For example, there is compelling evidence that alcohol and other substance use disorders are influenced by a common set of genes, that also impact other traits related to self-regulation, such as childhood behavior problems and measures of impulsivity (Krueger et al., 2009). This common underlying factor is called externalizing, and is highly heritable. Based on this literature, we conducted a GWAS of an externalizing factor in 1.5 million individuals, identifying 579 genetic variants that influence self-regulation (Karlsson Linnér et al., 2021). The resulting genetic risk scores, tallied for an individual based on how many of the risk variants they carry (Bogdan et al., 2018), predict a wide array of behavioral, social, and medical outcomes related to self-regulation in independent samples. They account for ~10% of the variance in externalizing behavior, commensurate with many central social science constructs, e.g., socioeconomic status, neighborhood disadvantage.
