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Heritability of Subjective Well-Being in a Representative Sample

Heritability of Subjective Well-Being in a Representative Sample. Alexander Weiss 1 Timothy Bates 1 & Michelle Luciano 2 1: Department of Psychology University of Edinburgh 2: QIMR, Brisbane Australia. Why are subjective well-being and personality correlated?.

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Heritability of Subjective Well-Being in a Representative Sample

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  1. Heritability of Subjective Well-Being in a Representative Sample Alexander Weiss1 Timothy Bates1& Michelle Luciano2 1: Department of Psychology University of Edinburgh 2: QIMR, Brisbane Australia

  2. Why are subjective well-being and personality correlated? • Temperament model (Gray, 1981, 1991) • Congruence model (Moskowitz & Cotes, 1995) • Costa & McCrae (1986) • N = mood • E = social contact effects • O = variance in well-being • A = lack of friends and support • C = ability to set and meet goals

  3. Behaviour Genetics of Well-being • Lykken and Tellegen (1996) • 80% of the variance of the stable component was heritable • No significant effect of shared environment • 50% of the variance resulted from nonadditive genetic effects • Baker et al. (1992) • 50% of the variance was heritable • Evidence for dominance • No shared environmental effects.

  4. Common Genes • Genetic correlation between Neuroticism and Depression. Roberts & Kendler (1999) • Chimpanzee Dominance and subjective well-being are genetically correlated. Weiss et al. (2002)

  5. Goal of the Present Study • Estimate common and unique genetic and environmental effects of • subjective well-being and • personality • Predictions: • Happiness genes are all personality genes • Significant dominance effects • Personality influences well-being via E, N, & C

  6. MIDUS Subjects • 973 twin pairs (age M = 44.9; SD = 12.1) • 170 male and 195 female MZ pairs • 136 male and 213 female same sex DZ pairs • 259 opposite sex DZ pairs

  7. MIDUS Dataset Measures • Personality measured by 30 adjectives • Five factors extracted with PCA. • Differentially-weighted factor scores. • Three item subjective well-being measure • “… how satisfied are you with your LIFE?” • “… how much control do you have over your life IN GENERAL?” • “… how satisfied are you with your SELF?”

  8. Model Comparisons

  9. AG N E O A C W AN AE AO AA AC Unreduced ADE Model Dominance effects mirror additive genetic effects

  10. AG N E O A C W AN AE AO AA AC Reduced Model 3 No influences of AO or AA on subjective well-being

  11. Final Reduced Model 3a D AG .25 .47 .24 -.30 .45 .50 .21 .34` .13 N E O A C W .10 .42 -.62 .22 .39 .57 .10 .33 AN AE AO AA AC No influences of AO or AA on subjective well-being

  12. Final Reduced Model 3b AG -.28 .56 .44 .31 .32 .18 N E O A C W .50 .28 -.62 .20 .57 .37 .38 AN AE AO AA AC No dominance effects

  13. Findings • Main findings • Subjective well-being has no genetic or environmental determinants over and above those of N, E, and C. • Additional findings • Common genetic influences underlie all five factors. • E and A are also influenced by dominance effects.

  14. Future Directions • Studying co-morbidity has led to a greater understanding of several phenotypes. • Depression • Personality disorders • Studying co-vitality might be similarly illuminating. • Humor • Happiness • Resilience • Altruism

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