PSY 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Eudaimonia, Twin Study, Heritability
Document Summary
Socrates: q: what is the good life?" a: the pursuit of wisdom. A typical overview of swb research (not necessarily correct) Life circumstances account for a very small percentage of the variance in happiness. The only thing that might affect us is the quality of our social relationships. And this is due to the fact that we inevitably adapt back to genetically determined set-points. Longitudinal twin study found that the stable component was 80% heritable. Your happiness next year is strongly correlated with how happy you are now. But, your happiness the next year is a little less strongly correlated with how happy you are now. You happiness in 25 years correlates about . 25 with your happiness right now. Probably reflects genetic influence; but lots of change too. Psychologists love to say that money doesn"t buy happiness. But this translates into relatively larger differences between the rich and the poor. New view: we don"t adapt to everything.
