Why do people take up different jobs? Researchers from Singapore and Hong Kong universities tried to answer this question using genetic studies and found that our genes partially account for the type of jobs we take up.
Analysing the genetic and occupational data of over 200,000 individuals of European ancestry, the research team found that specific genetic markers were correlated to the cognitive, emotional, and physical requirements of a job. In particular, the genetic markers related to cognitive job requirements are most in common with those genetic markers for education and income. The case does not apply to genetic markers related to emotional or physical job requirements, which shows that social-economic status (SES) variables such as education and income are more tied to cognition.
The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports in late May, 2022. The research team consisted of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS), Duke-NUS Medical School, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Lingnan University in Hong Kong.
Associate Professor Song Zhaoli, Department of Management & Organisation, NUS Business School, said, “Our research contributes to the nature versus nurture debate relating to jobs. For a long time, we tried to explore the genetic mechanisms behind why people choose jobs with certain characteristics. It is only recently when large genomic datasets, such as the UK Biobank dataset that we used, become publicly available that we were able to advance our research. Genes don’t determine our jobs but they certainly have some part to play in why we choose certain jobs over others.”
The team next plans to further their research with Asian population samples. Assoc Prof Song shared that they have started to collect local datasets to examine the relationship between occupation characteristics and well-being outcomes using genomic methods.