Humans vary substantially in their willingness to take risks. In a combined sample of over 1 million individuals, we conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of general risk tolerance, adventurousness, and risky behaviors in the driving, drinking, smoking, and sexual domains. Across all GWAS, we identified hundreds of associated loci, including 99 loci associated with general risk tolerance. We report evidence of substantial shared genetic influences across risk tolerance and the risky behaviors: 46 of the 99 general risk tolerance loci contain a lead SNP for at least one of our other GWAS, and general risk tolerance is genetically correlated (\(\left| {\hat r_{\mathrm{g}}} \right|\) ~ 0.25 to 0.50) with a range of risky behaviors. Bioinformatics analyses imply that genes near SNPs associated with general risk tolerance are highly expressed in brain tissues and point to a role for glutamatergic and GABAergic neurotransmission. We found no evidence of enrichment for genes previously hypothesized to relate to risk tolerance.

We evaluate the medium-term impacts of treating maternal depression on women’s mental health, financial empowerment, and parenting decisions. We leverage variation induced by a cluster-randomized controlled trial that provided psychotherapy to 903 prenatally depressed mothers in rural Pakistan. It was one of the world’s largest psych otherapy interventions, and it dramatically reduced postpartum depression. Seven years after psychotherapy concluded, we returned to the study site to find that impacts on women’s mental health had persisted, with a 17 percent reduction in depression rates. The intervention also improved women’s financial empowerment and increased both time- and money-intensive parental investments by between 0.2 and 0.3 standard deviations. (JEL G51, I12, J16, O15)

We present findings from a novel survey of Italian, British, and American families in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic of spring 2020. A high percentage report disruptions in the patterns of family life, manifesting in new work patterns, chore allocations and household tensions. Though men have taken a greater share of childcare and grocery shopping duties, reallocations are not nearly as stark as disruptions to work patterns might suggest, and families having to reallocate duties report greater tensions. Our results paint a picture of tightened constraints budging up against stable and gendered patterns of intra-household cooperation. While the long-run consequences of the COVID-19 lockdown on family life cannot be assessed at this stage, we point towards the likely opportunities and challenges.

Non-cognitive skills, such as motivation and self-regulation, are partly heritable and predict academic achievement beyond cognitive skills. However, how the relationship between non-cognitive skills and academic achievement changes over development is unclear. The current study examined how cognitive and non-cognitive skills are associated with academic achievement from ages 7 to 16 years in a sample of over 10,000 children from England and Wales. The results showed that the association between non-cognitive skills and academic achievement increased across development. Twin and polygenic scores analyses found that the links between non-cognitive genetics and academic achievement became stronger over the school years. The results from within-family analyses indicated that non-cognitive genetic effects on academic achievement could not simply be attributed to confounding by environmental differences between nuclear families, consistent with a possible role for evocative/active gene–environment correlations. By studying genetic associations through a developmental lens, we provide further insights into the role of non-cognitive skills in academic development.

The flexibility of digital learning environments allows for personalized content delivery tailored to individual teachers’ needs, fostering active and engaged learning. The opportunities offered by these digital technologies can help teachers adopt a lifelong learning attitude, which has become necessary to maintaining high educational standards in line with international guidelines and policy. However, teachers often struggle to leverage these digital technologies and integrate them in their daily activities. To overcome this problem, we developed a custom-built webinar training course focused on enhancing distance learning teaching in a flexible environment. We tested this training course on a group of 197 primary school teachers and examine the relationship between learning goal orientation, motivation, and intention to transfer and how they related to teachers’ personality traits. We found that our webinar training course is easily implementable and valued by teachers, who highlight the importance of allowing the choice between different training levels. The data analysis indicates that intention to transfer is predicted by learning goal orientation and motivation. In conclusion, the study emphasizes the importance of flexible learning environments and tailored training programs that meet teachers’ needs and interests. From a sustainable perspective, such approaches foster teachers’ lifelong learning, enhance their professional development, nurture a growth mindset, and facilitate adaptability to change.