Minnesota Twin Family Study
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Minnesota Twin Family Study
The Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research (or MCTFR) is a series of behavioral genetic longitudinal studies of families with twin or adoptive offspring conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota. It seeks to identify and characterize the genetic and environmental influences on the development of psychological traits. Principal investigators include Matt McGue, William Iacono, and Kevin Haroian. Cohorts The primary cohorts of participants include the Minnesota Twin Family Study, Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study, Minnesota Twin Registry, and a variety of other cohorts of participants. Minnesota Twin Family Study MTFS is a twin study established in June 1989 with 1300 same-gendered twin pairs age 11 or 17, with an additional cohort of 500 such pairs recruited around 2004. Twins were born between 1972 and 2000. All twins born in Minnesota at that time were eligible to participate using birth registry data. Both identical and fraternal twins share ce ...
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Behavioral Genetic
Behavioural genetics, also referred to as behaviour genetics, is a field of scientific research that uses genetic methods to investigate the nature and origins of individual differences in behaviour. While the name "behavioural genetics" connotes a focus on genetic influences, the field broadly investigates the extent to which genetic and environmental factors influence individual differences, and the development of research designs that can remove the confounding of genes and environment. Behavioural genetics was founded as a scientific discipline by Francis Galton in the late 19th century, only to be discredited through association with eugenics movements before and during World War II. In the latter half of the 20th century, the field saw renewed prominence with research on inheritance of behaviour and mental illness in humans (typically using twin and family studies), as well as research on genetically informative model organisms through selective breeding and crosses. I ...
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Longitudinal Studies
A longitudinal study (or longitudinal survey, or panel study) is a research design that involves repeated observations of the same variables (e.g., people) over short or long periods of time (i.e., uses longitudinal data). It is often a type of observational study, although it can also be structured as longitudinal randomized experiment. Longitudinal studies are often used in social-personality and clinical psychology, to study rapid fluctuations in behaviors, thoughts, and emotions from moment to moment or day to day; in developmental psychology, to study developmental trends across the life span; and in sociology, to study life events throughout lifetimes or generations; and in consumer research and political polling to study consumer trends. The reason for this is that, unlike cross-sectional studies, in which different individuals with the same characteristics are compared, longitudinal studies track the same people, and so the differences observed in those people are less li ...
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University Of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. The Twin Cities campus comprises locations in Minneapolis and Falcon Heights, Minnesota, Falcon Heights, a suburb of St. Paul, approximately apart. The Twin Cities campus is the oldest and largest in the University of Minnesota system and has the List of United States university campuses by enrollment, ninth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,376 students at the start of the 2021–22 academic year. It is the Flagship#Colleges and universities in the United States, flagship institution of the University of Minnesota System, and is organized into 19 colleges, schools, and other major academic units. The Minnesota Territorial Legislature drafted a ...
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Psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups.Fernald LD (2008)''Psychology: Six perspectives'' (pp.12–15). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Hockenbury & Hockenbury. Psychology. Worth Publishers, 2010. Ψ (''psi''), the first letter of the Greek word ''psyche'' from which the term psychology is derived (see below), is commonly associated with the science. A professional practitioner or researcher involved in the discipline is called a psychologist. Some psychologists can also be classified as behavioral or cognitive scientists. Some psyc ...
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Matt McGue
Matt McGue is an American behavior geneticist and Regents Professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, where he co-directs the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research. Career McGue received his B.A. in psychology (minor: mathematics) from the University of California, Berkeley in 1975 and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1981. After completing his Ph.D. he was an instructor and later assistant professor at the Washington University School of Medicine until 1985. He returned to the University of Minnesota and eventually became full professor there in 1992. He was elected president of the Behavior Genetics Association in 2002 and was president of the International Society for Twin Studies from 2008 to 2010. References External links Matt McGueUniversity of Minnesota Introduction to Human Behavioral Genetics with Matt McGue(Coursera) * 17-topic course on Behavioral Genetics taught at University of Minnesota in fall 2020Distinguished Contribu ...
