Happiness is expressed in your genes

Date: Jul-30-2013"If you're happy and you know it..." Researchers have studied how "positive psychology" impacts gene expression in humans.

Steven Cole from UCLA led a team who examined the human genome - some 21,000 genes - in light of two different classifications of happiness:

Eudaimonic well-being - the type of happiness associated with having "a deep sense of purpose and meaning in life"
Hedonic well-being - the type of happiness associated with unmitigated self-gratification.

The researchers assessed 80 healthy adults for hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, and they took into account potential negative psychological and behavioral elements. They then drew blood from the participants and mapped the varying biological effects of either hedonic or eudaimonic well-being, using a gene-expression profile known as conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA).

The CTRA is a shift associated with an increase of inflammation and a decrease in antiviral activities with the genes. This response, notes Steven Cole, probably evolved to aid the immune system in the wake of changing patterns, such as microbial threats accompanying shifting socio-environmental conditions - for example, social conflict and contact.

The study showed that people who had high levels of eudaimonic well-being had low levels of inflammatory gene expression and exhibited a strong expression of antiviral and antibody genes.

The opposite was true for people who had high levels of hedonic well-being - giving high inflammation and low antiviral/antibody expression.

How genes react to the good, the bad and the ugly

Steven Cole and his team have been studying how the human genome reacts to negative psychology, including stress, misery and fear, for the last 10 years.

He notes that "in contemporary society and our very different environment, chronic activation by social or symbolic threats can promote inflammation and cause cardiovascular, neurodegenerative and other diseases, and can impair resistance to viral infections."

This recent study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is the first of its kind to study positive psychology effects on gene expression.

Although the study participants with eudaimonic well-being had positive gene profiles in their immune cells and those with hedonic well-being had more adverse profiles, Cole notes that both groups did not feel any different.

Both groups had similar levels of positivity but their genomes responded quite differently.

Cole adds:

"What this study tells us is that doing good and feeling good have very different effects on the human genome, even though they generate similar levels of positive emotion.

Apparently, the human genome is much more sensitive to different ways of achieving happiness than are conscious minds."

A recent study located a happiness gene, which researchers say affects people's satisfaction with life.

Written by Marie Ellis

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