We investigated how the COVID-19 crisis and the extraordinary experience of lockdown affected young adults in England and Wales psychologically. One month after lockdown commenced (T2), we assessed 30 psychological and behavioural traits in more than 4000 twins in their mid-twenties and compared their responses to the same traits assessed in 2018 (T1). Mean changes from T1 to T2 were modest and inconsistent. Contrary to the hypothesis that major environmental changes related to COVID-19 would result in increased variance in psychological and behavioural traits, we found that the magnitude of individual differences did not change from T1 to T2. Twin analyses revealed that while genetic factors accounted for about half of the reliable variance at T1 and T2, they only accounted for ~ 15% of individual differences in change from T1 to T2, and that nonshared environmental factors played a major role in psychological and behavioural changes. Shared environmental influences had negligible impact on T1, T2 or T2 change. Genetic factors correlated on average .86 between T1 and T2 and accounted for over half of the phenotypic stability, as would be expected for a 2-year interval even without the major disruption of lockdown. We conclude that the first month of lockdown has not resulted in major psychological or attitudinal shifts in young adults, nor in major changes in the genetic and environmental origins of these traits. Genetic influences on the modest psychological and behavioural changes are likely to be the result of gene–environment correlation not interaction.

我们调查了新冠肺炎 (COVID-19) 危机和封锁期间的非凡经历对英格兰和威尔士年轻人的心理影响。封锁开始一个月后 (T2)，我们评估了 4000 多名二十多岁双胞胎的 30 项心理和行为特征，并将他们的反应与 2018 年评估的相同特征进行了比较 (T1)。从 T1 到 T2 的平均变化不大且不一致。与 COVID-19 相关的重大环境变化会导致心理和行为特征差异增加的假设相反，我们发现个体差异的程度从 T1 到 T2 没有变化。双胞胎分析显示，虽然遗传因素约占 T1 和 T2 可靠方差的一半，但它们仅占从 T1 到 T2 变化的个体差异的约 15%，并且非共享环境因素在心理和行为方面发挥着主要作用。变化。共同的环境影响对 T1、T2 或 T2 变化的影响可以忽略不计。 T1 和 T2 之间的遗传因素平均相关性为 0.86，并且占表型稳定性的一半以上，正如对 2 年间隔的预期，即使没有重大的封锁中断。我们的结论是，封锁的第一个月并没有导致年轻人出现重大的心理或态度转变，也没有导致这些特征的遗传和环境起源发生重大变化。遗传对心理和行为适度变化的影响可能是基因与环境相关性而非相互作用的结果。