ArticleJournal of personality and social psychology2017
Parental educational attainment and adult offspring personality: An intergenerational life span approach to the origin of adult personality traits.
Article in Journal of personality and social psychology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 111 citations in OpenAlex.
- Behavioural public policy should take the psychology of poverty into account.Communications psychology · 2025Review
- Personality as mechanism: An integrative model of five-factor model personality traits as a mechanism between earlier life factors and cognitive aging.Current opinion in psychology · 2025Review
- Social origin and the intention to enrol in higher education: personality traits as a mechanism of reproduction or mobility?Frontiers in sociology · 2025Article
- Personality traits explain the relationship between psychedelic use and less depression in a comparative study.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Rural-urban differences in personality traits and well-being in adulthood.Journal of personality · 2024Article
- The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on semen quality of uninfected men.Basic and clinical andrology · 2023Article
- Childhood adversity and educational attainment: Evidence from Zambia on the role of personality.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Aligning with Patients and Families: Exploring Youth and Caregiver Openness to Pediatric Headache Interventions.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Pathways From Early-Life SES to Dementia Risk in Old Age: The Role of Personality.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2022Article
- Personality traits at age 16 and risk of metabolic syndrome at age 46.Journal of psychosomatic research · 2022Article
- A mega-analysis of personality prediction: Robustness and boundary conditions.Journal of personality and social psychology · 2022Article
- Stability and change in the Big Five personality traits: Findings from a longitudinal study of Mexican-origin adults.Journal of personality and social psychology · 2022Article
- Timing of First Sexual Experience with a Same-Sex Partner: A Life Course Approach.Archives of sexual behavior · 2021Article
- Two Forms of Social Inequality in Students' Socio-Emotional Skills: Do the Levels of Big Five Personality Traits and Their Associations With Academic Achievement Depend on Parental Socioeconomic Status?Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Personality Characteristics and Emotional Distress Among Chinese Pregnant Women: A Moderated Mediation Model.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Article
- The development of effortful control from late childhood to young adulthood.Journal of personality and social psychology · 2020Article
- Family and neighborhood socioeconomic status and temperament development from childhood to adolescence.Journal of personality · 2020Article
- Five Factor Model Personality Traits and Subjective Cognitive Failures.Personality and individual differences · 2020Article
- Parenting Style and Emotional Distress Among Chinese College Students: A Potential Mediating Role of the Zhongyong Thinking Style.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- Five-factor model personality traits and cognitive function in five domains in older adulthood.BMC geriatrics · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Why do some individuals have more self-control or are more vulnerable to stress than others? Where do these basic personality traits come from? Although a fundamental question in personality, more is known about how traits are related to important life outcomes than their developmental origins. The present research took an intergenerational life span approach to address whether a significant aspect of the childhood environment-parental educational attainment-was associated with offspring personality traits in adulthood. We tested the association between parents' educational levels and adult offspring personality traits in 7 samples (overall age range 14-95) and meta-analytically combined the results (total N > 60,000). Parents with more years of education had children who were more open, extraverted, and emotionally stable as adults. These associations were small but consistent, of similar modest magnitude to the association between life events and change in personality in adulthood, and were also supported by longitudinal analyses. Contrary to expectations, parental educational attainment was unrelated to offspring Conscientiousness, except for a surprisingly negative association in the younger cohorts. The results were similar in a subsample of participants who were adopted, which suggested that environmental mechanisms were as relevant as shared genetic variants. Participant levels of education were associated with greater conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, and openness and partially mediated the relation between parent education and personality. Child IQ and family income were also partial mediators. The results of this research suggest that parental educational attainment is 1 intergenerational factor associated with offspring personality development in adulthood. (PsycINFO Database Record
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.