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[Dante]

BACKGROUND
It is known that appearances and physical characteristics are now genetically inherited by a creature's offspring. The question is, does this apply to personality? Specifically, we will consider the "traits" aspect of personality, rather than preferences and nervous habits.

POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS
-> Eugenically breeding a fortress of calm, non-violent, extremely cheerful, non-overindulging dwarves, and never worrying about a tantrum spiral again.
-> Dwarves that SERVE THE OVERMIND.

HYPOTHESIS
Personality traits are passed on to children. Some random variation is to be expected, but we should see some pattern of inheritance.

RESULTS
Signs point to no.

RAW DATA

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

Child 1
- anxiety                 
+ immoderation
+ vulnerability
- friendliness
+ activity level         
+ adventurousness
+ imagination
+ achievement             
- cautiousness           

Mother & father
+ anxiety
- activity level
++ excitement seeking
++ altruism
+ modest
- achievement
- cautiousness
-- self consciousness
+ self-discipline



Child 4
- assertive
- activity level
++ adventurousness
+ imagination
- intellectual curiosity
+ straightforwardness
-- orderliness

Mother & father
+ anxiety
+ depression
- gregariousness
+ adventurousness
- artistic interest
- altruism
+ excitement seeking
--- cautiousness



Child 2 [MIGRANT]
- vulnerability
- gregariousness
-- liberalism
-- trust
+ altruism
- cooperation
+ modest
+ orderliness
+++ cautiousness

Mother
- anger
- assertiveness
- trust
+ modest
- achievement
- self discipline
+ cautiousness
Father = ???



Child 3(a)
+++ depression
+ immoderation
- activity level
- adventurousness
+ straightforwardness
- altruism
-- cooperation
+ sympathy
-- self efficacy
- achievement
- self discipline

Child 3(b)
- anger
+ self consciousness
- vulnerability
++ assertiveness
++ imagination
- artistic interest
--- excitement seeking
- liberalism
+ achievement

Mother & father
--- anxiety
-- self consciousness
+ activity level
+ adventurousness
+++ artistic interest
+ cooperation
-- modesty
+ self discipline
+++ depression
+ vulnerability
- gregariousness
+ friendliness
+ cheerful
- imagination
-- excitement seeking
+ intellectual curiosity
+ dutifulness
++ cautiousness



Child 5(a) (Sakzul)
++ anxiety
++ gregariousness
+ friendliness
- artistic interest
+++ emotionality
- dutifulness
- achievement

Child 5(b) (Stakud)
-- anger
+ self consciousness
-- vulnerability
- artistic interest
- emotionality
- trust
-- altruism

Mother & father
- immoderation
- friendliness
- anger
+ depression
- self consciousness
+ trust
+ straightforwardness
- altruism



Child 6
+ anger
+ self consciousness
- vulnerability
-- cheerfulness
-- artistic interest
- emotionality
+ cooperation
- cautiousness

Mother & father
+ anxiety
+ friendliness
++ intellectual
+ liberalism
+ altruism
+ sympathy
+ orderliness
++ dutifulness
- achievement striving
++ assertiveness
- artistic interest
- emotionality

METHOD
I considered only those personality traits falling outside the (~) 40%-60% centre of the bell curve.
I looked at any association between parents and children, possibility of inverse relationships, and took the average where parents' personality features cancelled out.

ANALYSIS

Code: [Select]

1. Support for the hypothesis
[Examples where the parents' personalities did correlate with their childrens']
# minor correlation (parents[1 or 2] -> child[1], parents[1] -> child[2]) = 111111 = (6)
# major correlation (parents[2+] -> child[2+]) = 11 = (2)

2. Neutral or minor opposition to the hypothesis
[Examples where the parents' personalities were irrelevant to their childrens']
# no effects (parents[1] -> child[0]) = 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 = (43)
# no effects (parents[2] -> child[0]) = 111111111111 = (12)
# minor [1] quirks appearing in child = 1111111111111111111111111111 = (28)

