Scientists Find Gene That Predicts Happiness In Women

An anonymous reader writes "For reasons that scientists have not conclusively determined, women are happier than men. And now, researchers think that they may have pinpointed one of the reasons for that. They have found a gene in women that predicts the level of happiness in women. 'After controlling for various factors, ranging from age and education to income, the researchers found that women with the low-expression type of MAOA were significantly happier than others. Compared to women with no copies of the low-expression version of the MAOA gene, women with one copy scored higher on the happiness scale and those with two copies increased their score even more. While a substantial number of men carried a copy of the "happy" version of the MAOA gene, they reported no more happiness than those without it.'"

Comments

Spoilers

[GameboyRMH]

For reasons that scientists have not conclusively determined, women are happier than men

Spoilers: It's the difficulty of getting laid. A woman only has to ask "Sex?"

Re:Spoilers

[dkleinsc]

That's not true and you know it. If an 80-year-old woman came up to you and asked "Sex?", you'd probably leave very very quickly. Also, some guys don't just sleep with anything they can and want to evaluate potential partners for being decent-looking, reasonably healthy, and not crazy before jumping into bed.

Some real reasons women might be happier (as always, variations within a gender are much wider than variations between an average man and an average woman):
- Women tend to do a better job of building up a support network of friends and family, so if something goes wrong they have help they can call on.
- Moms tend to bond more closely with their children than dads. If you have kids, you're generally happier when you spend more time with them.
- As of quite recently, women are more educated than men, and also are more likely to be employed. Material security contributes a great deal towards happiness.

Re:Spoilers

[mcgrew]

Actually, I'd like to see the study that says woman are happier than men, because that flies in the face of my experience. Most of the women I know are either depressed or angry all the time.

The unhappy men I know are all married.

Re:Spoilers

[circletimessquare]

Also, some guys don't just sleep with anything they can and want to evaluate potential partners for being decent-looking, reasonably healthy, and not crazy before jumping into bed.

You are on the wrong website sir.

Re:Spoilers

[Hatta]

That's not true and you know it.

It's much closer to true than you want to admit. If you send a group of average looking college students onto campus to randomly proposition people of the opposite sex, the majority of females will get affirmative responses, and the majority of males will get negative responses. Women have a much easier time than men getting laid. That's scientific fact.

Re:Spoilers

[dsvick]

Most of the women I know are either depressed or angry all the time.

And the common factor is ..... :)

sorry, had to!

Re:Spoilers

[girlintraining]

Women have a much easier time than men getting laid. That's scientific fact.

Whoa there, partner. That's not science: That's social role. If you were in a different culture, it would be a different story. Try being a woman in feudal china: You had no rights. You slept with whomever the eldest male told you to. You married whomever your family told you to. For most of human history as it turns out, women were not given much choice on who they'd have sex with, and rape was a viable and commonly-practiced method of procreation. There's a 5% chance you're directly descended from Ghenghis Khan. And in pre-modern times, the spoils of a battle were often women. Generals had serious morale problems if they didn't produce enemy women on a regular basis -- it was one of the sign-up bonuses.

So don't tell me that it's a scientific fact. This isn't like gravity -- it existed 5 billion years ago, it'll still exist 5 billion years from now. That is a scientific fact. What you're talking about is just a re-arrangement of prejudices and commonly held conceptions and perceptions of the world as it exists right now. And if there's anything science teaches us, it's that the only constant... is change. These social values and ideas you think are eternally unchanging are right now in a state of flux; It's just happening too slowly for you to perceive it. So don't assume just because you, or even a thousand people like you, observe something and agree it's true that it becomes a scientific fact. Science has rules; One of which is to ensure your sample isn't biased. Yours... very much... is.

Re:Spoilers

[ColdWetDog]

Never eat a place called Mom's.
Never play poker with a man named Doc.
Never sleep with a woman with a woman who has more problems than you do.

That, along with a roll of duct tape, some WD-40, a screwdriver and a hammer will get you pretty far in this world.

Re:Spoilers

[PlusFiveTroll]

>Whoa there, partner. That's not science: That's social role.

In the vast majority of the animal kingdom, the female chooses which male partner to breed with. The males of a great many species look superficially different then the females. Bright colors, fancy displays, loud noises and songs, antlers and horns.. These are the things most commonly found on males. The females, especially in non-pairing or social grouping animals are very bland in color.

That's not social role, that's evolution saying it's easy for a woman to get laid.

