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

William W. Dressler博士（阿拉巴马大学）、Mauro C. Balieiro博士（圣保罗大学）和jos<s:1> Ernesto dos Santos博士（圣保罗大学）将对基因型和文化如何相互作用影响个体心理健康进行研究，以抑郁情绪为评估指标。人们认为多种基因会影响情绪状态，但这些基因并不是简单地决定情绪。相反，这些基因似乎与社会环境中的经验相互作用并改变经验。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本质。文化一致性是指个体在自己的信仰和行为中接近文化模式中编码的信仰和行为原型的程度。在许多不同的文化领域中，较高的文化一致性与更积极的情绪有关。本研究将探讨在5 -羟色胺系统中两个基因（5 -羟色胺传递基因和2A受体基因）存在不同遗传多态性的情况下，文化一致性对抑郁情绪变化的影响。据推测，这些基因的特定变体充当了经验的放大器；当一个人具有其中一种或两种变体时，文化一致性的影响将更大。这项研究将在巴西<s:1>圣保罗州北部拥有50万人口的城市里贝贝<e:1>奥普雷图进行。使用混合方法的研究设计，文化模型在各个领域（生活方式，社会支持，家庭生活）将被调查和文化一致性的措施将从这些分析中得出。在对从社区分层随机抽样中选出的600人的调查中，将收集有关文化一致性、抑郁症状和基因型的数据（以及社会人口统计学变量和其他解释变量）。数据分析将确定文化一致性的影响是否被基因型所改变。这项研究将有助于回答有关基因和文化在决定个人幸福方面的相对影响的非常重要的问题。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.