Variation in the gene for one of the receptors for the hormone vasopressin appears to be associated with how human males bond with their partners, according to an international team of researchers.
"Our findings are particularly interesting because they show that men who are in a relatively stable relationship of five years of more who have one or two copies of allele 334 appear to be less bonded to their partners than men with other forms of this gene," says Jenae Neiderhiser, professor of psychology, Penn State. "We also found that the female partners of men with one or two copies of allele 334 reported less affection, consensus and cohesion in the marriage, but interestingly, did not report lower levels of marital satisfaction than women whose male partners had no copies of allele 334."
Neiderhiser, Paul Lichtenstein, the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and colleagues interviewed 2,186 adults taking part in the Twin and Offspring Study in Sweden (TOSS). The TOSS study collected detailed information from pairs of twins and their partners or spouses about their marital relationships, personality and mental health, as well as genetic data.
They report in this week's on-line issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that, in men, having allele 334 was inversely linked to measures of the strength of a person's bond to their mate. They also report that men who carried two copies of allele 334 were more than twice as likely to report serious marital or relationship problems, such as facing threat of divorce, as men who had did not carry it. These men also were almost twice as likely to be unmarried as men with no copies, despite having a long-term relationship with their mate.
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