Falconer's formula

The Falconer 's formula is an estimation formula for determining the genetic heritability of personality traits, especially in twin studies.

It was developed in 1960 by British geneticist Douglas Scott Falconer ( 1913-2004 ) and reads:

Herein is h ² for the heritability in the broad sense; stands for correlation of identical twins and fraternal twins, the correlation ( in English: MZ and DZ for monozygotic for dizygotic ).

The formula provides reasonable estimates if neither Gendominanz, epistasis or assortative mating are present and the environment to similarity of identical and fraternal twins contributes the same amount.

Regarding the correlation amounts to a feature for EZ r = 0.50, that for ZZ r = 0.30. How high can the heritability of the trait to be estimated?

There are similar formulas for estimating the heritability in the narrow sense, as well as for shared and individual environment. Another variation to estimate the heritability suggested Holzinger ago.