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 Model -2LL df χ2 (Δdf) p AIC Saturated ACE 17092.42
10323
Saturated ADE
vs. ADE
Reduced 1
10333
5.72 (10)
.83
-14.28
Reduced 2
10335
4.78 (12)
.96
-19.22
Reduced 3
10337
7.93 (14)
.89
-20.07
3a) Reduce AD paths
10348
13.31 (25)
.97
-36.69
3b) Drop D entirely
10351
27.53 (28)
.14
-28.47
3c) Reduce A
10352
30.74 (29)
.38
-27.26

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

10. Reduced Model 3 No influences of AO or AA on subjective well-being ANAE AG AC AA N E O A C W AO
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 No dominance effects AG N E O A C W AN AE AO AA
-.28
.56
.44
.31
.32
.18 N E O A C W
.28
.50
-.62
.20
.57
.37
.38 AN AE AO AA AC
No dominance effects

13. Findings Main findings Additional 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