Exploring the genetic correlations of antisocial behaviour and life history traits.

Jorim J Tielbeek, JC Barnes, Arne Popma, Tinca JC Polderman, James J Lee, John RB Perry, Danielle Posthuma, Brian B Boutwell

OAI: oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/287233 • DOI: 10.17863/CAM.34540

UNLABELLED: Prior evolutionary theory provided reason to suspect that measures of development and reproduction would be correlated with antisocial behaviours in human and non-human species. Behavioural genetics has revealed that most quantitative traits are heritable, suggesting that these phenotypic correlations may share genetic aetiologies. We use genome-wide association study data to estimate the genetic correlations between various measures of reproductive development (N = 52 776-318 863) and antisocial behaviour (N = 31 968). Our genetic correlation analyses demonstrate that alleles associated with higher reproductive output (number of children ever born, r g = 0.50, P = 0.0065) were positively correlated with alleles associated with antisocial behaviour, whereas alleles associated with more delayed reproductive onset (age at first birth, r g = -0.64, P = 0.0008) were negatively associated with alleles linked to antisocial behaviour. Ultimately, these findings coalesce with evolutionary theories suggesting that increased antisocial behaviours may partly represent a faster life history approach, which may be significantly calibrated by genes. DECLARATION OF INTEREST: None.

Genome-Wide Association Study antisocial behaviour linkage disequilibrium regression