HAPPINESS: What studies on twins show us about nature --- Parts 4, 5 & 6

Details

Written by Ian E. Macindoe

Review of

HAPPINESS: What studies on twins show us about nature,

nurture, and the happiness set-point

by

David Lykken

[Golden Books, 1999; ISBN 1-58238-004-x]

Parts 4, 5 & 6

In reviewing this book so far I have summarised the author’s argument that, although our general persistent level of happiness — our happiness ‘set point’ — is determined by our genetic make up, our subjective daily experience of happiness (or feelings of subjective wellbeing) can be influenced by how we conduct ourselves. Part 2 of Professor Lykken’s book shows how ‘happiness makers’ (for example, work and recreational fulfilments) can assist one to keep ‘bouncing along’ in life above one’s happiness set point. Part 3 outlined how we can achieve happy families.

The good professor now, in Part 4 of the book, tackles the relationships between the sexes and, while admitting that both women and men may have a similar general recipe for happiness, these recipes differ in their detail. ‘Our research with twins has allowed us to discover why couples fall in love and cleave together and also why, too often, they later cleave apart’ (p. 172).

In Part 4 the first chapter deals with sex differences, from the finding that female feet are smaller (as a ratio to height) than are men’s, through the measured temperamental differences (men are more aggressive and less fearful, women more nurturant and empathetic towards others) to marked differences in leisure-time interests. Some interests, whether occupational or leisure, are substantially different between women and men. The main thing, of course, as far as happiness is concerned, is to vary your interests and to be enthusiastic about experiencing that variety.

Across many cultures men rate youth and beauty high for the attractiveness of females, while women rate males’ status as more attractive than good looks. As Lykken says, this makes good evolutionary sense, and also tends to explain why more young women than men suffer from eating disorders where physical attractiveness based on slimness motivates the sufferers’ misperception of beauty.

Using a translated questionnaire in sixteen countries Inglehart (1990) found that 80 per cent of both sexes were ‘satisfied’ with their lives, and 21 per cent of men and 24 per cent of women indicated that they were ‘very happy’. And Myers’ (1992) research showed that ‘working women are neither more nor less contented on the whole than full-time homemakers’, it being the challenge and satisfaction of the work that makes the difference, regardless of place of work or remuneration.

The data from twin studies shows that women ‘have a stronger need for close, confiding, intimate relationships than does the average man’ (p. 182). In general, females score higher on the ‘harm-avoidance’ scale of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) and Lykken acknowledges that this measure of ‘fearfulness’ is no doubt a mixture of genetic and experiential factors.

Chapter 11 (How to stay happy though married) reports research with the Minnesota Twin Registry that helps our understanding of why people fall in and out of love. For many relationships to become lasting ones there is a need for infatuation (romantic love) to keep a couple together long enough for shared experience, mutual understanding and tolerance to develop as the basis on which a long-term partnership can be based. In a cross-cultural study of 58 societies Fisher (1992) found that a modal period of four years occurs prior to a first ‘divorce’ (whether real or just a considered option) — a period that ‘reflects an ancestral strategy to remain pair-bonded at least long enough to raise a single infant through the period of lactation’ (p. 191). The Minnesota twin studies suggested, similarly, that ‘romantic infatuation … forms an initial bond almost adventiously and then sustains it long enough, in most instances, for an enduring bond to be forged by the slower processes of learning and adaptation that result in companionate love’ (p. 196). Who you fall in love with seems not to be determined by your genes, nor your experiences and influences in life, but by your own ‘readiness’ and the opportunity for a reciprocated romance.

The Minnesota Twin Registry was also used for an investigation of the likelihood of divorce. Divorce among parents or co-twins of monozygotic (identical) twins increased greatly the likelihood that a married twin would divorce. The reasons for this, Lykken explains, is that among these divorced people there are psychological traits that are shared genetically and that are implicated in the failure of a bonded relationship. In the MPQ study it transpired that people high on Social Potency (extraverted, take-charge people) were more at risk of divorce than were introverted people. ‘ … it is the heritable component of personality that predicts divorce risk’ (p. 203). Thus, people who are risk-takers, or are fearless, or are impulsive, are more likely to create friction with their partners. For them, a greater degree of self-control and determination is needed to keep a relationship sustainable.

