Heritability of Subjective Well-Being in a

Representative Sample

Alexander Weiss1 Timothy Bates1 & Michelle Luciano2

1: Department of PsychologyUniversity of Edinburgh2: QIMR, Brisbane Australia

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

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.

Common Genes

Genetic correlation between Neuroticism and Depression.

Roberts & Kendler (1999)

Chimpanzee Dominance and subjective well-being are genetically correlated.

Weiss et al. (2002)

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

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

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?”

Model Comparisons

Model -2LL df χ2 (Δdf) p AIC

Saturated ACE 17092.42 10323

Saturated ADE 17083.67 10323 vs. ADE

Reduced 1 17089.39 10333 5.72 (10) .83 -14.28

Reduced 2 17088.45 10335 4.78 (12) .96 -19.22

Reduced 3 17091.60 10337 7.93 (14) .89 -20.07

3a) Reduce AD paths

17096.98 10348 13.31 (25)

.97 -36.69

3b) Drop D entirely 17111.20 10351 27.53 (28)

.14 -28.47

3c) Reduce A 17114.41 10352 30.74 (29)

.38 -27.26

Unreduced ADE Model

AN AE

AG

ACAA

N E O A C W

AO

Dominance effects mirror additive genetic effects

Reduced Model 3

AN AE

AG

ACAA

N E O A C W

AO

No influences of AO or AA on subjective well-being

Final Reduced Model 3a

No influences of AO or AA on subjective well-being

.25

.24.47

.10.57.39

.42

.33

.10

.22-.62

.13.34`.21.50.45-.30

AN AE

AG

ACAA

N E O A C W

AO

D

Final Reduced Model 3b

No dominance effects

.57.37

.50

.38

.28

.20

-.62

.18.32.31.44.56-.28

AN AE

AG

ACAA

N E O A C W

AO

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.

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