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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science pp 1–6Cite as

Heritability

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Synonyms

Genetic inheritance; Inheritance

Definition

Heritability is the statistical metric that estimates the relative influence of genetic variation (measured as genetic variance) on phenotypic variation (phenotypic variance), relative to the influence of environmental differences (environmental variance).

Introduction

Heritability is a statistical parameter that is often used in discussions of genetic causation and the nature versus nurture debate. The heritability of a trait, represented by either H2 (for broad heritability) or h2 (for narrow heritability) is between 0 and 1. Traits with a high heritability are generally seen as genetically influenced, and those with a low heritability as environmentally caused (Lynch and Bourrat 2017).

The heritability concept most often invoked in psychological science is broad sense heritability. Broad sense heritability estimates the proportion of phenotypic variance (VP) that can be accounted for by genetic variance (VG), relative to the...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Kate E. Lynch

Authors
  1. Kate E. Lynch
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Correspondence to Kate E. Lynch .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  2. Rochester, MI, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancashire, UK

    Gayle Brewer

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Lynch, K.E. (2019). Heritability. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_41-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_41-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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