‘The Thieves of Happiness’ is Professor Lykken’s title for Part 5 of his book, and it covers ‘depression’, ‘fear and shyness’ and ‘anger and resentment’. The worst thief of happiness, says Lykken, is depression. It is an absence of happiness and, in its worst manifestations, is a life-threatening illness. Susceptibility to depression’s two main forms — bipolar affective disorder (in which bouts of depression alternate with manic elation) and primary major depressive disorder — is strongly determined by genetic factors. If one identical twin suffers bouts of either, there is a 40 to 60 per cent chance that the other twin will experience similar bouts. Thankfully, advances in medications now give much hope that, if the right combination of chemicals can be found for a particular person, a great deal of depressive suffering can be alleviated or at least reduced. In ‘talking therapies’ the challenge is to get depressed persons to genuinely understand that the condition is a temporary imbalance in brain chemistry; that the sad and hopeless feelings, while overwhelming, can lessen with time. Some form of activity, particularly physical exercise of some sort, can often lift the spirits. Dr Lykken, although a mainstream psychologist, suggests that the evidence for the antidepressant effects of the herb, Saint-John’s-wort, is such that it should be tried as an alternative, or perhaps a supplement, to more conventional treatments. One of the latter in this day and age is Prozac (fluoxetine hydrochloride) which has helped millions of people during the past decade or so. There is considerable anecdotal evidence that the drug can ‘improve’ personalities beyond the lifting of morbid depression, which suggests that it might even raise some people’s happiness set point. Lykken, however, is of the view that Prozac ‘works its wonders not by raising the happiness set point, but rather by disabling a variety of happiness thieves, including depression, shyness, timidity, and unpleasant compulsions … (sufferers) have been freed up to begin making the most of the potential they were born with’ (p. 220).

Lykken cites the developmental psychologist, Jerome Kagan, who (like Lykken) was originally ‘a radical environmentalist’ but who, in the light of the research data, came to realise that ‘the power of genes is real but limited’; so that, as Lykken says, ‘skillful parenting can mitigate the effects of an excessively shy or inhibited temperament’ (p. 222). The other extreme, a relatively fearless child, can be as big a worry to a parent, but for different reasons. A child that fails to fear the consequences of his actions may learn that resisting parental discipline ‘pays’, that he can get his own way, with the danger that over time he may become unsocialised, possibly even psychopathic. But over-sensitivity to things that can be ‘painful’, either physically or psychologically, may lead to ‘panic anxiety’ or similar debilitating inhibitions to normal action. ‘Stage fright’ is an example discussed by Lykken, and he mentions the concept of systematic desensitisation through which many such problems can be solved.

Anger is often a way of overcoming feelings of fear or weakness. People learn that feeling angry feels less distressful than feeling frightened or humiliated. But, of course, feeling happy is more gratifying than feeling angry or resentful. The twins research shows that ‘rage-readiness’ (a stable component of irritability) has strong genetic influences, although they (like the happiness set point) are ‘emergenic’ (not running in families). Such genetically predisposed feelings do not have to dominate one’s life if one is determined to control such feelings through self-discipline. Most angry flare-ups are those occasions when the ‘genes prehistoric song’ must be resisted. Similarly, there is little point in constantly blaming one’s problems on others (be they parents, teachers, or slings and arrows of outrageous fortune) and carrying permanent resentments like a professional victim. Even if our genes cause us to have our own peculiarities, little constructive is achieved by harping on our misfortune. Everyone is better off if each of us accepts our nature with equanimity and gets on with living as well and contentedly as we can.

Happiness among older people is Lykken’s appropriate conclusion to his book. Here Lykken is at his ‘chatty’ best, using examples of colleagues to show that retirement can be one of the happiest and most productive times in life. He also turns to science, however, to observe that happier people last longer than the querulous and dissatisfied. One reason may be that older people feel they have devolved responsibility to a younger group of people, that the state of the world — or one’s favourite project or cause — is no longer up to them. But Lykken indicates in his closing pages that older people, particularly those for whom life has been a ‘life of the mind’, can be equally concerned about what lies ahead for them: how they will die. He makes several wise observations about a rational approach to death and dying, including his own preparation for same; then ends his book with ‘I hope to see my grandchildren enter into young adulthood but if not, I hope that at least my own final chapter will be as brief as the one you have just read’ (p. 256).

Ian Macindoe