Consistent effects of the genetics of happiness across the lifespan and ancestries in multiple cohorts

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 13; no. 1; p. 17262
• Main Authors: Ward, Joey, Lyall, Laura M., Cullen, Breda, Strawbridge, Rona J., Zhu, Xingxing, Stanciu, Ioana, Aman, Alisha, Niedzwiedz, Claire L., Anderson, Jana, Bailey, Mark E. S., Lyall, Donald M., Pell, Jill P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 12.10.2023; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 631/208/205; 631/208/212; 631/378/1457; 631/477/2811; Age; Biobanks; Cognitive ability; Genetics; Happiness; Humanities and Social Sciences; Life span; Medicin och hälsovetenskap; multidisciplinary; Phenotypes; Polygenic inheritance; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Well being; United Kingdom > UK
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-43193-9

Happiness is a fundamental human affective trait, but its biological basis is not well understood. Using a novel approach, we construct LDpred-inf polygenic scores of a general happiness measure in 2 cohorts: the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) cohort (N = 15,924, age range 9.23–11.8 years), the Add Health cohort (N = 9129, age range 24.5–34.7) to determine associations with several well-being and happiness measures. Additionally, we investigated associations between genetic scores for happiness and brain structure in ABCD (N = 9626, age range (8.9–11) and UK Biobank (N = 16,957, age range 45–83). We detected significant (p.FDR < 0.05) associations between higher genetic scores vs. several well-being measures (best r 2  = 0.019) in children of multiple ancestries in ABCD and small yet significant correlations with a happiness measure in European participants in Add Health (r 2  = 0.004). Additionally, we show significant associations between lower genetic scores for happiness with smaller structural brain phenotypes in a white British subsample of UK Biobank and a white sub-sample group of ABCD. We demonstrate that the genetic basis for general happiness level appears to have a consistent effect on happiness and wellbeing measures throughout the lifespan, across multiple ancestral backgrounds, and multiple brain structures.