Social disadvantages persist over generations, while the mechanisms behind the intergenerational transmission are not well understood. To fill this gap, first, we examine to what degree being diagnosed with a mental health disorder in adolescence mediate the transmission of social disadvantage. Second, we investigate whether the role of mental health varies for different outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Childhood adverse effects and traumatic experiences increase the risk for several psychiatric disorders. We now investigated whether prospectively assessed childhood family environment per se contributes to increased risk for psychotic disorders in adulthood, and whether these family patterns are also relevant in the development of affective disorders.
Methods: We used the Young Finns Data (n = 3502).
Introduction: Helping others within and beyond the family has been related to living a healthy and long life. Compassion is a prosocial personality trait characterized by concern for another person who is suffering and the motivation to help. The current study examines whether epigenetic aging is a potential biological mechanism that explains the link between prosociality and longevity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Low education, low cognitive abilities, and certain cognitive styles are suggested to predispose to social intolerance and prejudices. Evidence is, however, restricted by comparatively small samples, neglect of confounding variables and genetic factors, and a narrow focus on a single sort of prejudice. We investigated the relationships of education, polygenic cognitive potential, cognitive performance, and cognitive styles with social intolerance in adulthood over a 15-year follow-up.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA strong genetic background for psychoses is well-established. Most individuals with a high genetic risk for schizophrenia, however, do not develop the disorder. We investigated whether individuals, who have a high genetic risk for schizophrenia but no non-affective psychotic disorders, are predisposed to develop milder forms of deviant thinking in terms of magical thinking.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe investigated whether temperament modifies an association between polygenic intelligence potential and cognitive test performance in midlife. The participants (n = 1647, born between 1962 and 1977) were derived from the Young Finns Study. Temperament was assessed with Temperament and Character Inventory over a 15-year follow-up (1997, 2001, 2007, 2012).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: We investigated (i) the predictive relationships of compassion with negative emotionality (a marker of susceptibility to stress) and vital exhaustion (a marker of chronic stress response) and (ii) the effect of compassion on the developmental courses of negative emotionality and vital exhaustion over a follow-up from early adulthood to middle age. We used the prospective Young Finns data ( = 1031-1495, aged 20-50). Compassion was evaluated in 1997, 2001, and 2012; and vital exhaustion and negative emotionality in 2001, 2007, and 2012.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe development of compassion for others might be influenced by the social experiences made during childhood and has a genetic component. No research has yet investigated whether the parent-child relationship quality interacts with genetic variation in the oxytocin and dopamine systems in predicting compassion over the life span. In the prospective Young Finns Study (N = 2099, 43.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe define compassion as an enduring disposition that centers upon empathetic concern for another person's suffering and the motivation to act to alleviate it. The contribution of specific candidate genes to the development of dispositional compassion for others is currently unknown. We examine candidate genes in the oxytocin and dopamine signaling pathways.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe objective of this study was to investigate (i) whether childhood family SES predicts offspring's compassion between ages 20-50 years and (ii) whether adulthood SES predicts compassion or vice versa. We used the prospective population-based Young Finns data (N = 637-2300). Childhood family SES was evaluated in 1980; participants' adulthood SES in 2001 and 2011; and compassion for others in 1997, 2001, and 2012.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Previously, compassion has been found to protect against depressive symptoms, while emotional adversities in childhood are suggested to increase inflammatory responses. The current study investigated (a) whether emotional family environment in childhood predicts levels of such cytokines in adulthood that are previously found to be elevated in depression (interleukin [IL]-2, IL-6, IL-1b, monocyte chemoattractant protein-1, interferon-gamma [IFN-γ], and tumor necrosis factor alpha [TNF-α]) and (b) whether these associations are modified by compassion in adulthood.
Methods: The participants (N = 1,198-1,523) came from the prospective population-based Young Finns data.
Background And Aim: Bereavement affects the health of the bereaved both emotionally and physically. Bereavement resulting from alcohol-related death of the previous generation (parents-first generation) may increase the risk of alcohol abuse and consequently alcohol-related mortality as well as all-cause mortality in the next generation (offspring-second generation). Furthermore, these associations can be bi-directional.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe long-term effects of sleep on adolescent psychosocial well-being are mostly unknown, although insufficient sleep has been associated with emotional and behavioral difficulties in cross-sectional studies. With a five-year follow-up of Finnish adolescents (Time 1: n = 8834; Mean age = 13 years, 51.1% female, Time 2: n = 5315, Mean age = 15 years, 51.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The health selection hypothesis suggests that poor health leads to low educational attainment during the life course. Adolescence is an important period as poor health might prevent students from making the best educational choices. We test if health in adolescence is associated with educational aspirations and whether these associations persist over and above sociodemographic background and academic achievement.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The Finnish government has emphasized the need to expedite educational transitions. We study if a late start of upper secondary education is related to health-related selection, namely health-compromising behaviours in adolescence.
Methods: A large cohort of adolescents from the seventh (12-13 years) and ninth (15-16 years) grades answered online classroom surveys (total n = 10 873).
Parenting qualities are known to transmit across generations, but less is known about genetic processes that may modify how strongly parenting quality carries across generations. We examined in prospective data whether oxytocinergic genes of offspring moderate the intergenerational transmission of warm and accepting parent-child relationship qualities. The sample comprised 1167 Finnish parents (G2, 62% female) and their mothers (G1).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Physical activity, sleep problems, and symptoms of depression contribute to overall well-being. The factors are reciprocally associated, but the nature of these associations remains unclear. The present study examined whether sleep problems mediated the association between physical activity and depressive symptoms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCompassion is known to predict prosocial behavior and moral judgments related to harm. Despite the centrality of compassion to social life, factors predicting adulthood compassion are largely unknown. We examined whether qualities of parent-child-relationship, namely, emotional warmth and acceptance, predict offspring compassion decades later in adulthood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Genomic analysis of the child might offer new potential to illuminate human parenting. We examined whether offspring (G2) genome-wide genotype variation (SNPs) is associated with their mother's (G1) emotional warmth and intolerance, indicating a gene-environment correlation. If this association is stronger than between G2's genes and their emotional warmth and intolerance toward their own children, then this would indicate the presence of an evocative gene-environment correlation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Lack of social support is an established risk factor across health outcomes, making it important to examine its family environmental and genetic determinants.
Methods: In a 27-year follow-up of the Young Finns Study (N = 2341), we examined with a latent growth curve model whether genes involved in the oxytocin signaling pathway-namely, oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) variants rs1042778, rs2254298, and rs53576-moderate the effect of early-life social experiences on perceived social support across the life span. Mothers reported the emotional warmth and acceptance towards their children at baseline when the participants were from 3 to 18 years old (1980).
This study examines the relationship between Inglehart's and Schwartz's value dimensions-both at the individual and the country levels. By rotating one set of items towards the other, we show that these value dimensions have more in common than previously reported. The ranking of countries (N = 47) based on Schwartz's Embeddedness--Autonomy and the Survival--Self-Expression dimensions reached a maximum of similarity, r = .
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