Is your attitude to money shaped by your genes or your learning?

I’ve been talking with many friends about genetic versus environmental development. Back in the day, this was a big discussion in my Sociology classes. How much of your personality is genetic versus environmentally developed? Is it nature or nurture?

This is a question raised regularly by psychologists and researches and, as a father of twin boys who are nine years old and completely different, I’ve become convinced that a lot of their personality is genetic and, by way of corroboration, a research study came out from MIT – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – ten years ago that provides an insight on this!

Apparently at the moment of conception of any animal, including humans, there is a spark of light. The study calls this the most likely emergence of a successful conception or is it that, at this moment of sperm meeting egg, a personality is born?

Thinking further, an embryo gets a heartbeat after around a month of pregnancy in humans and so the question the MIT study raised in my mind is: when does a human get a personality? Is it at that moment of conception? Is it in our genes? Is that when a soul is born?

I could debate this further and further with no scientific proof or fact, but most studies confirm that a large part of your being is made by nature and by nurture. The question is how much? What are the ratios? Is it 50:50 or something different? Equally, if you think about that spark of life, does it start sooner?

One thing that is clear is that children develop in different ways. For example, take my twin boys who, from day one, were very different. Today, one is really into maths and Lego; the other is much more focused on football and dancing. One is very much about caring for others and putting friends first; the other does care, but also gets picked on more by others. I could go on, but it intrigues me how different they are and that this started pretty much on day one.

When talking with other parents, they tell me the same things, and that their children all have very different character traits even thought they were born to the same parents and raised in the same family. Even when twins are separated at birth, the nature genes still remain.

There are several studies that have targeted identical (monozygotic) twins specifically, as they share all of the same genes, to try to identify whether it is nature or nuture that results in your character. Being identical allows for the control of genetic differences that is otherwise difficult to achieve with non-identical individuals.

Two studies particularly stand out:

The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart (MISTRA) studied identical twins separated at birth, finding remarkable similarities in behaviour, suggesting strong genetic influence; and the highly controversial Louise Wise Services Study which took place in the 1960s. This is when researchers deliberately split up twins to explore nature versus nurture, but didn’t tell the adoptive parents that they had done this.  Similarly to the MISTRA study, the Louise Wise study found remarkable similarities in behavioural characteristics and IQ profiles among the twins, although the detailed results are sealed by government order until 2066 according to the BBC.

Either way the implications are that there are strong genetic basics influencing character and IQ in human beings.

Having said that, other studies suggest that whilst certain core brain functions have a genetic component, most of the higher-level emotional and social processing is more strongly influenced by environment and culture.

For example, this study conducted in 2024, notes that the genetics are more embedded around disgust and fear than personality and sociability. A good summary of the study can be found over here at Psychology Today.

My twins are not identical but are heavily influenced by each other in their thinking. Having said that, as mentioned, one is practical and the other is more of a dreamer.

What’s this got to do with banking, fintech and tech?

Not much. It’s just the eternal nature versus nurture debate. However, the reason I raise it is that my boys shocked me the other day.

Their friend didn’t get a computer for Christmas – maybe mum and dad couldn’t afford it or felt it inappropriate – so my boys turned to me and said: “can you keep our pocket money until there is enough for Jack to have a laptop?”

I replied to clarify: “you want to give up your pocket money until there’s enough saved to buy Jack a laptop?”

Yes, they said.

That shows that caring is in their nature … or is it by nurture?