Happiness Is a Personal(ity) Thing

TLDR

Subjective well‑being is known to be related to personality traits. The study aimed to determine whether personality and subjective well‑being share a common genetic structure. Using a representative sample of 973 twin pairs, the authors tested whether heritable differences in subjective well‑being are fully explained by the genetic architecture of the Five‑Factor Model’s personality domains. The twin analysis confirmed that subjective well‑being is genetically linked to personality, with unique genetic effects from Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness and a common genetic factor influencing all five domains toward low Neuroticism and high Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, indicating that personality may serve as an affective reserve for set‑point maintenance.

Abstract

Subjective well-being is known to be related to personality traits. However, to date, nobody has examined whether personality and subjective well-being share a common genetic structure. We used a representative sample of 973 twin pairs to test the hypothesis that heritable differences in subjective well-being are entirely accounted for by the genetic architecture of the Five-Factor Model's personality domains. Results supported this model. Subjective well-being was accounted for by unique genetic influences from Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness, and by a common genetic factor that influenced all five personality domains in the directions of low Neuroticism and high Extraversion, Openness, Agree-ableness, and Conscientiousness. These findings indicate that subjective well-being is linked to personality by common genes and that personality may form an “affective reserve” relevant to set-point maintenance and changes in set point over time.