There’s a variable in the GSS, GENEEXPS, which asks if genes play a role in personality. The options are:
– It’s genes which play a major role
– It’s experience which determines personality
First, let’s admit that the premise is stupid. Personality is heritable, but environmental variation also seems to matter. In other words it is noncontroversial to assert that both genes and environment can explain variation in personality (or perhaps more precisely genetic variation can only explain around half the variation for any given trait).
I was curious how this broke down by education and intelligence. To remove demographic confounds I limited the sample to non-Hispanic whites. For intelligence I used WORDSUM, with scores 0-4 being dumb, 5-7 being average, and 8-10 being smart.
| Genes play major role | Experience plays major role | |
| Less than HS | 33 | 67 |
| High School | 26 | 74 |
| Junior College | 26 | 75 |
| Bachelor | 21 | 79 |
| Graduate | 24 | 77 |
| Dumb | 25 | 75 |
| Average | 25 | 75 |
| Smart | 24 | 76 |
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