Laura Wesseldijk

Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics | MPGAESTHETIC

The first part of this review provides a brief historical background of behavior genetic research and how twin and genotype data can be utilized to study genetic influences on individual differences in human behavior. We then review the field of music genetics, from its emergence to large scale twin studies and the recent, first molecular genetic s...

Uncovering the genetic underpinnings of musical ability and engagement is a foundational step for exploring their wide-ranging associations with cognition, health, and neurodevelopment. Prior studies have focused on using twin and family designs, demonstrating moderate heritability of musical phenotypes. The current study used genome-wide complex t...

While music engagement is often regarded as beneficial for mental health, some studies report higher risk for depression and anxiety among musicians. This study investigates whether shared underlying genetic influences (genetic pleiotropy) or gene-environment interaction could be at play in the music-mental health association using measured genotyp...

To further our understanding of the genetics of musicality, we explored associations between a polygenic score for self-reported beat synchronization ability (PGS rhythm ) and objectively measured rhythm discrimination, as well as other validated music skills and music-related traits. Using family data, we were able to further explore potential pat...

Genetic factors have a substantial influence on individuals' food preferences, but less is known about their influence on abstinence from eating meat and fish. Here we looked at the influence genetics may have on pescetarianism (not eating meat but eating fish) and vegetarianism (not eating meat and fish) in a Dutch twin sample (N = 8,196). We also...

Most Five-Factor Model questionnaire items contain unique variance that 1) is heritable, stable, and observable; 2) demonstrates consistent associations with age and sex, and 3) is predictive of life outcomes over and above higher-order factors. This is consistent with items indexing a unique level of the personality trait hierarchy—nuances. Extend...

The first aim of this study was to construct/validate a subscale—with cut-offs considering gender/age differences—for the school-age Child Behavior CheckList (CBCL) to screen for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) applying both data-driven (N = 1666) and clinician-expert (N = 15) approaches. Further, we compared these to previously established CBCL ASD...

Over the past decade, evolutionary psychologists have proposed that many moral stances function to promote self-interests. At the same time, behavioral geneticists have demonstrated that many moral stances have genetic bases. We integrated these perspectives by examining how moral condemnation of recreational drug use relates to sexual strategy (i....

People vary in the degree to which they enjoy eating meats versus plants. This paper examines the genetic and environmental roots of this variation, as well as the genetic and environmental roots of meat neophobia, plant neophobia, and vegetarianism/veganism. Using data from 9,319 adult Finnish twins and siblings of twins (551 MZ, 861 DZ complete;...

People vary in the degree to which they enjoy eating meats versus plants. This paper examines the genetic and environmental roots of this variation, as well as the genetic and environmental roots of meat neophobia, plant neophobia, and vegetarianism/veganism. Using data from 9,319 adult Finnish twins and siblings of twins (551 MZ, 861 DZ complete;...

Research on romantic jealousy has traditionally focused on sex differences. We investigated why individuals vary in romantic jealousy, even within the sexes, using a genetically informed design of ~7700 Finnish twins and their siblings. First, we estimated genetic, shared environmental and nonshared environmental influences on jealousy, Second, we...

Existing work indicates that socio-political attitudes (or: ideology) are associated with personality, with Social Dominance Orientation and Right-Wing Authoritarianism relating most strongly to honesty-humility and openness to experience, the two value-related domains of the HEXACO framework. Using a sample of 7067 twins and siblings of twins (inc...

Over the past decade, evolutionary psychologists have proposed that many moral stances function to promote self-interests, and behavioral geneticists have demonstrated that many moral stances have genetic bases. We integrate these perspectives by examining how moral condemnation of recreational drug use relates to sexual strategy (i.e., being more...

Experts in domains such as music or sports often start training early. It has been suggested that this may reflect a sensitive period in childhood for skill acquisition. However, it could be that familial factors (e.g., genetics) contribute to the association. Here, we examined the effect of age of onset of musical training on musical aptitude and...

Decades of research have shown that about half of individual differences in personality traits is heritable. Recent studies have reported that heritability is not fixed, but instead decreases across the life span. However, findings are inconsistent and it is yet unclear whether these trends are because of a waning importance of heritable tendencies...

Dozens of studies have indicated that individuals more prone to experiencing disgust have stronger symptoms of anxiety disorders—especially contamination sensitivity. However, no work has informed the degree to which this relationship arises from genetic factors versus environmental factors. In the present study, we fill this gap by measuring disgu...

Music listening plays an important role in the daily lives of many. It remains unclear what explains variation in how much time people spend listening to music and whether music listening improves musical auditory discrimination skills. In 10,780 Swedish twin individuals, data were available on hours of music listening, musical engagement and music...

The association between active musical engagement (as leisure activity or professionally) and mental health is still unclear, with earlier studies reporting contrasting findings. Here we tested whether musical engagement predicts (1) a diagnosis of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar or stress-related disorders based on nationwide patient r...

Both genes (G) and the environment (E) are important for individual differences in expertise, but little is known about GE interactions underlying domain-specific achievement. Here we explored this issue in a large Swedish twin cohort (N = 6,610), using moderator modeling with musical expertise as a model domain. Specifically, we tested whether mus...

The parents of children with psychopathology are at increased risk for psychiatric symptoms. To investigate which parents are mostly at risk, we assessed in a clinical sample of families with children with psychopathology, whether parental symptom scores can be predicted by offspring psychiatric diagnoses and other child, parent and family characte...

Conduct problems in children and adolescents can predict antisocial personality disorder and related problems, such as crime and conviction. We sought an explanation for such predictions by performing a genetic longitudinal analysis. We estimated the effects of genetic, shared environmental, and unique environmental factors on variation in conduct...

Objective: Parental psychiatric symptoms can negatively affect the outcome of children's psychopathology. Studies thus far have mainly shown a negative effect of maternal depression. This study examined the associations between a broad range of psychiatric symptoms in mothers and fathers and the child's outcome. Method: Internalizing and externa...

In studies of child psychopathology, phenotypes of interest are often obtained by parental ratings. When behavioral ratings are obtained in the context of a twin study, this allows for the decomposition of the phenotypic variance, into a genetic and a non-genetic part. If a phenotype is assessed by a single rater, heritability is based on the child...

The assessment of children's psychopathology is often based on parental report. Earlier studies have suggested that rater bias can affect the estimates of genetic, shared environmental and unique environmental influences on differences between children. The availability of a large dataset of maternal as well as paternal ratings of psychopathology i...

Knowledge is lacking regarding current psychopathology in parents whose children are evaluated in a psychiatric outpatient clinic. This especially accounts for fathers. We provide insight into the prevalence rates of parental psychopathology and the association with their offspring psychopathology by analyzing data on psychiatric problems collected...

Background: Spouses resemble each other for psychopathology, but data regarding spousal resemblance in externalizing psychopathology, and data regarding spousal resemblance across different syndromes (e.g. anxiety in wives and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD] in husbands) are limited. Moreover, knowledge is lacking regarding spousal...

Background: Psychiatric disorders run in families. To bridge the gap between child and youth psychiatry and adult psychiatry, GGZ inGeest has started screening parents of new registered children for psychopathology - and if indicated - offers parents treatment in the same department as their children. Aim: To examine the feasibility and usefulne...

Objective: The present research tested whether an evaluative conditioning intervention makes thin-ideal models less enviable as standards for appearance-based social comparisons (Study 1), and increases body satisfaction (Study 2). Design: Female participants were randomly assigned to intervention versus control conditions in both studies (ns = 66...