Re:Spoilers

[shutdown -p now]

There are similar studies done across cultures, and they support the same thing.

There's a fairly obvious explanation for that, too. From evolutionary perspective, it makes more sense for man to have sex with as many women as he can, since that increases the chances of him spreading his genes around. So, natural selection favors men like that.

For a woman, that same perspective makes for bonding with a single man. She doesn't increase the chance of spreading her genes by having sex with multiple men - it's one baby at a time either way - but, what with primates being strong adherents of the K strategy, and with Homo in particular having significantly higher than average male contribution to progeny, it is important to secure the attention of one particular male to contribute to her progeny - which he'll do if it's also his progeny (or at least he believes so).

Of course, it's all somewhat more complicated - for example, from the above also follows that sexual selection by women will favor men who don't openly fuck everything that moves - females will tend to avoid such males because they're more likely to spread their effort across the many children they have, but they can't avoid them if they don't know. And so we arrive at the present "pretend to be monogamous when somebody's looking" arrangement...

GATTACA

[GameboyRMH]

Now you can analyze your girlfriend's* DNA and see if she's only acting happy and would become miserable after marriage!

*Yeah this is Slashdot but the theory is sound

Re:GATTACA

[CubicleZombie]

Now you can analyze your girlfriend's* DNA and see if she's only acting happy and would become miserable after marriage!

It's a lot easier than that. Just plan a wedding. Whatever she's like during that process is what she'll be like after marriage. Bridezilla == Wifezilla.

Then throw a screaming baby and some surging hormones into the mix.

Somebody kill me.

Re:GATTACA

[hackula]

Just got married last weekend. Kept things simple with close to zero stress. Saved 20 grand and everyone's sanity. Wife was easy going and chill about everything. Pro tip: if your bride-to-be is freaking the fuck out about flowers, food, or chairs, then she is a psychopath. Do not marry a psychopath! This should go without saying, but somehow it is become the norm. Marry a woman, not a spoiled child.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

the gene is incredibly rare.

Hair?

[Chemisor]

This gene wouldn't be the one responsible for blond hair, would it?

Wait. What?

[squiggleslash]

There's such a thing as a happy woman?

Re:Wait. What?

[vbraga]

In my humble experience, the occasional flowers or chocolate box in an unexpected day works as well as a piece of jewellery every few years.

Of course they're happier...

[Anonymous Coward]

in most states they don't have to put up with wives.

Re:Yay!

[tattood]

Once they make a pill to activate this gene, then yes.

you fail at biology forever

[Anonymous Coward]

reproduction for females is costly and dangerous, reproduction for males is cheap

for a man any cooter will do, for a woman a specific wang is sought after

and historically the number of wanted wangs has been much smaller than the number of available cooters, roughly 20% of men
------------
in other words, yes random screwing is easier for women but that's irrelevant because that's not what women want, they want screwing by the small subset of desirable men and that is just as hard if not harder harder than a random man finding a random woman

Re:you fail at biology forever

[Frosty Piss]

reproduction for females is costly and dangerous, reproduction for males is cheap

First of all sex is more than reproduction, you know this, right?

for a man any cooter will do, for a woman a specific wang is sought after

Second of all, you know that sex is for more than reproduction, right?

The VAST majority of sexually active females are *not* trying to have a baby.

Re:you fail at biology forever

[Scragglykat]

He's referring to the using of sex to get one's way/money/goods I believe. That's why when you get married, you stop getting it... because they already have everything you own. :o)

Re:you fail at biology forever

[tnk1]

The VAST majority of sexually active females are *not* trying to have a baby.

That is true in a conscious way, but they generally want to have sex when they feel like having sex. They will feel like having sex when their body tells them they are interested. That interest tends to be generated when certain requirements are met, unless they're somehow impaired (i.e. drunk). Those requirements will tend to reflect who will provide good genes for a child. That's why a woman can like a man just fine and think he is awesome, but has no interest in having sex with him.

You may well not have sex for reproduction, but we've evolved various aspects of it for that purpose, and nature doesn't care if we intend to get pregnant or not, it will do its best to find the right reproductive partner to have sex with if there is even a chance reproduction may occur.

Obviously, women can override the immediate desire to have sex and certainly can try and avoid pregnancy, but she's probably not going to try to override her instincts about who she finds attractive.

Re:you fail at biology forever

[HeckRuler]

The VAST majority of sexually active females are *not* trying to have a baby.

