Roff 2005). Consistent with inbreeding pushing traits towards their low fitness ends, high Novelty Seeking, high Reward Dependence, and low Harm Avoidance are all associated with the socially desirable (and supposed high-fitness) end of the so-called `general factor of personality' (Rushton and Irwing 2008; Rushton et al. 2009). The lack of a significant inbreeding effect on Persistence might suggest that the population mean is close to the optimum (i.e. under stabilising rather than directional selection) or might be due to lack of power to detect a true inbreeding effect. If our inbreeding results reflect the influence of a load of pleiotropic deleterious mutations, the three personality traits should be genetically intercorrelated in line with the direction of the inbreeding effects – i.e. high Harm Avoidance with low Novelty Seeking and low Reward Dependence. This is indeed what has been found in previous research (Gillespie et al. 2003).
