Nature, Nurture, and the Transition to Early Adolescence by Stephen A. Petrill;Robert Plomin;John C. DeFries;John K. Hewitt

Author:Stephen A. Petrill;Robert Plomin;John C. DeFries;John K. Hewitt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-04-13T04:22:00+00:00

Discussion

Are individual differences in loneliness during childhood heritable across age? The answer appears to be yes when the children were 10 and 11 years old. Not surprisingly, environmental contributions to children's perception of loneliness were nonshared. It is likely that important contributors to individual differences in loneliness are experiences outside the family in peer groups. But, why would loneliness be heritable? Obviously, there is no gene for self-esteem. There are several paths through which biological differences can contribute to our feelings of loneliness. The behavior associated with those evaluations may be genetically influenced. For instance, genetic contributions to loneliness may be due to genetic contributions to emotionality or social interaction styles. McGuire et al. (1994) found that part of the heritability of children's perceptions of academic competence could be explained by genetic contributions to vocabulary and part of the heritability children's perceptions of peer popularity could he explained by genetic contributions to sociability. Biological factors may put us at risk factor for general psychopathology, while environmental factors determine its specific nature (e.g., Kendler, Heath, Martin, & Eaves 1987). This is one of many possible models that need to be tested using multivariate behavioral genetic data.

It would seem that a likely candidate for such multivariate analyses would be other internalizing problems. Surprisingly, parent and teacher reports of children's total numbers of internalizing problems were not highly correlated with children's reports of loneliness. It could he that our measure of loneliness was not valid, but other analyses showed that children's reports were linked to parents' and teachers' responses to specific questions about loneliness. Parent and teacher reports of depressive symptoms may have a different etiology than child reports (see Deater-Deacker & McGuire, chapter 9, this volume). It is also possible, however, that loneliness has been miscast as a member of the internalizing behavioral problems group. This is unlikely, given the links between children's loneliness and serious peer problems (e.g., Asher & Wheeler, 1985; Boivin & Hymel, 1997; Cassidy & Asher, 1992; Crick & Ladd, 1993; Renshaw & Brown, 1993). Yet another prospect is that loneliness has more in common with self-esteem than it does with depressive, somatic, or anxious behavior. Loneliness may be heritable via biological contributions to the self-evaluation process. Chronic loneliness is thought to involve a nialadaptive attribution style. This thinking process may involve cognitive impairments the same way that hostile attribution styles in conduct-disordered children are thought to have an attentional or perceptual component (e.g., Crick & Dodge, 1994). Memory or attentional problems may contribute to a maladaptive view of the world. This is not to say that biological factors work in a deterministic fashion. Rather, psychopathology is the result of biological and environmental risk and protective factors (Rutter & Plomin, 1998). Knowing those factors can help us develop better treatments. Chronic loneliness with an etiology that involves biological factors will require a different intervention from loneliness as a result of experiences alone.

In addition to the main findings, the results of the descriptive analyses were also interesting. Mow many

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