The heritability of well-being across contexts: exploring variation in genetic and environmental sources of mental health

The body of work that cumulatively forms the dissertation at hand contributes to a dynamic understanding of the genetic and environmental influences on well-being and mental health. It offers three complementary perspectives on the variation of these phenomena across contexts. Manuscript 1 on Life Satisfaction Stability and Change, currently under minor revisions at the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, focuses on the temporal structure of well-being heritability. It analyzes twin models and polygenic predictors on eight-year stable trait and trait-change measures of life satisfaction across multiple age cohorts. Manuscript 2 on Personality and Well-Being, currently in press at the European Journal of Personality, tackles the dispositional structure of well-being heritability. It applies a comparative approach to elucidate how genetic and environmental variance shared between Big Five personality traits and subjective well-being may differ across developmental stages. Manuscript 3 on Youth Depression Symptoms During COVID-19, published in the German Zeitschrift für Psychologie, extends the contextual perspective by examining the dynamics of a global situational disruption. It shows that typical predictors of depression symptoms and genetic differences were attenuated during the early stages of the pandemic and also provides evidence for plasticity and recovery of mental health. All three manuscripts analyzed data from a large population-based German twin dataset (TwinLife). Together, these studies provide longitudinal and genetically informative evidence on how the sources of well-being can vary across developmental and environmental contexts. The dissertation contributes to an integrated picture of well-being and mental health as dynamic, context-sensitive, and partially heritable phenomena.