Unraveling the Relation Between Personality and Well-Being in a Genetically Informative Design

Dirk H.M.  Pelt; Lianne de Vries; Meike Bartels

doi:10.1177/08902070221134878

Unraveling the Relation Between Personality and Well-Being in a Genetically Informative Design

Dirk H.M. Pelt, Lianne de Vries, Meike Bartels

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

In the current study, common and unique genetic and environmental influences on personality and a broad range of well-being measures were investigated. Data on the Big Five, life satisfaction, quality of life, self-rated health, loneliness, and depression from 14,253 twins and their siblings (age M: 31.82, SD: 14.41, range 16–97) from the Netherlands Twin Register were used in multivariate extended twin models. The best-fitting theoretical model indicated that genetic variance in personality and well-being traits can be decomposed into effects due to one general, common factor (Mdn: 60%, range 15%–89%), due to personality-specific (Mdn: 2%, range 0%–78%) and well-being-specific (Mdn: 12%, range 4%–35%) factors, and trait-specific effects (Mdn: 18%, range 0%–65%). Significant amounts of non-additive genetic influences on the traits’ (co)variances were found, while no evidence was found for quantitative or qualitative sex differences. Taken together, our study paints a fine-grained, complex picture of common and unique genetic and environmental effects on personality and well-being. Implications for the interpretation of shared variance, inflated phenotypic correlations between traits and future gene finding studies are discussed.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	99-119
Number of pages	21
Journal	European Journal of Personality
Volume	38
Issue number	1
Early online date	26 Oct 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/08902070221134878
Publication status	Published - Jan 2024

Funding

This work is supported by an European Research Council Consolidator Grant (ERC-2017-COG 771057 WELL-BEING PI Bartels). Data collection in the NTR was supported by NWO large investment (480-15-001/674; Netherlands Twin Registry Repository: researching the interplay between genome and environment), an European Research Council Starting grant 284167, and the Addiction program of ZonMW (31160008). The analyses were carried out on the Lisa Cluster computer, part of the Dutch national e-infrastructure with the support of SURF Cooperative. The authors thank all NTR participants who participated in this study. This work is supported by an European Research Council Consolidator Grant (ERC-2017-COG 771057 WELL-BEING PI Bartels). Data collection in the NTR was supported by NWO large investment (480-15-001/674; Netherlands Twin Registry Repository: researching the interplay between genome and environment), an European Research Council Starting grant 284167, and the Addiction program of ZonMW (31160008). The analyses were carried out on the Lisa Cluster computer, part of the Dutch national e-infrastructure with the support of SURF Cooperative.

Funders	Funder number
SURF Cooperative
European Research Council	ERC-2017-COG 771057
ZonMw	31160008
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek	284167, 480-15-001/674

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title = "Unraveling the Relation Between Personality and Well-Being in a Genetically Informative Design",

abstract = "In the current study, common and unique genetic and environmental influences on personality and a broad range of well-being measures were investigated. Data on the Big Five, life satisfaction, quality of life, self-rated health, loneliness, and depression from 14,253 twins and their siblings (age M: 31.82, SD: 14.41, range 16–97) from the Netherlands Twin Register were used in multivariate extended twin models. The best-fitting theoretical model indicated that genetic variance in personality and well-being traits can be decomposed into effects due to one general, common factor (Mdn: 60%, range 15%–89%), due to personality-specific (Mdn: 2%, range 0%–78%) and well-being-specific (Mdn: 12%, range 4%–35%) factors, and trait-specific effects (Mdn: 18%, range 0%–65%). Significant amounts of non-additive genetic influences on the traits{\textquoteright} (co)variances were found, while no evidence was found for quantitative or qualitative sex differences. Taken together, our study paints a fine-grained, complex picture of common and unique genetic and environmental effects on personality and well-being. Implications for the interpretation of shared variance, inflated phenotypic correlations between traits and future gene finding studies are discussed.",

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Unraveling the Relation Between Personality and Well-Being in a Genetically Informative Design

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