3. Opposition to the hypothesis
[Examples where the parents' personalities inversely effected their childrens', or huge personality defects appeared or disappeared]
# major [2+] quirks appearing in child = 11111111 = (8)
# no effects (parents[3+] -> child[0]) = 11111 = (5)
# minor inverse effects on child (2 diff) = 1111111111 = (10)
# major inverse effects on kid (3 or more out) = 1111 = (4)
CONCLUSION
Even considering only positive and negative correlation, we have 10 minor inverse effects versus only 6 minor positive effects, and 4 major inverse effects versus only 2 major positive effects.
A sample size of seven is obviously not sufficient for sophisticated analysis. However, finding NO pattern of correlation between parents and offspring indicates that no genetic inheritance of personality exists.

[DarthCloakedDwarf]

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the new Mermaid Thread.

[AngleWyrm]

@Dante, Thank you for this in-depth research project. Its too bad the results are somewhat disappointing, but results nonetheless.
-AngleWyrm

[Dante]

I was going to make a longterm fortress divided into four completely isolated burrows, and breed my dwarves as far as I could into humans, elves, kobolds and goblins. But it looks like I'd only get physiological results, so that project's off the table for now. :/

[smigenboger]

Did you make them adults at one and make them breed in litters?

[Nikov]

And people call me a freak for wanting sewer systems.

[hostergaard]

I would want any living thing to be able to inherit attributes from their parents but with small chance of getting or exceeding attributes that that the parents didn't have.

Say for example animal X of Y species have size 50, (a number just thrown out my head) which would translate into Medium Y animal or Small Animal.

i.e. that relative to it own species it is medium size but relative to the rest of the world it is small size.

Animal X mets another Y animal which we would call Z.
Z is of size 60 which would translate into Large Y animal or Medium animal.

Z and Y Have a litter together.

We call them A,B,C,D,E

A,B,C, Are sized between 50 and 60 since that is the range of the parents.

But D, due to random variants are slightly smaller than its parents. Say; 48.

The larger variation the smaller the change of it happening.

So we have E. Due to a very rare occurrence, the random variables have bestowed him with a size of 90.

This makes him an Giant Y animal and a huge animal.

We can then trow in a trigger that makes any animal that departs far enough from the original species a new species.

So E become the new species called Giant (or huge) Y. The new species can still procreate with the species it came from and perhaps the other species directly linked with the mother species. 


So any dwarf with enough patience could breed any animals to have whatever attributes he/she wanted.

Imagine riding into battle on Giant Fluffy Wambles.

 

[Urist Imiknorris]

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

You obviously need a bigger fortress. And, of course, death chambers of those with unacceptable traits.

[Jude]

I feel like implementing this level of genetics would be a waste of time. It can be simulated easily without such complex programming, and nobody would really notice the difference unless they went out of their way looking for it.

[Starver]

[snip interesting analysis]

CONCLUSION
Even considering only positive and negative correlation, we have 10 minor inverse effects versus only 6 minor positive effects, and 4 major inverse effects versus only 2 major positive effects.
A sample size of seven is obviously not sufficient for sophisticated analysis. However, finding NO pattern of correlation between parents and offspring indicates that no genetic inheritance of personality exists.

I've dabbled in this analysis (not as precisely as you have, I've not had many native children, and wasn't prepared to include the unknown forebear factor in immigrant Single Parent Famlies) and tentitively come to the conclusion that there's no correlation due to an apparent negativity to the correlation.

Although, with my smaller dataset I really couldn't prove the negative correlation either (nor could I have technically proven any observed positive one).  It could have been some Regression Towards The Mean effect, statistical fluke or similar... The conceptual error bars were too large.


But you've gotten me thinking, with your results showing a tendency towards an inverse pattern as well:

a) Rebelliousness of youth?  I know these are personality traits rather than preferences[1], but the Ab Fab effect might apply.

b) Recessive and generation-skipping variations, possible including epigenetic factors[2].  And for that, second-generation births probably need to be studied.

