Willingness to Drive When Drunk and Personality: A Twin Study

N.G. Martin, D.I. Boomsma

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Abstract

In a laboratory study of psychomotor sensitivity to alcohol, twins were asked "Would you drive a car now?" at 1, 2, and 3 h after drinking a standard dose of ethanol (0.75 g/kg). Correlations among these binary items, the Eysenck personality scales, and age were investigated using PRELIS and LISREL. Willingness to drive and Extraversion correlate at all three times in both males and females. In males, willingness to drive also correlates with Psychoticism, and in females it correlates negatively with the Lie (or Social Desirability) scale. Most correlations between cotwins in willingness to drive were significant in both monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) male twins but correlations were lower in female twins. Factor and Markovian models were fitted. In males there seem to be both genetic and cultural influences on willingness to drive when drunk. About half the genetic variance seems to be the pleiotropic effects of genes influencing Extraversion. The correlationswith Psychoticism, on the other hand, seem to be largely environmental in origin. The small sample size and lack of proper significance tests mean that these results must be interpreted with caution. © 1989 Plenum Publishing Corporation.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)97-111
JournalBehavior Genetics
Volume19
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1989

Cohort Studies

  • Netherlands Twin Register (NTR)

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