Twin studies have established that various measures of risk tolerance are moderately heritable (h2~30%, although estimates in the literature vary3–5). Discovery of specific genetic variants associated with general risk tolerance could provide insights into underlying biological pathways; advance our understanding of how genetic influences are amplified and dampened by environmental factors; enable the construction of polygenic scores (indexes of many genetic variants) that can be used as overall measures of genetic influences on individuals; and help distinguish genetic variation associated with general versus domain-specific risk tolerance.
