PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

OBJECTIVE: Self-esteem and life satisfaction are highly correlated but little is known about the sources of this association. Both characteristic adaptations are negatively correlated with Neuroticism. We investigated the relationship between self-esteem, life satisfaction, and Neuroticism and the degree to which shared variance was explained by Neuroticism from a behavior genetic perspective.; METHOD: We analyzed 2,042 German same-sex twin pairs and their siblings. Twins were m=17 and m=23 years old and siblings were m=21.6 years old. The sample was balanced regarding gender. We applied multivariate twin-sibling Cholesky models to obtain genetic and environmental correlations and estimated the impact Neuroticism had on genetic and environmental correlations of self-esteem and life satisfaction.; RESULTS: The genetic correlation between self-esteem and life satisfaction was 1.00 and 47% of this phenotypic correlation was explained by genetics. 28% of the common genetic variance between self-esteem and life satisfaction was explained by shared genes with Neuroticism.; CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that Neuroticism is not a common factor of self-esteem and life satisfaction. The results are not in line with theories assuming that Neuroticism is a basic tendency whose genetic factors account for most of the genetic variance between the assumed characteristic adaptations self-esteem and life satisfaction. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.