Genetic mechanisms explaining how
evolution is linked to organizational
behavior: The genetic basis of work
attitudes and emotions.
Remus Ilies and Nikos
Dimotakis
Michigan State University
Zhaoli Song
National University of
Singapore
Purpose
• Biology, evolution, and organizational behavior.
• Links to behavior via employees’ attitudes and
emotional states at work.
▫ Attitudes and emotional states have significant
genetic components.
▫ Implications for understanding how individuals
behave and how they experience work.
Purpose (cont.)
• Evidence of genetic effects is accumulating
rapidly.
• Organizational research has been slow to
integrate genetic effects.
• Important implications for practice have also
been neglected.
Estimating the magnitude of genetic
effects
• Estimate variance of the outcome among MZ
twins reared apart.
• Estimate variance of the outcome among MZ &
DZ twins reared apart and together.
VA = a2 + c2 + e2
h2 = a2 / VA
Evolution, inheritance and behavioral
genetics
• Dispositions evolved because they contributed to
solving specific adaptation problems.
▫ Individual differences as ranges of viable evolutionary
strategies (Buss, 1991).
▫ Variation in a characteristic facilitates niche
occupation (Lusk et al., 1998).
• That an individual characteristic is heritable
indicates that it is subject to sexual or natural
selection.
▫ Difficult to establish the consequences of traits for
fitness.
Potential trait benefits and costs
(Nettle, 2006)
Trait
Example Benefit
Example Cost
Extraversion
Social allies
Physical risks
Neuroticism
Vigilance to dangers
Stress and depression
Openness
Creativity
Unusual beliefs
Conscientiousness
Attention to long-term Missing of immediate
fitness benefits
fitness gains
Agreeableness
Harmonious interpersonal
Subject to social cheating
relationships
Genetics, behavior, and attitudes
• The role of personality and emotionality.
▫ Big Five (Loehlin, 1992).
▫ Affectivity (Bouchard & Mcgue, 20030.
• Relationships with behavior and attitudes
Personality
Behaviors
Emotion and Affect
Attitudes
Genetic Influences
The case of job satisfaction
• The importance of job satisfaction.
• Heritability estimates
• Mediating role of personality and affectivity
Other satisfaction domains
• Substantial heritability of life satisfaction
 Moderated effects
• General well-being
Work values
• Heritability of work values
• Heritability of non-work values and attitudes
Work and non-work behaviors
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Turnover
Risk taking
Task persistence
Aggression and hostility
Leadership
Entrepreneurial behaviors
Parenting styles
Future research
• More sophisticated and comprehensive models.
▫ Integrating organizational behavior, evolutionary psychology, and
genetics.
• Interactions and correlations between heritability, genes, and
the environment – beyond h
▫ hxE, GxE, G-E correlations, Epigenetic Programming (Moffitt et
al., 2006).
▫ Personality as strategic traits and environments as distributions
of adaptive problems (Buss, 2009).
• Emphasis on on-the-job behaviors.
• More appropriate samples and methods.
Implications for theory
• Integrating genetic influences in models of work
behavior.
• Drawing upon previous work to detect geneenvironment interactions.
• Synthesizing viewpoints.
Practical Implications
• Organizational
▫ Selection, organizational climate, job design, workplace
interventions.
• Ethical
▫ “Unhappy consequences” (Turkheimer, 1990, p. 788).
• Legal issues
▫ US: Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008
▫ Potential legislation in the EU and elsewhere.
• Alternative implications
▫ “Breaking” established correlations (Judge, Ilies, & Dimotakis,
2010).
Questions