In a world with a known Designer, of course, we might be able to say that the possibility of these things are a little unlikely, given the complexity needed to encode such heritability.  Our own world probably only exhibits generational skips such as this as an emergent property.  However, one could argue that it's an Ineffable Creator running our particular show, and while the Creator of the Dwarven world is perhaps a bit more communicative with us than one that might exist of our own world (and his base code can technically be analysed without hitting the usual problems of deriving any Theory Of Everything, such as Heisenburg limits, observation horizons and the inability to divine the precise nature of the substrate of the universe and divorce this from the data laid upon it) I don't think I'd put it past a certain Toady-type person to have deliberately and with malice aforethought inserted such complications into the respective simulations...



[1] Which I've similarly failed to find correlations for, although I still have a lot of historical 40D records (and, indeed, save-games) that I could also analyse, I suppose...

[2] In phenotype terms, an example of this would be the oft-reported case that maternal-line grand-children of women who suffered famine are smaller babies than their contemporaries without the same heratige, the reason for which appears to be that it is the grandmother's epigenetic cellular environment that dictates the way the grandmother/father genetic cross mixture develops into the mother's DNA, and thus the grand-child themselves develops from an egg that is a direct product of the expression of genes activated (or otherwise) by the stressed biology of the grandmother.  But a study regarding grand-maternal smoking that I found doesn't appear to have any indication of similar bi-generational transmission, if i read it correctly.

BTW, Maggarg, click clickety-click, eh?  [edit: Oh, it looked like you'd multi-posted, but not now.]

And Jude: Yeah, that's a good summary of what I'm still trying to post, except that, with Toady... who knows!

[Deathworks]

Hi!

However, in one of the earlier 31.xx versions, I had one fortress where my cat lovers married and most of their children also liked cats.... I noticed because I always keep an eye on my cat lovers to ensure their mental health later in the game. And usually, I have only one or two cat lovers in the approximately 20 dwarves DF will send to my fortress via migration/starting 7 - the large number of children showing that trait was really unusual. So, I think further research might be needed.

Deathworks

[Dante]

Did you make them adults at one and make them breed in litters?

Nope, all unmodded.

I feel like implementing this level of genetics would be a waste of time. It can be simulated easily without such complex programming, and nobody would really notice the difference unless they went out of their way looking for it.

By the same token, children inheriting their parents' bone structure and eyebrow length is a waste of time, but that's in.

a) Rebelliousness of youth?  I know these are personality traits rather than preferences[1], but the Ab Fab effect might apply.

Aha, I didn't think of this. I doubt it's actually coded in, though.

b) Recessive and generation-skipping variations, possible including epigenetic factors[2].  And for that, second-generation births probably need to be studied.

This I did think of. Since it was a spur-of-the-moment thing, I only looked at the children in the fortress, and again, I didn't think Toady was likely to put it in. (Corollary questions: is there more generation-skipping in mental attributes irl than physical attributes? Did Toady code in any generation-skipping for physical attributes, i.e. does he have an actual allele system or is it just non-evolutionary "blending"?)

Another pressing question, of course, is exactly how much mental features are inherited in real life. We know that many forms of mental illness are. But these are broader, personality-type things. How much is nature, how much nurture (etc, etc, etc, dwarven personalities/preferences determined at birth, not developed, etc, etc, etc).

I had one fortress where my cat lovers married and most of their children also liked cats.

Very interesting. I'm tempted to dismiss it as coincidence, because I've seen no inheritance of preferences beyond the tiniest random prefstones and such like. Instead, I think I'll make a big new breeding fortress for further study.

[IronyOwl]

Hitler-Awesome.png

I am stealing this image.

Anyway, carry on with your fine work. I might point out that dismissing median values could hurt your research, however. If nothing else, it gives you fewer samples per child.

[culwin]

You obviously need a bigger fortress. And, of course, death chambers of those with unacceptable traits.

He simply needs to increase their concentration skill.
Perhaps some sort of camp.