Researchers from the University of California found that being happy is not enough. The type of happiness one experiences matters as it affects our genes.
Happier people are healthier people, researchers have stated in the past. However, a new study by researchers from University of California, Los Angeles, found that just being happy is not enough as the type of happiness matters. Different types of happiness have different effects on human genomes.
There are generally two types of happiness. The first one is eudaimonic happiness that comes from having a deep sense of purpose and meaning in life and the other hedonic happiness that comes from "consummatory" self-gratification. Both these types of happiness or well being have completely opposite effects on genes with the former one being better than the later.
For the study, a team of researchers from the university examined the biological implications of both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being through the lens of a system of some 21,000 genes that has evolved fundamentally to help humans survive and be well.
While previous studies have been conducted to study how genes respond to negative psychology like stress, fear and misery, Steven Cole, a UCLA professor of medicine and a member of the UCLA Cousins Center, and his colleagues conducted this study to see how genes respond to positive psychology.
Researchers found that people who experience eudaimonic happiness have low levels of inflammatory gene expression and strong expression of antiviral and antibody genes, while those that experience hedonic happiness have high inflammation and low antiviral and antibody gene expression.
According to Cole, these different gene responses may have evolved in order to help the immune system cope with the changing patterns of microbial threat that were previously linked to changing socio-environmental conditions.
"But in contemporary society and our very different environment, chronic activation by social or symbolic threats can promote inflammation and cause cardiovascular, neurodegenerative and other diseases and can impair resistance to viral infections," said Cole, the senior author of the research, in a press release.
"What this study tells us is that doing good and feeling good have very different effects on the human genome, even though they generate similar levels of positive emotion," he continued. "Apparently, the human genome is much more sensitive to different ways of achieving happiness than are conscious minds."
The study was published online July 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
