New research from Stephen Petrill, professor of psychology, suggests that genes may play a large role in why some kids feel unmotivated to learn at school.

The research, published online this week in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, involves separate studies of twins aged nine to 16 in the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Germany, Russia and the United States. Students reported how much they enjoyed various academic activities and were also asked to rate their own ability in different subjects in school.

The researchers compared how close the answers were for fraternal twins, who share half their inherited genes on average, with identical twins who share all of their inherited genes. Since the identical twins’ answers were more closely matched than those of fraternal twins, that suggests a stronger genetic effect.

The findings were extremely similar across all six countries with children of all ages, Petrill said. On average, 40 to 50 percent of the difference between twins in motivation could be explained by genetics.

Petrill said he and the researchers were surprised by the results, believing that the twins’ shared environment - elements such as the teachers and the family that they had in common - would be a larger factor than genetics. Instead, genetics and non-shared-environment factors had the largest effect on the children’s motivation to learn, whereas the shared environment had negligible impact.

"The knee-jerk reaction is to say someone is not properly motivating the student, or the child himself is responsible," Petrill said. "We found that there are personality differences that people inherit that have a major impact on motivation.That doesn't mean we don't try to encourage and inspire students, but we have to deal with the reality of why they're different."

Read the entire press release, courtesy of Jeff Grabmeier, director, research communications, The Ohio State University.