Our Genes Show that Not All Happiness Is Created Equal

According to a new study out of UCLA and UNC, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, people who have high levels of eudaimonic well-being (often translated as "human flourishing," the kind of happiness sourced in a deep sense of life purpose and meaning) had low levels of inflammatory gene expression and higher expression levels of antiviral and antibody genes.

On the other hand, people with relatively high levels of hedonic well-being (the type of happiness that comes from consumption and self-gratification, "think most celebrities") actually showed just the opposite.

Interestingly, “people with high levels of hedonic well-being didn’t feel any worse than those with high levels of eudaimonic well-being.” So both groups feel happy and positive, but at the genomic level, it was a whole different story.

For more information on the health benefits of eudaimonic well-being, please see: Lee, E., & Carey, T. (2013, Winter). Eudaimonic well-being as a core concept of positive functioning. MindPad, 17-20.

The whole study is available online, through PNAS, details below this summary.

Not All Happiness Is Created Equally, and Genes Show It

By RICK NAUERT PHD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on July 31, 2013

Provocative new research suggests happiness or positive psychology can affect your genetic makeup.

However, not all happiness is the same, and different types of happiness may have significantly different effects as the body responds in a unique manner to dissimilar forms of positive psychology.

Researchers from UCLA and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill discovered people who have high levels of what is known as eudaimonic well-being — the kind of happiness that comes from having a deep sense of purpose and meaning in life (think Mother Teresa) — showed very favorable gene expression profiles in their immune cells.

That is, the “do-gooders” had low levels of inflammatory gene expression and strong expression of antiviral and antibody genes.

However, people who had relatively high levels of hedonic well-being — the type of happiness that comes from consummatory self-gratification (think most celebrities) — actually showed just the opposite.

The “feel-gooders” had an adverse expression profile involving high inflammation and low antiviral and antibody gene expression.

Steven Cole, Ph.D., a UCLA professor of medicine, and first author Barbara L. Fredrickson at UNC report their findings in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Cole and Frederickson have been examining how the human genome responds to stress, misery, fear and all kinds of negative psychology for more than a decade.

In this study, though, the researchers asked how the human genome might respond to positive psychology. Is it just the opposite of stress and misery, or does positive well-being activate a different kind of gene expression program?

The researchers examined the biological implications of both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being through the lens of the human genome, the system of some 21,000 genes that has evolved fundamentally to help humans survive and be well.

Previous studies had found that circulating immune cells show a systematic shift in baseline gene expression profiles during extended periods of stress, threat or uncertainty.

Known as conserved transcriptional response to adversity, or CTRA, this shift is characterized by an increased expression of genes involved in inflammation and a decreased expression of genes involved in antiviral responses.

This response, Cole noted, likely evolved to help the immune system counter the changing patterns of microbial threat that were ancestrally associated with changing socio-environmental conditions. These threats included bacterial infection from wounds caused by social conflict and an increased risk of viral infection associated with social contact.

“But 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,” said Cole, the senior author of the research.

In the present study, the researchers drew blood samples from 80 healthy adults who were assessed for hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, as well as potentially confounding negative psychological and behavioral factors.

The team used the CTRA gene-expression profile to map the potentially distinct biological effects of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being.

Researchers discovered that although those with eudaimonic well-being showed favorable gene expression profiles in their immune cells and those with hedonic well-being showed an adverse gene expression profile, “people with high levels of hedonic well-being didn’t feel any worse than those with high levels of eudaimonic well-being.”

“Both seemed to have the same high levels of positive emotion. However, their genomes were responding very differently even though their emotional states were similarly positive,” said Cole.

“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,” he said.

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

Source: UCLA

Here are the abstract and citation, with a link to the full article.

A functional genomic perspective on human well-being

Barbara L. Fredrickson, Karen M. Grewen, Kimberly A. Coffey, Sara B. Algoe, Ann M. Firestine, Jesusa M. G. Arevalo, Jeffrey Ma, and Steven W. Cole

Abstract

To identify molecular mechanisms underlying the prospective health advantages associated with psychological well-being, we analyzed leukocyte basal gene expression profiles in 80 healthy adults who were assessed for hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, as well as potentially confounded negative psychological and behavioral factors. Hedonic and eudaimonic well-being showed similar affective correlates but highly divergent transcriptome profiles. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells from people with high levels of hedonic well-being showed up-regulated expression of a stress-related conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA) involving increased expression of proinflammatory genes and decreased expression of genes involved in antibody synthesis and type I IFN response. In contrast, high levels of eudaimonic well-being were associated with CTRA down-regulation. Promoter-based bioinformatics implicated distinct patterns of transcription factor activity in structuring the observed differences in gene expression associated with eudaimonic well-being (reduced NF-κB and AP-1 signaling and increased IRF and STAT signaling). Transcript origin analysis identified monocytes, plasmacytoid dendritic cells, and B lymphocytes as primary cellular mediators of these dynamics. The finding that hedonic and eudaimonic well-being engage distinct gene regulatory programs despite their similar effects on total well-being and depressive symptoms implies that the human genome may be more sensitive to qualitative variations in well-being than are our conscious affective experiences.

Full Citation:

Fredrickson, BL, Grewen, KM, Coffey, KA, Algoe, SB, Firestine, AM, Arevalo, JMG, Ma, J, and Cole, SW. (2013, Jul 29). A functional genomic perspective on human well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1305419110