Sports club participation impacts life satisfaction in adolescence: A twin study

Abstract

A large amount of research has investigated precursors to subjective well-being in general and high life satisfaction in particular, in other words, what makes people happy. Some of the more commonly cited antecedents of well-being and life satisfaction are fulfilling relation ships, personality factors such as low neuroticism, a sense of purpose and meaning, and a healthy lifestyle, including sports, exercise or physical activity in general (for reviews, see Diener et al., 2018; Diener & Ryan, 2009; Veenhoven, 1996; Proctor et al., 2009). However, as in many other research domains, direction and extent of causality are less clearly established (Diener et al., 2018; Veenhoven, 1996). One approach for supporting hypotheses of causality is to use genetically informed samples, such as twin pairs (Pingault et al., 2018; McAdams et al., 2021). Direct evidence of causality, with no room for alternative explanations, remains elusive under this framework as well. Twin models can, however, cover some of the distance towards this ideal. For variables that cannot be experimentally manipulated, mono zygotic (MZ) twin pairs that happen to differ (be discordant) on this variable provide a decent approximation to two experimental groups where subjects in one condition ideally do not systematically differ from the other group in variables other than the manipulated variable (McGue et al., 2010). Thus, differences within MZ twin pairs are at the core of using twin samples to strengthen causal inferences (albeit indi rectly by ruling out alternative explanations rather than unequivocally establishing causality; see Sjolander ¨ et al., 2012). The present study uses a twin sample to investigate possible associ ations between life satisfaction and one of its most frequently cited possible causes – physical activity, and participation in sports clubs in particular.