Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Don't enjoy school? Blame genetics.

A new study at Ohio State University has recently discovered that a lack of motivation in school may be attributed to genetic inheritance from parents. The study took approximately 13,000 twins from six different countries and asked them to rate their enjoyment and their ability in several different school subjects. The study compared the answer between fraternal twins, who share half of their inherited genes, and identical twins, who share all of their inherited genes. The results were similar in all countries and showed that there was more similarity between the answers of identical twins, showing a strong genetic linkage.  Researchers said that ones motivation to learn isn't dependent upon one gene, but instead it is dependent on multiple genes and gene-environment interactions. However environmental factors only account for 3% of the variable for this personality.

I believe this study will help teachers and parents around the world better understand their children and how they are doing in their academics. When a child is failing, many people instantly blame the child or assume that there is no one in the child's life to motivate them. This research shows that it may just be that they are unmotivated due to their genetic predisposition, and therefore will require more attention in the classroom and at home to help cope with their lack of motivation in school.

1 comment:

  1. This is a very interesting finding, and I really think more research should go into this subject. How exactly motivation/interest in school can be connected to genetics would definitely be handy knowledge. Coming from a psychology perspective, I would think this relates to attention spans, and perhaps even levels of attention disorders. In most cases of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), those dealing with the disorder often find themselves lacking motivation in the classroom setting. If specific genes involved in motivation could be located, it could help the psychology field address attention issues. I know a lot of focus is turning to the relationship between behavior and genetics, both from biology and psychology focused labs, and I think combining the fields in this kind of research could yield some big, and hopefully more detailed, results.

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