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Nature Vs. Nurture: Are Leaders Born Or Made? A Behavior Genetic Investigation Of Leadership Style, Andrew Johnson, Philip Vernon, Julie Mccarthy, Mindy Molson, Julie Harris, Kerry Jang

Andrew M. Johnson

With the recent resurgence in popularity of trait theories of leadership, it is timely to consider the genetic determination of the multiple factors comprising the leadership construct. Individual differences in personality traits have been found to be moderately to highly heritable, and so it follows that if there are reliable personality trait differences between leaders and non-leaders, then there may be a heritable component to these individual differences. Despite this connection between leadership and personality traits, however, there are no studies of the genetic basis of leadership using modern behavior genetic methodology. The present study proposes to address the lack …