Happiness can affect your genes in a healthy or unhealthy way depending on what causes you to feel pleasure, a first-of-its-kind study has found.

US researchers found that human bodies recognise at the molecular level that not all happiness is created equal and respond in ways that can help or hinder physical health.

They found that different types of happiness have surprisingly different effects on the human genome.

People who have high levels of what is known as eudaimonic well-being — the kind of happiness that comes from having a deep sense of purpose and meaning in life — showed very favourable gene-expression profiles in their immune cells.


However, people who had relatively high levels of hedonic well-being — the type of happiness that comes from consummatory self-gratification — actually showed just the opposite.


Steven Cole, a University of California, Los Angeles professor of medicine, and his colleagues, including first author Barbara L. Fredrickson at the University of North Carolina, have been examining how the human genome responds to stress, misery, fear and all kinds of negative psychology.




Known as conserved transcriptional response to adversity, or CTRA, this shift is characterised by an increased expression of genes involved in inflammation and a decreased expression of genes involved in antiviral responses.






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