Wellbeing
Science Review
The
journal of happiness studies is dedicated to publishing scientific
peer-reviewed articles on wellbeing. The basic idea of the peer-review process is
to use a high threshold for the quality of published work to reduce factual
mistakes in publications. Unfortunately, it has been shown that the peer-review
process is not very good at ensuring quality control. One reason is that
journals are also trying to publish high impact articles. As a result, journals
are biased towards publishing novel, groundbreaking findings rather than
studies that report a small incremental contribution to existing evidence.
Inevitably, groundbreaking studies are riskier and more likely to contain
factual mistakes. Often these mistakes become more apparent over time, but
there are various reasons why researchers are reluctant to point out mistakes
in other people's work. As a result, mistakes remain uncorrected and false claims
from groundbreaking studies often have lasting effects well beyond the time
when newer findings undermine the original conclusions (see Easterlin Paradox
as an example). The aim of this section of wellbeingscience.org is to correct
unwarranted conclusions about wellbeing in peer-reviewed publications swiftly
to create a more solid foundation for future researches.
Unfortunately,
I can only provide information on a small and unrepresentative sample of
research articles. If you would like to post (even anonymously) comments of
published articles, please send me the reference and your comments and I will
post it here. Medical journals allow readers to post comments, and I encourage
all scientific journals to adopt this policy. Until then, wellbeingscience.org will
serve the function of allowing researchers to discuss published work rather
than uncritically accepting every scientific publication at face value because
it passed peer-review.
I
start with an article that just came to may attention. I will add more articles,
time permitting. It should also be said that many articles do not contain major
factual mistakes, and that some factual mistakes do not really alter the
conclusions. However, at times, conclusions go way beyond the empirical data.
If you find
factual mistakes in my comments or have additional comments, please email me
(uli.schimmack@utoronto.ca).
Posted
June 13, 2008
Casas, F., Coenders, G., Cummins, R. A., Gonzalez, M., Figuer, C., & Malo,
S. (2008). Does subjective well-being show a relationship between parents and
their children? Journal of Happiness Studies, 9(2), 197-205.
[Abstract The relationship between the subjective well-being of parents and
their own 12–16-year-old children was explored in a Spanish sample of N = 266
families. A positive relationship was expected due to both a shared environment
and the possibility of the genetic transmission of subjective well-being
‘set-points’. A positive significant relationship was found for the summated
scale of satisfaction domains forming the Personal Well-being Index, and for
the specific domains of health and security for the future. However, no
relationship was found for the other five domains that make up this Index or
for satisfaction with life as a whole. We conclude while these results provide
some evidence for the expected influence of a shared environment, they have
failed to provide evidence for high heritability of set-points for subjective
well-being.]
[Correction: The data reported in this article are entirely consistent with
high heritability of set-points for subjective well-being.
The study reports correlations of the similarity between parents and their
children in wellbeing. For a general life-satisfaction question the study finds
an observed correlation of r = .083, with a confidence interval ranging
from r = -.052 to r = .218]. This finding is very similar to the sibling
correlation by Stubbe et al., 2005) [siblings also share 50% of their genes.]
This is a low correlation. However, this correlation is not different from
correlations for dyzigotic twins who also share 50% of their genes in studies
that have claimed 80% heritability of the setpoint of wellbeing (e.g., Lykken
& Tellegen, 1996). How can this be? First, the set-point (variance)
accounts only for about 50% of the total variance. Second, additive genetic
effects contribute only 50% to the phenotypical variance. In this case they
contribute 50% of the 50% set-point variance. Thus, a simple additive genetic
model predicts a correlation of r = .25. This prediction is not far from
the upper confidence level of r = .218 of the observed correlation in this
study. Moreover, several articles have argued that non-additive genetic effects
also influence people's set-point [again, they have proposed that this could be
the case, they have not demonstrated it]. Non-additive genetic effects only
show up in similarity of identical twins, but not in similarity of dizygotic
twins, siblings, or parents and their children. Thus, even if the true
correlation for parents and children were .09, it is still possible that 100%
of the set-point variance is genetically determined. Finally, the authors do
not correct for measurement error. In sum, I think the results are important
because they add to our knowledge about parent-child similarity. It is quite
interesting for parents, especially future parents, to know whether their own
wellbeing is a predictor of their children's wellbeing, and how much of this
similarity may be genetically mediated. Unfortunately, wellbeing science
currently does not have solid scientific facts to answer this question. You
will have to draw your own conclusions from the finding in this and other
studies that observed correlations are often quite small. In sum, a more
correct representation of the results in the abstract would have been that this
study failed to provide evidence for high or low heritability of set-points for
subjective well-being because the results are consistent with 0% and 100%
heritability of set-points.]
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