ABSTRACT

This chapter looks at some findings about how different people are hard-wired to have different feelings. Job satisfaction increased substantially after people started in a new position, but it returned towards their set-point levels in subsequent years. Happiness levels go along with the personality factors of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, although not as strongly. Identical twins are born from the same fertilized egg, and so they have an identical genetic structure. Research has shown genetic effects for many other psychological features – general intelligence and other cognitive abilities, traits of personality, specific preferences and attitudes, and broad outlooks like religious conservatism and racial prejudice. Some psychologists like to divide people into different categories or "types" separated with either a low score or a high score on a factor, for instance as either "introverts" or "extraverts.".