Subjective well-being (SWB) is a major topic of research across the social sciences. Twin
and family studies have found that genetic factors may account for as much as 30–40% of
the variance in SWB. Here, we study genetic contributions to SWB in a pooled sample of≈
11,500 unrelated, comprehensively-genotyped Swedish and Dutch individuals. We apply a
recently developed method to estimate “common narrow heritability”: the fraction of variance
in SWB that can be explained by the cumulative additive effects of genetic polymorphisms …

Subjective well-being (SWB) is a major topic of research across the social sciences. Twin
and family studies have found that genetic factors may account for as much as 30-40% of the
variance in SWB. Here, we study genetic contributions to SWB in a pooled sample of~
11,500 unrelated, comprehensively-genotyped Swedish and Dutch individuals. We apply a
recently-developed method to estimate “common narrow heritability”: the fraction of variance
in SWB that can be explained by the cumulative additive effects of genetic polymorphisms …