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William Iacono
William George Iacono is an American psychologist known for his research using behavior genetic methodologies, such as twin and adoption studies, to study the development of common mental disorders and substance abuse. He has also researched the relationship between substance use and cognitive impairment among adolescents. He is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, where he is also the co-director, with Matt McGue, of the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research. Before joining the faculty of the University of Minnesota in 1985, he was an associate professor at the University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top thre .... References External links * Living people Univers ...
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Twin Study
Twin studies are studies conducted on identical or fraternal twins. They aim to reveal the importance of environmental and genetic influences for traits, phenotypes, and disorders. Twin research is considered a key tool in behavioral genetics and in related fields, from biology to psychology. Twin studies are part of the broader methodology used in behavior genetics, which uses all data that are genetically informative – siblings studies, adoption studies, pedigree, etc. These studies have been used to track traits ranging from personal behavior to the presentation of severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. Twins are a valuable source for observation because they allow the study of environmental influence and varying genetic makeup: "identical" or monozygotic (MZ) twins share essentially 100% of their genes, which means that most differences between the twins (such as height, susceptibility to boredom, intelligence, depression, etc.) are due to experiences that one tw ...
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Phenotype
In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological properties, its behavior, and the products of behavior. An organism's phenotype results from two basic factors: the expression of an organism's genetic code, or its genotype, and the influence of environmental factors. Both factors may interact, further affecting phenotype. When two or more clearly different phenotypes exist in the same population of a species, the species is called polymorphic. A well-documented example of polymorphism is Labrador Retriever coloring; while the coat color depends on many genes, it is clearly seen in the environment as yellow, black, and brown. Richard Dawkins in 1978 and then again in his 1982 book ''The Extended Phenotype'' suggested that one can regard bird nests and other built structures such as cad ...
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Twin Registry
A twin registry is a database of information about both identical twins and fraternal twins, which is often maintained by an academic institution, such as a university, or by other research institutions. Investigative use The use of twins can improve the statistical power of a genetic study by reducing the amount of genetic and/or environmental variability.NIEHS Twin Registry
accessed 2013-06-14. (Some of the text in this article is a close paraphrase of the material on this website maintained by the U.S. Federal Government, and which is a document in the public domain.)
"Identical twins" ( (MZ) twins) share virtually all their

Adoption Study
Adoption studies are one of the classic research methods of behavioral genetics and are an effective technique for assessing the interconnections of genetic and environmental variables in the elicitation of human qualities such as intelligence (IQ) and diseases such as alcoholism. They also compare personality traits and mental disorders. Adoption studies are used alongside twin studies to identify the roles of genetic and environmental variables in the development of drinking issues along with many other diseases in children who were adopted. These studies often include identical twins who are adopted into different families, and they have pinpointed that some traits such as schizophrenia, IQ, criminality and alcoholism are linked to genetics. Adoption studies also usually compare the results of adoptees with biological parents who have alcohol issues and who grow up in varied adoptive circumstances to the outcomes of adoptees reared in comparable situations but without such family ...
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Thomas J
Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 1991. After Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Court and its longest-serving member since Anthony Kennedy's retirement in 2018. Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia. After his father abandoned the family, he was raised by his grandfather in a poor Gullah community near Savannah. Growing up as a devout Catholic, Thomas originally intended to be a priest in the Catholic Church but was frustrated over the church's insufficient attempts to combat racism. He abandoned his aspiration of becoming a clergyman to attend the College of the Holy Cross and, later, Yale Law School, where he was influenced by a number of conservative authors, notably Thomas Sowell, who dramatically shifted his worldview from progressive to ...
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Pioneer Fund
Pioneer Fund is an American non-profit foundation established in 1937 "to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences". The organization has been described as racist and white supremacist in nature. One of its first projects was to fund the distribution in US churches and schools of ''Erbkrank'', a Nazi propaganda film about eugenics. From 2002 until his death in October 2012, the Pioneer Fund was headed by psychology professor J. Philippe Rushton, who was succeeded by Richard Lynn. Two of the best known studies funded by Pioneer Fund are the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart and the Texas Adoption Project, which studied the similarities and differences of identical twins and other children adopted into non-biological families. Research backed by the fund on race and intelligence has generated controversy and criticism, such as the 1994 book ''The Bell Curve'', which drew heavily from Pioneer-funded research. The fund also has ties to eugenics, and has b ...
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