Computational modelling of person-environment transactions: (Contribution to an invited symposium: Behavioral genetics of personality differences and development)

Personality characteristics of all breadth and flavour are ubiquitously heritable, yet the specific genetic variants responsible for this variance have remained extremely elusive. Among other possibilities, some part of (apparent) genetic variance in personality characteristic may be accounted for by gene-environment transactions or non-additive genetic mechanisms. I will present computational models to show how transactions between persons and environment can result in high heritability estimates of personality characteristics even when direct and ongoing genetic influences on these characteristics are in fact very weak. I will also show how different types of person-environment transactions can result in either mostly additive or a combination of additive and non-additive genetic influences. More generally, I will argue that computational models are a possibly useful approach to test how different personality-related processes may pan out.