Intergenerational transfer of individual differences in hereditary monarchs: Genetic, role-modeling, cohort, or sociocultural effects?

342 hereditary monarchs were drawn from 14 European nations. Ss, along with their parents, grandparents, and predecessors, were then assessed on the variables of intelligence, morality, eminence, leadership, life span, and reign span. Theoretically significant interaction effects were also operationalized, using such moderator variables as genetic relationship, years of overlap in lives, age difference, difference in reign midpoints, and sex. The intergenerational transfer of intelligence and life span was best explained by genetics, whereas the transfer of morality and eminence was governed by role-modeling processes. The remaining variables were either transferred by more complex mechanisms (leadership) or not transferred at all from one generation to the next (reign span). Results contradict both F. A. Woods's (1906) belief that morality is genetically inherited and F. Galton's (1869) argument that eminence can serve as a nearly equivalent proxy variable for intellectual genius. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)