Study explores link between people's professions and their genetic predisposition to neuropsychiatric traits

Medical Xpress / Nature Human Behaviour ^ | Jan. 16, 2025 | Ingrid Fadelli / Georgios Voloudakis et al

[ConservativeMind]

Polygenic scores (PGS) are metrics used to estimate the genetic predisposition of people to developing specific mental health conditions, personality traits or diseases. In recent years, these metrics have often been used to investigate the intricate connections between genes and environmental factors.

Researchers recently carried out a study aimed at determining whether neuropsychiatric polygenic scores could predict the professional categories that individuals belong to. Their findings suggest that these scores weakly predict the professional category that people belong to.

Specifically, they wished to determine whether PGS scores hinting at a predisposition for specific neuropsychiatric disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or schizophrenia, are predictors of the membership to specific professional categories (e.g., "computers & math," "arts & design," etc.).

To determine whether a slightly higher predisposition for specific psychiatric traits was aligned with a person's profession, the researchers analyzed data collected as part of two of the world's largest biobanks. One of these is the Million Veteran Program (MVP), which is run in the US, while the other is the UK Biobank (UKBB), collected in the UK.

"A major takeaway is that while we do see statistically significant associations between several neuropsychiatric traits and professional categories, each trait's polygenic score (PGS) explains less than 0.4% of the variation in whether a person enters a particular profession," said Voloudakis. "In other words, there is a real but weak genetic signal in these career placements."

Interestingly, the researchers found that both age and sex played a far greater role in determining the professions that individuals will pursue compared to neuropsychiatric PGSs. Age accounted for approximately 21% of the observed variance in profession, while sex accounted for 7%.

"Our findings emphasize that demographic and social factors far outweigh genetic predisposition when it comes to occupational outcomes," explained Voloudakis.

[spankalib]

All I know, is that you can tell when an engineer is an extrovert:

He looks at your shoes while talking to you.

;)