Do Heritability Estimates of Political Phenotypes Suffer From an Equal Environment Assumption Violation? Evidence From an Empirical Study

Littvay, Levente

doi:10.1375/twin.15.1.6

Cited by 31 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Distal influences are not unimportant; they increase the likelihood of related proximal influences, but rarely are they a specific and immediate impetus for behavior (McLeod and Kessler 1990). With regards to sources of individuals differences, there is limited evidence that distal factors such as region, marital status, or income, substantially moderate genetic or environmental variance components estimates of political attitudes (Hatemi, Funk, et al 2009; Hatemi et al 2012; Littvay 2012; Smith et al 2012). This may be in part because long-term contextual factors are captured within the larger trait, and distal traits are often confounded with potential self-selection or moderation effects.…”

Section: Rationale For the Study Of Gene-environment Interaction And mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of Major Life Events on Economic Attitudes in a World of Gene‐Environment Interplay

Hatemi

2013

American J Political Sci

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The role of “genes” on political attitudes has gained attention across disciplines. However, person-specific experiences have yet to be incorporated into models that consider genetic influences. Relying on a gene-environment interplay approach, this study explicates how life-events, such as losing one’s job or suffering a financial loss, influence economic policy attitudes. The results indicate genetic and environmental variance on support for unions, immigration, capitalism, socialism and property tax is moderated by financial risks. Changes in the magnitude of genetic influences, however, are temporary. After two years, the phenotypic effects of the life events remain on most attitudes, but changes in the sources of individual differences do not. Univariate twin models that estimate the independent contributions of genes and environment on the variation of attitudes appear to provide robust baseline indicators of sources of individual differences. These estimates, however, are not event or day specific. In this way, genetic influences add stability, while environment cues change, and this process is continually updated.

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Section: Rationale For the Study Of Gene-environment Interaction And mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of Major Life Events on Economic Attitudes in a World of Gene‐Environment Interplay

Hatemi

2013

American J Political Sci

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“…Nevertheless, a series of studies have empirically addressed this criticism regarding political orientations. Hatemi et al’s (2010) extended kinship analyses found no special twin environments existed for political attitudes; Littvay (2012) partitioned common variance into that which is shared and that specific to each twin, and found explicit differences in rearing had little influence on the heritability of attitudes or ideology; Smith et al (2012) relied on a gene-environment interaction design and found sharing a room, attending the same class and other similarity-in-rearing measures had almost no influence on the heritability of ideology. One of the most powerful tests for unequal environments on attitudes was conducted by Eaves et al (1997) and later by Hatemi, Funk, et al (2009), in which MZ and DZ twins were assessed for attitudes from ages 9-18 every 2 years.…”

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Genetic Influences on Political Ideologies: Twin Analyses of 19 Measures of Political Ideologies from Five Democracies and Genome-Wide Findings from Three Populations

et al. 2014

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Almost forty years ago, evidence from large studies of adult twins and their relatives suggested that between 30-60% of the variance in social and political attitudes could be explained by genetic influences. However, these findings have not been widely accepted or incorporated into the dominant paradigms that explain the etiology of political ideology. This has been attributed in part to measurement and sample limitations, as well the relative absence of molecular genetic studies. Here we present results from original analyses of a combined sample of over 12,000 twins pairs, ascertained from nine different studies conducted in five democracies, sampled over the course of four decades. We provide evidence that genetic factors play a role in the formation of political ideology, regardless of how ideology is measured, the era, or the population sampled. The only exception is a question that explicitly uses the phrase “Left-Right”. We then present results from one of the first genome-wide association studies on political ideology using data from three samples: a 1990 Australian sample involving 6,894 individuals from 3,516 families; a 2008 Australian sample of 1,160 related individuals from 635 families and a 2010 Swedish sample involving 3,334 individuals from 2,607 families. No polymorphisms reached genome-wide significance in the meta-analysis. The combined evidence suggests that political ideology constitutes a fundamental aspect of one’s genetically informed psychological disposition, but as Fisher proposed long ago, genetic influences on complex traits will be composed of thousands of markers of very small effects and it will require extremely large samples to have enough power in order to identify specific polymorphisms related to complex social traits.

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“…At the time, the vast majority of the discipline had little exposure to the natural sciences. But political scientists have been rapidly learning the new methods in genetics that have been developed in the past few years (Cranmer and Dawes 2012;Dawes and Fowler 2009;Hatemi, Funk, et al 2009;Littvay 2012;Loewen and Dawes 2012;McDermott and Hatemi 2011;Settle et al 2010;Settle, Dawes, and Fowler 2009;Stam, Von Hagen-Jamar, and Worthington 2012;Verhulst 2012;Weber, Johnson, and Arceneaux 2011), and we are now working directly with geneticists on a variety of political outcomes and behaviors (Arceneaux, Johnson, and Maes 2012;Benjamin et al 2012b;Eaves and Hatemi 2008;Fowler, Baker, and Dawes 2008;Hatemi et al 2007;Hatemi, Alford, et al 2009;Hatemi, Dawes, et al 2011;Hatemi, Gillepsie, et al 2011;Klemmensen et al 2011;McDermott et al 2009;Medland and Hatemi 2008;Verhulst and Estabrook 2012;Verhulst, Hatemi, Eaves 2012a;2012b;Verhulst, Hatemi, and Martin 2010). But political scientists have been rapidly learning the new methods in genetics that have been developed in the past few years (Cranmer and Dawes 2012;Dawes and Fowler 2009;Hatemi, Funk, et al 2009;Littvay 2012;Loewen and Dawes 2012;McDermott and Hatemi 2011;Settle et al 2010;Settle, Dawes, and Fowler 2009;…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Defense of Genopolitics

Fowler

Dawes

2013

Am Polit Sci Rev

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doi:10.1017/S0003055413000063 The American Political Science Review recently published a critique of an article we published in the Journal of Politics in 2008. In that article we showed that variants of the genes 5HTT and MAOA were significantly associated with voter turnout in a sample of 2,300 subjects from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Here, we address the critique first by conducting a replication study using an independent sample of 9,300 subjects. This study replicates the gene-environment interaction of the 5HTT gene variant with church attendance, but not the association with MAOA. We then focus on the general argument of the critique, showing that many of its characterizations of the literature in genetics and in political science are misleading or incorrect. We conclude by illustrating the ways in which genopolitics has already made a lasting contribution to the field of political science and by offering guidelines for future studies in genopolitics that are based on state-of-the-art recommendations from the field of behavior genetics. In2005, the American Political Science Review published an article that used data on political attitudes from identical and fraternal twins in the Unite

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Do Heritability Estimates of Political Phenotypes Suffer From an Equal Environment Assumption Violation? Evidence From an Empirical Study

Cited by 31 publications

References 15 publications

The Influence of Major Life Events on Economic Attitudes in a World of Gene‐Environment Interplay

The Influence of Major Life Events on Economic Attitudes in a World of Gene‐Environment Interplay

Genetic Influences on Political Ideologies: Twin Analyses of 19 Measures of Political Ideologies from Five Democracies and Genome-Wide Findings from Three Populations

In Defense of Genopolitics

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