
Genetic contribution to neuroticism associated with affluence, health, longevity - gwern
http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/06/146787
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heheocoenev
This seems intuitively correct. Neutrotisicm is associated with risk-averse
behavior and thus less likely to engage in risky life-threatening activity. A
highly neurotic personal can be paralyzed by enumeration of every conceivable
outcome, and as such not ever do the dangerous thing. There seems to be a
positive correlation of intelligence, so the individual may make long term
conservative bets that further increase longevity.

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keithwhor
Be careful: this post just reeks of confirmation bias. Correlation
(association) does not imply causation and it’s tantalizingly attractive to
want to draw conclusions that confirm the way we think about the world.

I, personally (for example), would not generally assume neuroticism is
associated with risk-aversion. In my experience risk aversion (or tolerance)
tends to be completely decoupled from other traits.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, and it would equally be a fallacy to believe my
anecdotal experience is anything more than an anecdote, but just be careful
jumping to conclusions.

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Natsu
Neroticism [1] also correlates with being female. And women, on average, have
longer lifespans.

[1] The big 5 personality trait, not to be confused with neuroses.

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OilDerek
The article is looking at genetic differences, not environmental ones. The
small gender difference in neuroticism is actually _overexplained_ by the
difference in rates of childhood sexual assault alone, meaning that if
anything females are genetically predisposed to be less neurotic.

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projektir
I'd be really curious to see data on this, do you have a link?

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shullbitt0r
They take a 12 question test, so 12 bits of entropy (asfar as I could see
these are indeed yes/o questions) and were able to correlate that to gene
code, which has orders of magnitudes more entropy (I assume)?

> _For the general factor of neuroticism we identified 1,436 SNPs that were
> genome wide significant and formed 11 independent loci. [...] Again, these
> findings were comparable to those from the original study by Smith et al._

> _We include them here in order to compare them with the first GWASs of
> neuroticism factors, which we report next. Four SNPs, all on chromosome 12,
> were genome-wide significant for the worry /vulnerability phenotype. These
> SNPs were located in one locus, spanning 219kb. This region contains the
> gene PPFIA2, which is known to be part of the postsynaptic density in humans
> [14,15]._

And further

> _The largest difference in the pattern of enrichment found was identified
> when examining which tissues showed enrichment. For each of the three
> neuroticism phenotypes, significant enrichment was found for the tissues of
> the central nervous system (general factor fold enrichment = 2.76, P = 1.35
> × 10−4, anxiety /tension fold enrichment = 3.13, P = 1.90 × 10−4,
> worry/vulnerability fold enrichment = 3.57, P = 2.79 × 10−4);_

> _however, for the anxiety /tension factor significant enrichment was also
> found for the adrenal/pancreas (fold enrichment = 4.57, P = 6.52 × 10−4),
> cardiovascular (fold enrichment = 3.76, P = 0.004), and skeletal/muscle
> tissues_

They actually had data quantifying the nervous tissue. Wow!

> _The genetic variants associated with an increase in the general factor of
> neuroticism were also associated with a genetic risk for a lower household
> income (rg = -0.39, P = 2.67 × 10−16), and living in an area with a higher
> level of social deprivation (rg = 0.24, P = 6.95 × 10−5). However, both the
> anxiety /tension, and the worry/vulnerability factors showed significant
> genetic correlations in the opposite directions to the general factor of
> neuroticism for both household income (anxiety/tension rg = 0.25, P = 7.64 ×
> 10−4, worry/vulnerability rg = 0.24, P = 3.57 × 10−4), and living in an area
> with a higher level of social deprivation (anxiety/tension rg = -0.31, P =
> 3.87 × 10−5, worry/vulnerability rg = -0.31, P = 5.02 × 10−5)._

Amazing, but association is not cause. I can imagine living in a terrible
neighbourhood can leave a person, well, terrified, not to say neurotic. One
question of an older test they used was removed from the revised test ("do you
lock the door at night"), because it didn't fit their P values. Whatever that
means, the test seems like a very rough measure to arrive at any statement at
all.

And the fact that two traits are inversely related means to me without giving
it further due thought, that headline is largely misleading.

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shullbitt0r
That should be "One question of an older _version of the_ test they used".

