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Recent studies have shown that variation in political attitudes and participation can be attributed to both genes and the environment. This finding raises the question of why genes matter to participation, and by which pathways. Two hypotheses suggest that feelings of civic duty and sense of political efficacy intermediate the relationship between genes and political participation and, thus, that these traits have a common heritable component. If so, how robust are the relationships across cultural contexts? Utilizing two new twin studies on political traits, one in Denmark and one in the United States, we show that the heritability of political participation and political efficacy is remarkably similar across cultures. Moreover, most of the covariation between efficacy and political participation is accounted for by a common underlying genetic component. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We compare a recent Danish twin survey on political attitudes and behaviors to a nationally representative survey covering similar topics. We find very similar means and variances for most of our constructed scales of political attitudes and behaviors in the two surveys, although even small differences tend to be statistically significant due to sample size. This suggests that the twin study can be used to make inferences on the heritability of several political traits in the Danish population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Almost 40 years ago, evidence from large studies of adult twins and their relatives suggested that between 30 and 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been established across several contexts that political attitudes are informed by heritable factors. However, it remains unclear how much of the stability we observe in political attitudes can be ascribed to environmental factors and how much of the stability is due to genetics. In this paper we show, using a unique three-wave panel dataset of twins (N = 2471) spanning ten years, that both environmental and genetic influences are important in explaining the stability of social and economic ideology. However, we find that changes in ideology over time are explained by environmental factors for both social and economic ideology. For social ideology, only the shared environment is important in explaining changes over time. For economic ideology, both shared and unique environmental factors influence changes over time. Our results suggest that stability and change in political attitudes is a complex phenomenon that is best understood when examining heritable as well as social factors. • Environmental and genetic factors explain the stability of ideology. • Only environmental influences explain changes over time for ideology. • For social ideology, only the shared environment explains changes over time. • For economic ideology, the shared and unique environment explain changes over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where do our political attitudes originate? Although early research attributed the formation of such beliefs to parent and peer socialization, genetically sensitive designs later clarified the substantial role of genes in the development of sociopolitical attitudes. However, it has remained unclear whether parental influence on offspring attitudes persists beyond adolescence. In a unique sample of 394 adoptive and biological families with offspring more than 30 years old, biometric modeling revealed significant evidence for genetic and nongenetic transmission from both parents for the majority of seven political-attitude phenotypes. We found the largest genetic effects for religiousness and social liberalism, whereas the largest influence of parental environment was seen for political orientation and egalitarianism. Together, these findings indicate that genes, environment, and the gene–environment correlation all contribute significantly to sociopolitical attitudes held in adulthood, and the etiology and development of those attitudes may be more important than ever in today's rapidly changing sociopolitical landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have shown that political efficacy, interest in politics, and political knowledge are strongly related to political participation. In most analyses, these variables are described as having a causal effect on participation. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the relationship between political attitudes and participation is confounded by familial factors. By using the discordant twin design, which relates within-pair differences in political attitudes to within-pair differences in political participation, we are able to examine the relationship net of confounding factors rooted in genes and the early rearing environment. Using four samples of monozygotic twins from the United States, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark, we find that the relationship between political attitudes and political participation is confounded to a large extent. This study makes an important contribution to the literature on political attitudes and political participation given the longstanding idea that attitudes cause political participation. Our findings also have practical implications for those interested in elevating levels of political participation. In addition, they have important implications for how scholars theorize about, model, and examine political participation in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]