Voting Republican Is A Genetic Flaw?

A couple of days ago, the New
York Times published an op-ed citing a recent study on the
political beliefs of identical and fraternal twins. Oddly, twin
studies are generally eschewed by lots of folks on the left-hand
side of the ideological spectrum when they are used to try to
figure out how much genes contribute to differences in IQ. But
let’s set that aside and focus the remarkable results reported
here.

The op-ed, “How
Much Do Our Genes Influence Our Political Beliefs?” by Columbia
University journalism professor Thomas Edsall is actually quite
interesting. Edsall is reporting the results of several twin
studies that find that there is a heritable component to such
personality attributes as conservatism, religiousness,
authoritarianism, and traditionalism. Edsall reports that one
study…

…comparing identical and fraternal twins [found] that “the
correlation between religious importance and conservatism” is
“driven primarily, but usually not exclusively, by genetic
factors.” The substantial “genetic component in these relationships
suggests that there may be a common underlying predisposition that
leads individuals to adopt conservative bedrock social principles
and political ideologies while simultaneously feeling the need for
religious experiences.”

From this perspective, the Democratic Party — supportive of
abortion rights, same-sex marriage and the primacy of
self-expressive individualism over obligation to family — is
irreconcilably alien to a segment of the electorate. And the same
is true from the opposite viewpoint: a Republican Party committed
to right-to-life policies, to a belief that marriage must be
between a man and a woman, and to family obligation over
self-actualization, is profoundly unacceptable to many on the
left.

Edsall quotes Harvard University evolutionary psychologies
Steven Pinker:

Pinker contends that “an acknowledgment of the possibility of
genetic differences is a game-changer for countless specific
issues. If people differ genetically in conscientiousness,
intelligence, and other psychological traits, then not all
differences among people in social and economic outcomes are
automatically consequences of a rigged system.”

And Edsall quite correctly concludes:

Why are we afraid of genetic research? To reject or demonize it,
especially when exceptional advances in related fields are
occurring at an accelerating rate, is to resort to a know-nothing
defense. A clear majority of those involved in the study of
genetics, neuroscience and evolutionary biology are acutely aware
of the tarnished research that produced racist, sexist and
xenophobic results in the past. But as the probability of a
repetition of abuses like these diminishes, restrictions on
intellectual freedom, even if they consist only of psychological
barriers, will prove counterproductive. We need every tool
available to increase our understanding of our systems of
self-governance and of how we came to be the political animals that
we are.

Still, it bears noting that whatever constitutes traditionalism,
conservatism and so forth, the attitudes of the American electorate
have shifted dramatically toward greater tolerance with regard to
how racial minorities, women, drug use, and now, even same-sex
marriage are viewed over the past half century. Genes didn’t
change, yet political beliefs did.

The whole
op-ed is worth reading.

For more discussion in this vein, see my critical review,
“Different
Races Exist. So What?” of Nicholas Wade’s
A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human
History. 

Hat tip Genetic Literacy Project.