A multivariate analysis of 59 candidate genes in personality traits: the temperament and character inventory

Cloninger (Cloninger CR. Neurogenetic adaptive mechanisms in alcoholism. Sc ience 1987. 236: 410-416) proposed three basic personality dimensions for t emperament: novelty seeking, harm avoidance, and reward dependence. He sugg ested that novelty seeking primarily utilized dopamine pathways, harm avoid ance utilized serotonin pathways, and reward dependence utilized norepineph rine pathways. Subsequently, one additional temperament dimension (persiste nce) and three character dimensions (cooperativeness, self-directedness, an d self-transcendence) were added to form the temperament and character inve ntory (TCI). We have utilized a previously described multivariate analysis technique (Comings DE, Gade-Andavolu R, GonzaIez N et al. Comparison of the role of dopamine, serotonin, and noradrenergic genes in ADHD, ODD and cond uct disorder. Multivariate regression analysis of 20 genes. Clin Genet 2000 : 57: 178-196; Comings DD, Gade-Andavolu R, GonzaIez N et al. Multivariate analysis of associations of 42 genes in ADHD, ODD and conduct disorder. Cli n Genet 2000: in press) to examine the relative role of 59 candidate genes in the seven TCI traits and test the hypothesis that specific personality t raits were associated with specific genes. While there was some tendency fo r this to be true, a more important trend was the involvement of different ratios of functionally related groups of genes, and of different genotypes of the same genes, for different traits.