Genes and Fortune Determine Happiness

Feb. 20, 2007 — Can't get no satisfaction, as the Rolling Stone song goes? You're not alone. Everlasting satisfaction is a near impossibility, claims a new study, but it might be tantalizingly just within reach for many of us.

The findings help explain why some individuals are not happy despite good fortune, while others remain cheerful under terrible circumstances.

The study also negates a prior theory formulated by researchers David Lykken and Auke Tellegen that "trying to be happier (may be) as futile as trying to be taller" due to genetic predispositions.

"There has been a widespread belief among psychologists that happiness is primarily determined by genes and inborn personality characteristics," lead author Richard Lucas, who collaborated with M. Brent Donnellan on the study, told Discovery News.

"This would mean that those who are happy now will also be happy in the future, but that those who are unhappy now will inevitably be unhappy in the future," added Lucas, an associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University.

Lucas and Donnellan (also of Michigan State) instead believe that genes account for one-third to one-half of a person’s likelihood for feeling satisfied or not.

Other factors are around equally divided between major life-changing events — such as winning the lottery or experiencing the death of a loved one — and everyday variables, like work stress or getting cut off in traffic.

For the study, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Research in Personality, the researchers gathered data from two prior studies: The German Socio Economic Panel Study, which had 8,632 respondents rate how satisfied they were with their lives over an average of 11.75 years, and The British Household Panel Study, which gathered similar information from 9,437 participants.

The psychologists used a model called "STARTS" to explain the variability observed for each individual as well as for between respondents. Inherited predispositions for satisfaction and happiness emerged as more stable, consistent factors over the years, so each person wound up having a characteristic "trait level" — meaning that, on average, they felt a certain way.

But this level changed over lengthy periods in response to significant events.

"For instance, someone who got married in 1990 might experience a boost above their trait level of happiness for that year," Lucas explained.

"This boost might carry over for a year or two, which means that those people who were happier than average in 1990 would also be happier than average in 1991 and perhaps 1992, but by 1993, the effect might have dissipated, bringing them back to their trait level — or some new level that resulted from additional intervening life events."

Daily happenings also influence feelings of satisfaction in the short-run.

David Myers, a psychology professor at Michigan’s Hope College, told Discovery News that he fully agrees with the findings, which demonstrate "our emotional responses to good and bad events have a shorter half life than most people suppose."

Myers likens feelings of well-being to our cholesterol levels.

He explained, "Both are genetically influenced and moderately stable, yet also influenced by our lifestyles."

Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California at Riverside and associate editor of The Journal of Positive Psychology, agrees we only have so much control over our own level of happiness.

"Approximately one-third of our happiness is likely unmodifiable and genetically determined," she concluded. "One-third is influenced by major life transitions and events — like marriage or job loss — and one-third is influenced by daily or momentary events, such as stress at work this week, the weather and daily uplifts."