The main goal of behavior genetics’ research is to understand the causes of variation in (human) traits. When single traits are considered, observed trait variation is decomposed into sources of genetic and environmental variation. A genetically informative design, such as the classical twin design, allows estimating the relative contributions of these sources of variation. When multiple traits are considered, genetically informative designs additionally allow investigating the causes of co-variation between two or more traits. Such multivariate genetic analyses are usually more powerful than univariate genetic analyses (Schmitz, Cherny,&Fulker 1998), may aid in understanding underlying biological mechanisms, and may provide a faster route to gene-finding and elucidating environmental factors that influence a trait (Leboyer et al., 1998).
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Posthuma, D. (2009). Multivariate Genetic Analysis. In: Kim, YK. (eds) Handbook of Behavior Genetics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-76727-7_4
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