MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Wendong Li, Ph.D. Assistant professor of psychological sciences Department of Psychological Sciences Kansas State University Manhattan, KS Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Wen-Dong Li: There has been a "nature versus nurture" debate in leadership: Are leaders born or made? In academia, research on trait theories of leadership has shown that important individual characteristics such as personality traits are predictive of whether one is a leader or not (leadership role occupancy or emergence). One author of this paper, Dr. Arvey conducted twin studies showing that about 30% of the individual differences in leadership is attributable to individual differences in their genetic makeup. But so far, little research has examined whether specific genes are involved and no research has examined the pathways linking genes to leadership. This is where this research came in. We found that a dopamine transporter gene, DAT1 was involved in genetic influences on leadership role occupancy, but through two opposing pathways. One pathway is through proactive personality: DAT1 10-repeat allele was negatively related to proactive personality, which in turn was positively associated with leadership role occupancy. The negative indirect effect was significant. On the other hand, DAT1 was positively related to (moderate) rule breaking, which was positively associated with leadership role occupancy. The overall relationship between DAT1 and leadership was not significant. Thus we call it a mixed blessing because the two opposing mechanisms offset each other. (more…)