US scientists have discovered a gene that they say prevents men from being happy, the so-called warrior gene that is allegedly responsible for a predisposition to aggression. In women it is inactive, which is the key to the fairer sex's happiness. However, Russian experts claim that happiness is not dependent on genes, but on a person's view of the world. One of the forms of the monoamine oxidase A, known as the MAO-A gene, is activated in the human body by stress or under the influence of alcohol or drugs. As a result, a person's behavior becomes violent. People, whose “warrior gene” is less active, are usually more kind, softer and therefore happier. But not everyone agrees; according to Svetlana Borinskaya, a researcher at the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics at the Russian Academy of Sciences, one cannot believe that everything depends solely on genes, she says social background is no less important. “Genes do affect to what degree a person perceives the surrounding world with optimist or pessimism, to what degree a person is prone to depression or not. But not only the genes are important. Nobody can claim that the genes determine love or happiness. That depends on what goes on in our lives, on the events in the world around us, in our families. Ten years ago people with various genes were examined taking into account their lives and upbringing. It turned out that men who were treated badly in their childhood exhibited worse social results even with lower MOA-A gene activity. They showed antisocial behavior, cruelty to people or animals more often.” On the other hand, happiness is not a disease and has no specific symptoms. Each person determines for himself whether or not he is happy, says psychologist Julia Zotova. “From the psychology point of view, happiness is a resulting evaluation of how a person sees his life, his achievements, feelings, to what is in store for him and what he has gone through. Happiness is based on two emotions – on joy and on having our expectations come true. That is why if you do what you wanted to do and you have success with it, if you experience joy and have fun more often, it is easier to consider yourself a happy person in the end.” There is one major drawback in the research performed by the US scientists – they asked the same question of all the focus group members” “Do you feel happy?” But no efforts were made to establish what “happiness” meant, it is a phenomenon unique to each individual person and nobody has yet managed to explain or define in scientific terms. Source: Voice of Russia
