Happiness and Success: Genes, Families, and the Psychological Effects of Socioeconomic Position and Social Support

Abstract

Although there is considerable evidence linking success-including wealth, marriage, and friendships-to happiness, this relationship might not reflect, as is often assumed, the effects of the proximate environment on well-being. Such an interpretation is contravened by evidence that both happiness and the environment are influenced by genetic factors and family upbringing. Using the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States, which includes a subsample of twins, this study evaluates the relationship between happiness and various features of success before and after eliminating the influence of endowments. The results suggest that many putative indicators of the environment are highly heritable and, indeed, that the same genes that affect the environment may affect happiness as well. Yet the results also suggest that the role of genetic endowments varies considerably across different features of success, suggesting complex patterns of selection, reinforcement, and causation among genes and the environment.Abundant evidence links happiness with the achievements and assets valued by society. Education, work, and income are all associated with greater happiness (Mirowsky and Ross 1986), occupational self-direction is linked to positive affect (Schooler 1984), and social support is among the most powerful predictors of well-being (Smith-Lovin 1995). To explain these relationships, sociologists usually rely on a model wherein the social environment changes psychological states through assorted processes of

As Organizações e a Felicidade no Trabalho: Uma Perspectiva Integrada

“…Pela visão biológica, de acordo com estudos de hereditariedade, os eventos da vida (positivos e negativos) têm um efeito temporário -os indivíduos se adaptam a eles, retornando a um nível predeterminado de felicidade média (set point) (Arvey, Bouchard, Segal, & Abraham, 1989;Lykken & Tellegen, 1996;Schnittker, 2008;Sosis, 2014).…”

“…A influência da família, principalmente na infância, e os valores transmitidos em relação ao trabalho (R. Schnittker, 2008), assim como outras variáveis demográficas como idade e sexo (Dolan, Peasgood, & White, 2008;Lok & Crawford, 2004) …”

A Conceptual Framework of Happiness at the Workplace

“…A study of income and happiness by Caporale, Georgellis, Tsitsianis and Yin (2009) confirms that there is a strong relationship between a person's income and life satisfaction. This is because people who have higher income have more opportunities to buy desired goods and services (Frey & Stutzer, 2002;Schnittker, 2008). Even though people who gain higher income seem to be happier people, their happiness level is affected by working hours (Binswanger, 2006;Paul & Guilbert, 2013).…”

Heritability of Lifetime Income

“…This branch of the literature include Behrman and Taubman (1989) and Miller et al (2001), who investigate the genetic heritability of education, Miller et al (1996) and Schnittker (2008), who focus on occupational status and socioeconomic position, and Nicolaou et al (2008), who examine the effect of genetic heritability on the likelihood of becoming an entrepreneur. More recent work has extended the literature by studying the genetic heritability of the formation of preferences (Cesarini et.…”