Cultureplaces

A meta-analysis done at Stanford University (Levinson, 2005) showed the particular role that genetics plays in depression. While an absence of depression is not an indicator of the presence of  happiness , many wonder if we are genetically predisposed to higher levels of life satisfaction. An additional study was conducted in an attempt to locate a gene responsible for happiness. In this twin study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience (De Neve, 2012) subjects with a higher presence of the number of longer alleles of the 5-HTTLPR gene (a serotonin transporter gene) self-reported higher levels of life satisfaction, aka happiness. While the study did not define this gene as the happiness gene, it did equate 33% of subjective life satisfaction with genetic variation. Whereas environmental factor variation equated to not more than 3%. A twin study of over 2,000 twins from the Minnesota Twin Registry found that approximately 50% of life satisfaction is due to genetics. This leaves 4...