The DNA of Politics

Genes shape our beliefs, our values, and even our votes.

….For a century or more, we have understood that intelligence is largely inherited, though even today some mistakenly rail against the idea and say that nurture, not nature, is all. Now we know that much of our personality, too, is inherited and that many social attitudes have some degree of genetic basis,….

….Three political science professors-John Alford, Carolyn Funk, and John Hibbing-have studied political attitudes among a large number of twins in America and Australia. …asks whether a respondent agrees or disagrees with 28 words or phrases, such as “death penalty,” “school prayer,” “pacifism,” or “gay rights.” They then compared the similarity of the responses among identical twins with the similarity among fraternal twins. …. the identical twins did indeed agree with each other more often than the fraternal ones did-and that genes accounted for about 40 percent of the difference between the two groups…..

….Genes also influence how frequently we vote. Voting has always puzzled scholars: How is it rational to wait in line on a cold November afternoon when there is almost no chance that your ballot will make any difference? Apparently, people who vote often feel a strong sense of civic duty or like to express themselves…

…studying identical twins reared apart by different families, even in different countries, effectively shows that their similar traits cannot be the result of similar upbringing.

….men and women tend to marry people with whom they agree on big issues-assortative mating, as social scientists call it. Assortative mating means that the children of parents who agree on issues will be more likely to share whatever genes influence those beliefs. ………~~~~

James Q. Wilson, formerly a professor at Harvard and at UCLA, now lectures at Pepperdine University. In 2003, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_1_dna.html