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

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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.