Hate School? You're Not Lazy, It's Genetic

If notebooks, guidelines and lectures aren't a few of your favorite things, don't blame sheer laziness, alone. Could your genes actually have something to do with a distaste for school?

New findings published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences found that our genetic heritage has a lot to do with how much we'll love or hate a classroom setting before we even set foot inside.

Researchers studied over 13,000 twins from six countries. Going into it, co-study author Stephen Petrill believed that children's motivation to learn could be explained by their genetic inheritance. Furthermore, he believed that a shared environment could also play a large factor in the kind of educational impact life would have on young ones.

The study looked at children between the ages of 9 to 16 in the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Germany, Russia and the United States. Though the methodology and questions in each country were slightly different, all measured concepts were similar.

Students were required to complete a measure of how much they enjoyed various academic activities, including such things as reading, writing and spelling. Researchers then compared how close the answers were for fraternal twins, who shared half of their inherited genes, on avarege, with identical twins, who shared all of their inherited genes.

However, the study results revealed that genetics and nonshared environmental factors held the largest effect on learning motivation, rather than shared environments and negliglble impact.

"We had pretty consistent findings across these different countries with their different educational systems and different cultures. It was surprising," said Petrill, who is a professor of psychology at The Ohio State University, in a news release.

But findings showed that a lack of motivation can't simply be blamed on parents, teachers or children themselves. It could be a deeper problem based in the human body.

"The knee-jerk reaction is to say someone is not properly motivating the student, or the child himself is responsible," Petrill stressed. "We found that there are personality differences that people inherit that have a major impact on motivation. That doesn't mean we don't try to encourage and inspire students, but we have to deal with the reality of why they're different."

Study results revealed that on average, 40 to 50 percent of the difference between twins in motivation could be explained by genetics, with striking similarities across all six countries. The same percentage could also be explained with what is called the twins' nonshared environment. However, only about 3 percent could be explained via shared environment.

"Most personality variables have a genetic component, but to have nearly no shared environment component is unexpected," Petrill said. "But it was consistent across all six countries."

Of course, researchers stressed that theres' no gene for how much children enjoy learning. Rather, there's a much more complex process involved in learning, particularly for children who don't flourish in a controlled learning environment. Studies like these help to push for a better understanding of that.