Cultural and Genetic Influences on Individual Well-Being in Urban Brazil

阿拉巴马大学的威廉·W·德雷斯勒博士、保利斯塔大学的毛罗·C·巴列罗博士和S大学的何塞·埃内斯托·多斯桑托斯博士将进行研究，研究基因和文化如何相互作用，影响个人的心理健康，如抑郁情绪评估。有多种基因被认为可以影响情绪状态，但这些基因并不简单地决定情绪。相反，这些基因似乎与社会环境中的经验相互作用并改变。文化以日常生活的共享模式的形式，定义了社会环境中经验的性质。文化和谐是指个体在自己的信仰和行为中对编码在文化模式中的信仰和行为的原型的近似程度。在许多不同的文化领域中，较高的文化和谐性与更积极的情绪有关。这项研究将考察在5-羟色胺系统中两个基因(5-羟色胺递质基因和2A受体基因)存在不同遗传多态的情况下，文化共鸣对抑郁情绪的影响是如何变化的。假设这些基因的特定变体充当经验的放大器；当一个人拥有这些变体中的一个或两个时，文化共鸣的影响将更大。这项研究将在巴西的里贝拉奥普雷托进行，该市位于S圣保罗州北部，有50万人口。使用混合方法的研究设计，将调查不同领域(生活方式、社会支持、家庭生活)的文化模式，并从这些分析中得出文化和谐的衡量标准。在一项从社区分层随机抽样中挑选的600人的调查中，将收集关于文化和声、抑郁症状和基因型的数据(以及社会人口统计变量和替代解释变量)。数据分析将确定文化和谐的效果是否会受到基因类型的影响。这项研究将有助于回答基因和文化在决定个人幸福感方面的相对影响这一非常重要的问题。它将对进一步的生物文化综合和促进国际研究合作作出重大贡献。

Dr. William W. Dressler (University of Alabama), Dr. Mauro C. Balieiro (Paulista University), and Dr. José Ernesto dos Santos (University of São Paulo) will undertake research on how genotype and culture interact to affect individual psychological well-being, as assessed by depressed mood. A variety of genes are thought to influence mood states, but these genes do not simply determine mood. Rather, these genes appear to interact with and modify experience in the social environment. Culture, in the form of shared models of everyday life, defines the nature of experience in the social environment. Cultural consonance is the degree to which individuals approximate, in their own beliefs and behaviors, the prototypes for belief and behavior encoded in cultural models. Higher cultural consonance in a number of different cultural domains is associated with more positive mood. This research will examine how the effect of cultural consonance on depressed mood changes in the presence of different genetic polymorphisms for two genes in the serotonin system (the serotonin transmitter gene and the 2A receptor gene). It is hypothesized that specific variants of these genes act as amplifiers of experience; when an individual has one or both of these variants, the effect of cultural consonance will be larger. The research will be conducted in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, a city of 500,000 people in the north of the state of São Paulo. Using a mixed-methods research design, cultural model in various domains (lifestyles, social support, family life) will be investigated and measures of cultural consonance will be derived from these analyses. In a survey of 600 persons selected from a stratified random sample of the community, data on cultural consonance, depressive symptoms, and genotype will be collected (along with sociodemographic variables and alternative explanatory variables). Data analysis will determine if the effect of cultural consonance is modified by genotype.This research will help to answer very important questions about the relative influences of genes and culture in determining individual well-being. It will contribute significantly to a further biocultural synthesis and to promoting international research collaboration.