We conducted genome-wide association studies of three phenotypes: subjective well-being (N = 298,420), depressive symptoms (N = 161,460), and neuroticism (N = 170,910). We identified three variants associated with subjective well-being, two with depressive symptoms, and eleven with neuroticism, including two inversion polymorphisms. The two depressive symptoms loci replicate in an independent depression sample. Joint analyses that exploit the high genetic correlations between the phenotypes (|ρ̂| ≈ 0.8) strengthen the overall credibility of the findings, and allow us to identify additional variants. Across our phenotypes, loci regulating expression in central nervous system and adrenal/pancreas tissues are strongly enriched for association.

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Scientific interest in expertise-superior performance within a specific domain-has a long history in psychology. Although there is a broad consensus that a long period of practice is essential for expertise, a long-standing controversy in the field concerns the importance of other variables such as cognitive abilities and genetic factors. According to the influential deliberate practice theory, expert performance is essentially limited by a single variable: the amount of deliberate practice an individual has accumulated. Here, we provide a review of the literature on deliberate practice, expert performance, and its neural correlates. A particular emphasis is on recent studies indicating that expertise is related to numerous traits other than practice as well as genetic factors. We argue that deliberate practice theory is unable to account for major recent findings relating to expertise and expert performance, and propose an alternative multifactorial gene-environment interaction model of expertise, which provides an adequate explanation for the available empirical data and may serve as a useful framework for future empirical and theoretical work on expert performance.

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The relative importance of nature and nurture for various forms of expertise has been intensely debated. Music proficiency is viewed as a general model for expertise, and associations between deliberate practice and music proficiency have been interpreted as supporting the prevailing idea that long-term deliberate practice inevitably results in increased music ability. Here, we examined the associations (rs = .18-.36) between music practice and music ability (rhythm, melody, and pitch discrimination) in 10,500 Swedish twins. We found that music practice was substantially heritable (40%-70%). Associations between music practice and music ability were predominantly genetic, and, contrary to the causal hypothesis, nonshared environmental influences did not contribute. There was no difference in ability within monozygotic twin pairs differing in their amount of practice, so that when genetic predisposition was controlled for, more practice was no longer associated with better music skills. These findings suggest that music practice may not causally influence music ability and that genetic variation among individuals affects both ability and inclination to practice.