{
  "abstract": "People vary in how strongly they believe their psychological traits are innate. Using a twin/sibling design (N = 5,844; 1,043 MZ and 2,607 DZ families), I tested whether such beliefs moderate the heritability of 11 traits spanning sexuality, personality, attitudes, and health behavior. Innateness beliefs significantly moderated heritability for all traits: individuals who considered a trait more innate showed higher heritability for that trait. The effect was more trait-specific than indicative of a general essentialist tendency and largely driven by the individual's own belief rather than shared familial or genetic factors (religiosity and risk-taking were partial exceptions). A stringent sensitivity analysis reduced the number of significant traits from 11 to 6, indicating that for some traits the moderation may at least partly reflect a confound between extreme trait scores and innateness beliefs. The low heritability of innateness beliefs is consistent with largely non-genetic beliefs gatekeeping the expression of genetic variation.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 1,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Patrick Jern"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/dt9v0chtnw8dg.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.31234/osf.io/q6ths_v2",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "dt9v0chtnw8dg",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/q6ths_v2/",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "bepress",
      "Developmental Psychology"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Environmental Psychology"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Evolution"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Evolutionary Biology"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Family and Kin"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Gene-environment Interaction"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Genetic factors"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Motivational Behavior"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Natural Environments"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Self-concept and Identity"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Self-regulation"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Social and Behavioral Sciences"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Social and Personality Psychology"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "3203|Personality Traits and Psychology"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7213633042",
  "pdf_url": "https://osf.io/q6ths/download",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-09-19",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/dt9v0chtnw8dg.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:24:11Z",
      "native_id": "q6ths",
      "source": "osf",
      "url": "https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/q6ths_v2/"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "bepress:Evolution",
      "subfield": "evolutionary-biology"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Self-Attributed Innateness Beliefs Moderate the Heritability of Psychological Traits",
  "title_text": "Self-Attributed Innateness Beliefs Moderate the Heritability of Psychological Traits",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:24:11Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/dt9v0chtnw8dg",
  "venue": "PsyArXiv",
  "versions": []
}