Exploring boundaries for the genetic consequences of assortative mating for psychiatric traits
Open accessAbstract
IMPORTANCE: Considerable partner resemblances have been found for a wide range of psychiatric disorders, meaning that partners of affected individuals have an increased risk of being affected compared with partners of unaffected individuals. If this resemblance is reflected in genetic similarity between partners, genetic risk is anticipated to accumulate in offspring, but these potential consequences have not been quantified and have been left implicit. OBSERVATIONS: The anticipated consequences of partner resemblance on prevalence and heritability of psychiatric traits in the offspring generation were modeled for disorders with varying heritabilities, population prevalence (lifetime risk), and magnitudes of partner resemblance. These models facilitate interpretation for a wide range of psychiatric disorders, such as autism, schizophrenia, and depression. The genetic consequences of partner resemblance are most pronounced when attributable to phenotypic assortment (driven by the psychiatric trait). Phenotypic assortment results in increased genetic variance in the offspring generation, which may result in increased heritability and population prevalence. These consequences add generation after generation to a limit, but assortative mating is unlikely to balance the impact of reduced fecundity of patients with psychiatric disorders in the long term. This modeling suggests that the heritabilities of psychiatric disorders are unlikely to increase by more than 5% from 1 generation of assortative mating (maximally 13% across multiple generations). The population prevalence will increase most for less common disorders with high heritability; for example, the prevalence of autism might increase by 1.5-fold after 1 generation of assortative mating (≥2.4-fold in the long term) depending on several assumptions. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: The considerable partner resemblances found for psychiatric disorders deserve more detailed interpretation than has been provided thus far. Although the limitations of modeling are emphasized, the anticipated consequences are at most modest for the heritability but may be considerable for the population prevalence of rare disorders with a high heritability.
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“Partner correlations for depression phenotypes are typically moderate in magnitude 59,60 , which has been found in MoBa also 61,62 .”
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“This is because the ASD GWAS used pseudocontrol subjects, which reduces power to detect GWAS associations, such that using the observed sum of effective sample size would produce downwardly biased estimates of heritability [22].”
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Assortative Mating Across the Full Spectrum of Mental Disorders: A Nationwide Finnish Register Study
Golovina, K., Gutvilig, M., Niemi, R., & Hakulinen, C. A. (2025) · Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science · doi:10.1016/j.bpsgos.2025.100642 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
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Assortative Mating, Autistic Traits, Empathizing, and SystemizingPreprint
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“28) in the general population (Peyrot et al., 2016).”
BackgroundInfluentialAtypical autism in a boy with double duplication of 22q11.2: implications of increasing dosage
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Family dynamics on mental health: a network analysis
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“Individuals with mental health problems tend to select partners who exhibit similar psychiatric traits 11 .”
Phenotypic and ancestry-related assortative mating in autism
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“Ultimately, AM could lead to increased genetic variance over time and could contribute to increased disease prevalence and severity [7–9].”
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“The presence of assortative mating can (modestly) increase estimates of heritability 23 and genetic correlations 42 .”
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Consequences of assortative mating for genetic similarities between partners, siblings, and in-lawsPreprint
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Linking mental health disorders to childlessness: The roles of disorder type and partnership
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“Partner choice is further structured by assortative mating, whereby individuals tend to form partnerships with others who have similar health characteristics, socioeconomic resources, or life-course profiles (Goldman, 1993; Fu & Goldman, 1996; Tybur & Gangestad, 2011; Peyrot et al., 2016).”
InfluentialLocal genetic correlation via knockoffs reduces confounding due to cross-trait assortative mating
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“PRS derived from GWAS can be influenced by potential bias such as population stratification (unless adequately controlled for 22 ) and by assortative mating 23 , which refers to partner selection based on similarities in certain characteristics 24 .”
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“Human partner resemblance is pertinent to many disciplines, including genetics 17,44–49 , sociology, economics, epidemiology, anthropology, and psychology 50–52 , informing research on health and health behaviors 4,5,11–15, 28, 33, Study of same-sex partner resemblance is an important topic for…”
Additional file 1 of Phenotypic and ancestry-related assortative mating in autism
Zhang, J., Weissenkampen, J. D., Kember, R. L., Grove, J., Børglum, A. D., Robinson, E., Brodkin, E. S., Almasy, L. A., Bućan, M., & Sebro, R. (2024) · Figshare · doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.26043692
Additional file 2 of Phenotypic and ancestry-related assortative mating in autism
Zhang, J., Weissenkampen, J. D., Kember, R. L., Grove, J., Børglum, A. D., Robinson, E., Brodkin, E. S., Almasy, L. A., Bućan, M., & Sebro, R. (2024) · Figshare · doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.26043803
Family Dynamics on Mental Health: A Network Analysis
Tetkovic, I., Neufeld, S., Ford, T. J., Jiang, Z., & Chen, B.-B. (2025) · Apollo (University of Cambridge)
The Architecture of Loneliness: A Unified Neurocognitive and Evolutionary Model of ADHDPreprint
Blake, J. (2026) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.6822721
Dehkordi, S. R., Meijsen, J. J., Waples, R. K., Zetterberg, R., Helenius, D., Athanasiadis, G., Vaez, M., Shorter, J. R., Montalbano, S., Hellberg, K.-L. G., et al. (2026) · JAMA Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2026.2712
- Authors
- Peyrot, W. J., Robinson, M. R., Penninx, B. W. J. H., & Wray, N. R.
- Affiliations
- The University of Queensland (AU)
- Amsterdam Neuroscience (NL)
- Venue
- JAMA Psychiatry
- Publisher
- American Medical Association (AMA)
- Published
- 2016-11-01
- Volume
- 73
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1189
- ISSN
- 2168-622X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2530041388
- Cited by
- 66
- References
- 48
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 3
- FWCI
- 6.18
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- pure.amsterdamumc.nl
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- JAMA Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Pure Amsterdam UMC (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
- Medical Research Council (1078901)
- National Health and Medical Research Council (1078901, 1087889)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic Associations and Epidemiology
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Schizophrenia research and treatment
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic and phenotypic traits in livestock
- Keywords
- assortative mating, mental illness, heritability, population prevalence, phenotypic assortment, genetic variance, autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, depression, rare diseases
- MeSH terms
- Mental Disorders, Cross-Sectional Studies, Female, Genetics, Population, Genotype, Humans, Male, Marriage, Models, Genetic, Phenotype, Risk, Selection, Genetic, Statistics as Topic, Reproductive Behavior
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