Symposium 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

The History of the Genetics of Well-being (#423)

Meike Bartels 1
  1. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, NOORD HOLLAND, Netherlands

Well-being and its assumed relationship with health benefits constitute a growing area of research in behavioral genetics. Quantitative genetic studies have revealed that a substantial part (~40%) of the variation in WB could be attributed to genetic influences, supporting the scientific effort to identify genomic regions associated with SWB. After the establishment of the heritablity of well-being tremendous progress have been made to identify genomic regions of interest for well-being.. This presentation will cover the current state of art within the field of behavioral and molecular genetic research into well-being, including twin-family studies and molecular genetic findings and the search for the exposome. The importance of these findings for individuals and the society at large will be explained.