We tested a mediation model predicting that a quantitative multilocus genetic profile score – reflecting the additive effects of alleles known to confer relatively increased dopamine signaling in the ventral striatum – would relate positively to a composite measure of addictive behaviors, and that this association would be mediated by personality traits consistently associated
with addiction disorders. Our model was strongly supported by the data, and accounted for 24% of the variance in addictive behaviors.