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Zusammenfassung. Gesundheitsbewusstes Verhalten (wie z.B. Sport, Ernährung, Verzicht auf Tabakkonsum) leistet einen bedeutsamen Beitrag zu Gesundheit und Wohlbefinden. Trotz des gut dokumentierten Nutzens verhält sich ein Großteil der Bevölkerung in den westlichen Industrienationen weniger gesundheitsbewusst als dies vorteilhaft wäre. Warum aber unterscheiden sich Personen in Lebensstil und Gesundheitsverhalten? Welchen Einfluss hat Persönlichkeit auf Gesundheit und inwiefern wird dieser Zusammenhang durch Gesundheitsverhalten vermittelt? Im Rahmen der Zwillingsstudie zu Persönlichkeit und Wohlbefinden (TwinPaW; Twin Study on Personality and Well-being; Spinath & Wolf, 2006 ) wurden Persönlichkeit, Gesundheit und das Gesundheitsverhalten von 302 ein- und zweieiigen Zwillingspaaren mittels Fragebogenverfahren detailliert erfasst. Mithilfe von Mediatoranalysen sowie uni- und multivariaten verhaltensgenetischen Analysen wurden Annahmen aus zwei theoretischen Modellen, dem Health Behavior Modell und dem Constitutional Predisposition Modell geprüft. Beide Modelle erheben den Anspruch, Mechanismen, die dem Zusammenhang von Persönlichkeit und Gesundheit zugrundeliegen, zu erklären. In Übereinstimmung mit dem Health Behavior Modell zeigte sich, dass Gesundheitsverhalten in gewissem Ausmaß den Zusammenhang zwischen Persönlichkeit und Gesundheit vermittelt. Entgegen den Annahmen des Constitutional Predisposition Modells spielte in den verhaltensgenetischen Analysen genetische Kovarianz für den Zusammenhang von Persönlichkeit und Gesundheit keine Rolle.

AbstractAfter briefly recapitulating two earlier German twin studies (BiLSAT and GOSAT), we present two new German twin studies with a longitudinal perspective: CoSMoS and TwinPaW. The twin study on Cognitive ability, Self-reported Motivation and School performance (CoSMoS) aims to investigate predictors and influences of school performance in a genetically sensitive design, beginning with children in late elementary school. The Twin study on Personality And Wellbeing (TwinPaW) focuses on adult personality and its relation to physical health as well as health-related behavior in an adult sample of twins. Both studies are characterized by an effort to recruit new large twin samples through a novel recruitment procedure aimed at reducing self-selective sampling. In two German federal states, contact information on persons born on the same day and with the same name was retrieved from record sections. From the resulting pool of more than 36,000 addresses we contacted approximately 2000 parents of twins aged 9 and 10 for CoSMoS, as well as 2000 adult twin pairs for TwinPaW by telephone and mail. Personal contact by telephone proved to be more efficient with agreement rates of 63% in the children sample and 65% in the adult sample. In this article we briefly describe the rationale and the study aims of CoSMoS and TwinPaW as well as the characteristics of the sample we have recruited so far.

This article summarizes the status of three recent German twin studies: CoSMoS, SOEP, and ChronoS. The German twin study on Cognitive Ability, Self-Reported Motivation, and School Achievement (CoSMoS) is a three-wave longitudinal study of monozygotic and dizygotic twins reared together, and aims to investigate predictors of and influences on school performance. In the first wave of the data collection in 2005, 408 pairs of twins aged between 7 and 11 as well as their parents participated in CoSMoS. The SOEP twin study is an extended twin study, which has combined data from monozygotic and dizygotic twins reared together with additional data from full sibling pairs, mother–child, and grandparent–child dyads who participated in the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) study. The SOEP twin project comprises about 350 twin and 950 non-twin pairs aged between 17 and 70. Data were collected between 2009 and 2010, with a focus on personality traits, wellbeing, education, employment, income, living situation, life-satisfaction, and several attitudes. The aim of the Chronotype twin study (ChronoS) was to examine genetic and environmental influences on chronotype (morningness and eveningness), coping strategies, and several aspects of the previous SOEP twin project in a sample of 301 twin pairs aged between 19 and 76 years, recruited in 2010 and 2011. Part of the ChronoS twin sample also participated in the earlier SOEP twin study, representing a second wave of assessments. We briefly describe the design and contents of these three studies as well as selected recent findings.