Well, NOW, yeah. But for the vast majority and prior banging, on the evolutionary time scale, the purpose was baby-making.
I mean, we're talking about genetics and the evolutionary forces that push for those genes, right?

It's legacy code that's vastly out of date, but hey, it's what we've got today and we have to live with it. Eventually we'll get around to refactoring it all, cleaning up the code, and steamlining the crufty parts, but it's good to know where we're at now.

Re:you fail at biology forever

[K. S. Kyosuke]

First of all sex is more than reproduction, you know this, right?

cca 1,000,000,000 years ago: Sexual reproduction appears and sexual behavior develops.

cca 200 years ago: Effective contraceptives get into widespread use.

You think that our basal ethology and psychology has had the time to adjust to the existence of artificial reproductive barriers?

Re:you fail at biology forever

[Frosty Piss]

He's referring to the using of sex to get one's way/money/goods I believe. That's why when you get married, you stop getting it...

Maybe I'm in the minority, but my wife likes sex just fine.

Maybe *YOUR* wife just doesn't like sex with YOU?

Re:you fail at biology forever

[mcgrew]

Your comment reminded me of an old joke:
What's the difference between a wife and a job?

After five years the job still sucks.

Re:you fail at biology forever

[invid]

Pregnant women still seek sex.

So...evolutionary forces should have made some sort of mechanism to turn off the sex drive while the woman is pregnant in order to prove to you that the sex evolved for the purpose of procreation? Evolution would only do that if the sex drive was sufficiently detrimental during pregnancy. That said, a secondary evolutionary benefit of sex is the strengthening of the pair bonds between parents, which could have been selected for and explain the generally horny nature of humans compared to other animals.

Re:you fail at biology forever

[hairyfeet]

Problem is women are more fucked up biologically than men, period. Now before the few females here have a shitfit, hear me out. In today's society the "Alpha male" is the one you do NOT want, they screw around thus bringing the risk of possibly deadly STDs, they don't provide for the female thus leaving her and the offspring in worse shape, and they are more prone to violence thus putting her and the potential offspring in danger.

But what do we see? Women lined up to buy books like "How to tame the bad boy" and "bad boys and the women that love them" like you can reset the male like he's just got a switch that needs flipping! Let me make this perfectly clear women...men? We really aren't that fucking hard to figure out, we really aren't. We really were never good at manipulation anyway so when a man tries its hamhanded and sloppy, so with men what you see? What you get.

At least with us guys are drives are as simple as we are. Some like big titties, some like a nice ass, some like nice legs, and most of us like a woman that can make something to eat and don't bitch constantly. Again simple and predictable is the male.

So if women are happier it has to be a "delusional crazy woman" gene, because I have seen women in truly shitastic relationships that just smile away, they are just sure they are gonna "fix" him like a 75 Dodge that needs a rebuild. If guys aren't as happy its simply because we don't lie to ourselves, that all. And again like deception our self lies are as hamhanded and unbelievable as Will Shatner's rug, so naturally even we don't buy it.

Re:you fail at biology forever

[Max Rool]

And now.... It's not just you. Thank you for that.

Re:you fail at biology forever

[marcello_dl]

A thread about sex on slashdot is like a thread about cannibalism in a vegan forum.

Achievement disparity

[Anonymous Coward]

Could this be a major contributor to the disparity in achievement between men and women? Women have achieved great things as scientists, CEOs, politicians, and in many other areas. Despite this, by and large, men strive for achievement more than women (as a group). Is it because men, on average, are less content? Could this be the primary motivating factor for men to achieve greater things than their predecessors? Perhaps men then to just "want it" more than women. I'm not denying that discrimination and disenfranchisement are contributing factors, but maybe they don't play as big a role as people think.

Re:Achievement disparity

[sandytaru]

I'm a fairly happy woman (also pretty hard to get upset) and I still dream of big things. But I'm content so long as I have my creature comforts. Even if I never achieve my most ambitious dreams (like working for NASA), I'm happy just having reached some smaller goals (writing a novel, going to graduate school, finding a nice guy to marry, buying a house, etc.) So I do think that the yearning, the desire for more and better things, that some men and women experience is definitely a factor in their level of happiness.

They identified the shape of the gene

[rullywowr]

...and it looked like a very large princess cut diamond set in a bed of milk chocolate.

happy genes

[indy_Muad'Dib]

sadly the gene is 3 sizes too small and no one can fit into them.