HomeLifestyleHealth & FitnessHow a person's sense of well-being might be inherited

How a person’s sense of well-being might be inherited

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Evolutionary psychologists have claimed in the last decade that many moral perspectives serve the interests of the individual. Behavioral geneticists, on the other hand, have demonstrated that a large number of these ethical perspectives have genetic roots.

There is an interesting shift in the debates over how to teach values and how to define morality when genetics is taken into account.

For some families, discussing casual relationships and recreational drug use is a sensitive matter. People’s morality might be shaped by their genes in addition to what they learn in school, according to a recent study published in Psychological Science by Dutch researchers.

Individuals’ opinions on noncommittal sex and recreational drug usage, according to researchers from the Association for Psychological Science, may be influenced by a “common genetic base.”

These new findings by experts have crucial consequences for modern science’s knowledge of how genes and heredity influence the beliefs and moral ideals that drive the behavior of each individual.

“People adopt behaviors and attitudes, including certain moral views, that are advantageous to their own interests,” said lead study author Annika Karinen, a researcher at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, in a media release.

“People tend to associate recreational drug use with noncommitted sex. As such, people who are heavily oriented toward high commitment in sexual relationships morally condemn recreational drugs, as they benefit from environments in which high sexual commitment is the norm.”

Early research suggests that a person’s genes may play a role in their willingness to engage in casual relationships up to a degree. A new study aims to see if the same holds true for drug usage, which some believe is linked to a more noncommittal approach to serious relations.

The researchers polled 8,118 Finnish fraternal and identical twins about their attitudes about recreational drug use and love life outside of a relationship. The researchers next analyzed the perspectives of fraternal and identical twins to see how many of their views on casual relationships, drug usage, and their relationship are influenced by three separate aspects.

Genetics was the first component to be investigated. The common environment (growing up in the same house, neighborhood, or town) was the second, and the survey of distinct personal experiences was the third. This procedure led to the conclusion that one’s attitudes toward causual relationships and drugs are 50% heritable and 50% explained by one’s unique environment.

Similarly, genetic influences account for 75% of the association between openness to casual relationships and drug attitudes. A considerable genetic commonality was also discovered by the researchers. About 40% of genes linked to openness to casual relationships, for example, appear to be linked to moral views on recreational drugs.

“These findings suggest that the genetic effects that influence openness to noncommitted sex overlap with those that influence moral views concerning recreational drugs,” Karinen concluded.

“Important parts of hot-button culture-war issues flow from differences in lifestyle preferences between people, and those differences in lifestyle preferences appear to partly have a genetic basis.”

Source: 10.1177/0956797621997350

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