{"doi":"10.1177/08902070261423583","title":"How positive beliefs about the world relate to well-being and social connections—A genetically informative approach","abstract":"<jats:p>\n                    Positive world beliefs (e.g., believing in a safe world) are associated with higher well-being and more social connections. While these associations have often been interpreted as causal, little is known about their origins. Here, we utilized a large (\n                    <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">N</jats:italic>\n                    ∼ 9000) Swedish twin sample to investigate the role of familial confounding (genetic influences and family environmental effects influencing both primals and social well-being) and test whether associations are in line with a causal effect. Indeed, positive world beliefs were associated with higher well-being, reduced loneliness, and less social isolation. When adjusting for familial confounding, associations were substantially attenuated, but remained significant—consistent with a causal association. Bivariate twin models strengthened this finding, indicating that genetic effects explain approximately half of the covariation. When also accounting for personality differences in addition to familial confounding, a small—yet significant—association remained. These findings highlight that familial influences and personality differences explain a substantial part of the observed associations between primals and social well-being, while also lending support for a small potentially causal effect—though the directionality of this effect remains unknown. We discuss the implications of these findings for primals research and positive psychology.\n                  </jats:p>","journal":"European Journal of Personality","year":2026,"id":11135,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.061,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2026-02-07","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":89934,"name":"Laura W. Wesseldijk","orcid":"0000-0002-9900-0371","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":89935,"name":"Fredrik Ullén","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":89936,"name":"Miriam A Mosing","orcid":"0000-0003-2049-125X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":89933,"name":"Sophie Perizonius","orcid":"0009-0006-6459-2609","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":101,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}