This study meta-analytically examines correlations between dimensions of work–nonwork conflict (work-to-nonwork and nonwork-to-work conflict) and burnout subscales (exhaustion, depersonalization/cynicism), with a special emphasis on the role of moderating variables. The meta-analysis is based on 220 coefficients from 91 samples with a total of 51,700 participants and employs a random-effects model. Primary studies relied on samples of working adults from different cultural backgrounds. Our results revealed that both directions of work–nonwork conflict were strongly related to emotional exhaustion as well as to cynicism (ρ between .34 and .61). The correlations were shown to be moderated differentially by gender, age, marital and parental status as well as by cultural background. Meta-analyses based on primary studies with multi-wave designs indicated that work interfering with nonwork and exhaustion have equal reciprocal effects when considering zero-order correlations. However, within meta-analytical structural equation modeling, cross-lagged relations between work-to-nonwork conflict and exhaustion across time did not improve the prediction of outcomes at Time 2 above the influence of stability coefficients.

Understanding the sources of individual differences beyond social and economic effects has become a research area of growing interest in psychology, sociology, and economics. A quantitative genetic research design provides the necessary tools for this type of analysis. For a state-of-the-art approach, multigroup data is required. Household panel studies, such as BHPS (Understanding Society) in the UK or the SOEP in Germany, combined with an oversampling of twins, provide a powerful starting point since data from a reasonably large number of non-twin relatives is readily available. In addition to advances in our understanding of genetic and environmental influences on key variables in the social sciences, quantitative genetic analyses of target variables can guide molecular genetic research in the field of employment, earnings, health and satisfaction, as combined twin and sibling or parent data can help overcome serious caveats in molecular genetic research.

The Bielefeld Longitudinal Study of Adult Twins (BiLSAT) is a German longitudinal study of monozygotic and dizygotic twins reared together, including more than 1,100 twin pairs aged between 14 and 80 who participated in the first wave. Data were collected at five waves of assessment between 1993 and 2009. Initially, the study focused on genetic and environmental influences on the structure and the development in adult temperament and personality. Today, the study includes a broad range of individual variables, such as personality disorders, major life goals, interests, attitudes, values, life and work satisfaction, and major life events. A special feature of this genetically informative study lies in the multiple-rater approach (i.e., self-reports and peer reports). Longitudinal multiple-rater analyses allow researchers to go beyond the basic nature–nurture decomposition of variance in self-reports examining genetic and environmental influences on stability and change in more accurately measured individual attributes. In the current article, we briefly describe the design and contents of BiLSAT as well as some recent major findings and future plans.

Evidence of assortative mating according to personality was reported in a previous SOEP-based study (Rammstedt & Schupp, 2008). Based on population representative data of almost 7,000 couples, high levels of congruence between spouses were found, which increased with marriage duration. Almost 5,000 of these couples were tracked over a five-year period with personality assessed at the beginning and end of this time, which allowed us to investigate the relationship between personality congruence and marriage duration longitudinally. Using this data, we investigated (a) whether personality congruence is predictive for partnership longevity and whether congruence therefore differs between subsequently stable and instable couples, (b) if stable couples become more congruent, and (c) if separated couples become less congruent with regard to their personality over time. The results provide initial evidence of personality congruence as a predictor for partnership longevity: the more congruent couples are in the personality domain of Openness, the more stable their partnership. In addition, we found no indications of an increase in personality congruence over time within the stable couples; within the separated couples, however, a strong decrease in congruence was detectable.

AbstractThe German Twin Family Panel (TwinLife) is a German longitudinal study of monozygotic and dizygotic same-sex twin pairs and their families that was designed to investigate the development of social inequalities over the life course. The study covers an observation period from approximately 2014 to 2023. The target population of the sample are reared-together twins of four different age cohorts that were born in 2009/2010 (cohort 1), in 2003/2004 (cohort 2), in 1997/1998 (cohort 3) and between 1990 and 1993 (cohort 4). In the first wave, the study included data on 4097 twin families. Families were recruited in all parts of Germany so that the sample comprises the whole range of the educational, occupational and income structure. As of 2019, two face-to-face, at-home interviews and two telephone interviews have been conducted. Data from the first home and telephone interviews are already available free of charge as a scientific use-file from the GESIS data archive. This report aims to provide an overview of the study sample and design as well as constructs that are unique in TwinLife in comparison with previous twin studies — such as an assessment of cognitive abilities or information based on the children's medical records and report cards. In addition, major findings based on the data already released are displayed, and future directions of the study are presented and discussed.