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Is Happiness Genetic and if so, What Percent

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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 40% attributable to intentional activities and 10% attributable to external events. (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, 2005) Being able to move a happiness “set point” with intentional activities makes levels of happiness variable.

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