Genetic Correlates of Psychological Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis in Young Adult Twins in Great Britain.

ABSTRACT: We investigated how the COVID-19 crisis and the extraordinary experience of lockdown affected young adults in England and Wales psychologically. One month after lockdown commenced (T2), we assessed 30 psychological and behavioural traits in more than 4000 twins in their mid-twenties and compared their responses to the same traits assessed in 2018 (T1). Mean changes from T1 to T2 were modest and inconsistent. Contrary to the hypothesis that major environmental changes related to COVID-19 would result in increased variance in psychological and behavioural traits, we found that the magnitude of individual differences did not change from T1 to T2. Twin analyses revealed that while genetic factors accounted for about half of the reliable variance at T1 and T2, they only accounted for ~ 15% of i

SUBMITTER: Rimfeld K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7902241 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature