Associations between Subjective Well-being Polygenic Scores and Personality, Mental Health and Behavioral Outcomes in Young Adults

Subjective well-being is associated with a variety of better psychosocial and health outcomes. Twin studies suggest that subjective well-being is heritable and genetically correlated with depression and personality traits such... [ view full abstract ]

Subjective well-being is associated with a variety of better psychosocial and health outcomes. Twin studies suggest that subjective well-being is heritable and genetically correlated with depression and personality traits such as neuroticism. We examined whether genome-wide polygenic scores for subjective well-being predict phenotypic measures for subjective well-being, personality traits, and mental/behavioral health outcomes in a sample of young adults. Our sample included 2,451 European-American college students (58% female, age range 18-25) collected as part of the Spit for Science study (S4S). Phenotypic subjective well-being was measured using the Mental Health Continuum Short Form. Our personality traits included the Big Five domains. Mental and behavioral health outcomes included depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms (assessed by the Symptom Checklist-90), alcohol consumption, and criterion counts for DSM-5 alcohol use disorder. Subjective well-being polygenic scores (SWB-PGS) were calculated using genome-wide association weights from the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium. We used regression models to examine whether SWB-PGS were associated with phenotypic subjective well-being, personality, mental health and behavioral outcomes. Covariates included age, sex, and three genetic ancestry principal components. We found evidence that higher SWB-PGS predicted higher subjective well-being in S4S (effect size ~1%). In addition, SWB-PGS were associated with neuroticism (beta = -.04, p = .03), but not associated with the other domains of personality. Higher SWB-PGS also predicted lower levels of depressive symptoms (beta = -.09, p < .01) and anxiety symptoms (beta = -.09, p < .01). Finally, SWB-PGS were not associated with alcohol consumption, associations with alcohol use disorder criterion count were just above the traditional threshold (beta = -.04, p = .07). Together, our results show that higher SWB-PGS predicted higher levels of subjective well-being and lower levels of neuroticism and mental health problems in an independent, college sample.