Work Values: Genetic and Environmental Influences

The Minnesota Importance Questionnaire (MIQ), measuring work values, was administered to 23 monozygotic and 20 dizygotic reared-apart twin pairs to test the hypothesis that genetic factors are associated with work values. Both univariate and multivariate analyses were performed. In the univariate analysis, intraclass correlations were computed to estimate the proportion of variability in work values associated with genetic factors for each of the 20 MIQ scales and for the 6 higher order work value scales. The multivariate analysis used maximum likelihood estimation to separate the genetic and environmental factors for the correlated higher order scales. Results from both analyses indicated that, on average, 40% of the variance in measured work values was related to genetic factors, whereas approximately 60% of the variance was associated with environmental factors and error variance. Implications for job enrichment and motivation theories are discussed.