Feeling grumpy? Do not look for the culprit in the gloom of the winter cold, your lingering fatigue or your professional annoyances. What is really responsible for your mood and your personal satisfaction is actually in your genes.
Researchers from the Varna University of Management in Bulgaria and the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong carried out a study on the satisfaction of people in countries around the world. They discovered that the genetic component would play more in the balance of the national happiness as socio-economic factors such as wealth, but also political stability and disease prevalence.
In fact, the more inhabitants possessed a certain variant of a gene, the “A allele”, the happier they would feel.
The study published in the journal Journal of Happiness Studies is the first to establish a correlation between national happiness and genetics. The participants in this large survey estimated their level of personal satisfaction by saying whether they were “very happy, fairly happy, not very happy or not happy at all”.
Mexico, the “genetically” happiest country?
Result: it was in Mexico that the inhabitants said they were the happiest, the country where the greatest prevalence of the A allele appeared in the population. Ghana, Nigeria, Colombia and Ecuador also had high genetic happiness scores, regardless of political-economic status. Northern Europe was also characterized by a prevalence of the A allele.
Conversely, it was in Iraq, Jordan, Thailand, China and Hong Kong that the inhabitants proved to be the least happy, because the least endowed with the famous allele A.
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