1. A Genetic Investigation of the Well-Being Spectrum
- Author
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Bart M. L. Baselmans, Gonneke Willemsen, M. P. van de Weijer, E.J.C. de Geus, Abdel Abdellaoui, J-J Hottenga, Jacqueline M. Vink, Michel G. Nivard, Dorret I. Boomsma, Meike Bartels, Biological Psychology, APH - Mental Health, APH - Personalized Medicine, APH - Health Behaviors & Chronic Diseases, and APH - Methodology
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Male ,Netherlands Twin Register (NTR) ,Multifactorial Inheritance ,congenital, hereditary, and neonatal diseases and abnormalities ,Genetic correlation ,Neuropsychological Tests ,Factor structure ,Spectrum (topology) ,Extraversion, Psychological ,Healthy Aging ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Self-rated health ,Statistics ,Genetics ,medicine ,Humans ,cardiovascular diseases ,Big Five personality traits ,Life Style ,Genetics (clinical) ,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics ,Genetic Association Studies ,Original Research ,Neuroticism ,Extraversion and introversion ,Depression ,Loneliness ,Correction ,Flourishing ,Regression ,030104 developmental biology ,Phenotype ,Well-being ,Quality of Life ,Female ,medicine.symptom ,Well-being spectrum ,Psychology ,Developmental Psychopathology ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Personality - Abstract
The interrelations among well-being, neuroticism, and depression can be captured in a so-called well-being spectrum (3-phenotype well-being spectrum, 3-WBS). Several other human traits are likely linked to the 3-WBS. In the present study, we investigate how the 3-WBS can be expanded. First, we constructed polygenic risk scores for the 3-WBS and used this score to predict a series of traits that have been associated with well-being in the literature. We included information on loneliness, big five personality traits, self-rated health, and flourishing. The 3-WBS polygenic score predicted all the original 3-WBS traits and additionally loneliness, self-rated health, and extraversion (R2 between 0.62% and 1.58%). Next, using LD score regression, we calculated genetic correlations between the 3-WBS and the traits of interest. From all candidate traits, loneliness and self-rated health were found to have the strongest genetic correlations (rg = − 0.79, and rg= 0.64, respectively) with the 3-WBS. Lastly, we use Genomic SEM to investigate the factor structure of the proposed spectrum. The best model fit was obtained for a two-factor model including the 5-WBS traits, with two highly correlated factors representing the negative- and positive end of the spectrum. Based on these analyses we propose to include loneliness and self-rated health in the WBS and use a 5-phenotype well-being spectrum in future studies to gain more insight into the determinants of human well-being. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s10519-019-09951-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
- Published
- 2019
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