Born to serve? Disentangling genetic, childhood, and adulthood influences on PSM using a twin design

Since its inception as a motivational form based “primarily or uniquely in public institutions” (Perry and Wise 1990), the antecedents of public service motivation (PSM) have been debated and explored. However, to date no investigations of a possible genetic component of PSM exist and only few attempts have been made to disentangle youth and adolescence socialization effects from adulthood socialization effects. Investigating the relative impact of these variables is important as genetic or early life influences might additionally confound established empirical relationships. Empirically, we employ a twin-design, popular in the behavioral genetics tradition, on a data set of 1,801 twins from the Danish Twin Registry. In accordance with dominant interpretations of PSM we find a sizeable effect of adulthood environment. Additionally, we find that PSM is also heavily influenced by early life socialization and not at all by genetics. This is surprising, as other “other-oriented” concepts such as empathy, pro-sociality, altruism, and agreeableness have sizeable genetic components whilst their childhood socialization components are either negligible or minor in relative importance. Our study thus yields important insights into the uniqueness of PSM and we conclude by discussing implications for public sector management."