Knowledge that Transforms

Identical experimental pain stimuli were applied to the right and left index fingers of 56 university students, following the application of a placebo in the guise of a topical anesthetic to one of the fingers The pain stimuli were administered simultaneously to treated and untreated fingers for half of the subjects and sequentially for the others Significant and equivalent reductions in pain were reported in both conditions as a function of placebo administration These data indicate that reductions of experimental pain produced by placebos presented in the guise of local anesthetics are not mediated by such global mechanisms as anxiety reduction or the release of endogenous opioids

Happiness, or subjective well-being, was measured on a birth-record-based sample of several thousand middle-aged twins using the Well-Being (WB) scale of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire Neither socioeconomic status, educational attainment, family income, marital status, nor an indicant of religious commitment could account for more than about 3% of the variance in WB From 44% to 52% of the variance in WB, however, is associated with genetic variation Based on the retest of smaller samples of twins after intervals of 4 5 and 10 years, we estimate that the heriability of the stable component of subjective well-being approaches 80%