Why Don't Smart Teens Have Sex? A Behavioral Genetic Approach

Overview

Journal Child Dev

Specialty Pediatrics

Date 2011 Jun 18

PMID 21679172

Citations 4

Authors

Kathryn P Harden

Jane Mendle

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Academic achievement and cognitive ability have been shown to predict later age at first sexual intercourse. Using a sample of 536 same-sex twin pairs who were followed longitudinally from adolescence to early adulthood, this study tested whether relations between intelligence, academic achievement, and age at first sex were due to unmeasured genetic and environmental differences between families. Twins who differed in their intelligence or their academic achievement did not differ in their age at first sex. Rather, the association between intelligence and age at first sex could be attributed entirely to unmeasured environmental differences between families, whereas the association between academic achievement and age at first sex could be attributed entirely to genetic factors.

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