Wedding Bliss or Blues – Is DNA to Blame?

Amy Taylor October 15, 2013

Tweet

Could the success of a marriage depend on the couple’s DNA? According to a new study by the University of California – Berkeley and Northwestern University, a gene involved in the regulation of serotonin in the brain can predict how much our emotions affect our relationships.

The new findings show how emotions matter a lot to other people, the researchers say.

For the study, the genotypes of 125 participants were matched to their levels of marital satisfaction and emotional tenor. The researchers found a link between relationship satisfaction and a gene variant called 5-HTTLPR. All humans inherit a copy of this gene variant from each of their parents. In the study, participants with two short 5-HTTLPR alleles were found to be most affected with the emotional ups and downs of their marital relationship. That is, they felt most happy when there is positive emotion, and most unhappy when there’s a lot of negative emotions.

Participants in the study belong to a group of 156 middle-aged and older couples who have been followed by the researchers since 1989.  Every five years, couples were interviewed about their levels of marital satisfaction. Couples were also asked to interact with each other in a lab setting whilst the researchers code their conversations based on body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, and topic of discussion.

Robert W Levenson, a psychologist at UC Berkeley said an enduring mystery is what makes one spouse so attuned to the emotional climate in a marriage, and another so oblivious. “With these new genetic findings, we now understand much more about what determines just how important emotions are for different people.” he said.

The findings don’t mean that couples with different variations of the gene are incompatible, the researchers note. They simply suggest that those with two short 5-HTTLPR alleles are more likely to thrive in a good relationship and suffer from a bad one. Among the spouses with two short 5-HTTLPR alleles, researchers found a strong link between the emotional tone of their conversations and how they felt about their marriage. On the other hand, for the 83 per cent of spouses with one or two long alleles, the emotional quality of their discussions show no or little relationship to how satisfied the couples were in their marriage over the next 10 years.

The study, which was published in the journal Emotions, was the first to link genetics, emotions and marital satisfaction.

Source of this article:

Wedded bliss or blues? Scientists link DNA to marital satisfaction