendency to be an entrepreneur. Although the phenotypic correlations between the personality characteristics and the tendency to be an entrepreneur were small in size, genetic factors accounted for most of them.