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In this article, we examine whether there is genetic overlap between personality traits and political participation, interest, and efficacy. We make several contributions to the literature. First, we use new data from a large sample of twins from Denmark to examine the link between genes, the Big Five traits, and political behavior. Previous research in this area has not examined the Danish context. Second, because our measures have some overlap with those used in previous studies, we are able to examine whether previous findings replicate in a different sample. Finally, we extend the literature by examining the possible genetic link between some personality and political traits that have not yet been explored. Overall, we find that genes account for a fairly large share of the correlation between two of the Big Five personality traits (openness and extraversion), political participation, and political interest. Thus, most of the relationship between these personality traits and our measures of political behavior can be accounted for by a common underlying genetic component.

In this article, we examine the nature of the relationship between educational attainment and ideology. Some scholars have argued that the effect of education on political variables like ideology is inflated due to unaccounted-for family factors, such as genetic predispositions and parental socialization. Using the discordant twin design and data from a large sample of Danish twins, we find that after accounting for confounders rooted in the family, education has a (quasi)-causal effect on economic ideology, but not social ideology. We also examine whether the relationship between education and economic ideology is moderated by levels of economic hardship in the local context where individuals reside. We find that the (quasi)-causal effect of education on economic ideology increases in economically challenged areas.

Topic models (TMs) have become the de facto standard for automated content analysis in the social sciences. Some problematic aspects of the models, however, have been recently identified. These mainly concern the high variability of solutions that is the result of both preprocessing and non-deterministic inference in high-dimensional and very large solution spaces. Whether current model selection and validation practices are sufficient to ensure precise and unbiased measurement has been the subject of debate. This paper argues that the prevalent practices of model selection and validation for ensuring unbiased measurement are indeed insufficient. This paper focus is on the use of summarization techniques during labeling, indirect validation techniques, and the employment of heuristics for model selection. Our results document non-trivial biases and show that current model validation techniques lead to arbitrary research outcomes. The study concludes by providing recommendations on ways to validate work based on topic models.

Democracy functions well, and governance is credible and transparent in Denmark. Public trust in government and public administration is high. Comparatively, Denmark stands out for its ability to combine strong economic performance (as measured by per capita income) with a relatively equal distribution of income and low poverty rates.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-spp-10.1177_19485506221137161 for Parental Transmission and the Importance of the (Noncausal) Effects of Education on Political Engagement: Missing the Forest for the Trees by Stig Hebbelstrup Rye Rasmussen, Aaron Weinschenk, Christopher T. Dawes, Jacob v. B. Hjelmborg and Robert Klemmensen in Social Psychological and Personality Science

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-pss-10.1177_09567976211021844 for Parent Contributions to the Development of Political Attitudes in Adoptive and Biological Families by Emily A. Willoughby, Alexandros Giannelis, Steven Ludeke, Robert Klemmensen, Asbj��rn S. N��rgaard, William G. Iacono, James J. Lee and Matt McGue in Psychological Science

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-psx-10.1177_00323217211008788 for Educational Attainment Has a Causal Effect on Economic, But Not Social Ideology: Evidence from Discordant Twins by Stig Hebbelstrup Rye Rasmussen, Aaron Weinschenk, Asbjørn Sonne Nørgaard, Jacob von Bornemann Hjelmborg and Robert Klemmensen in Political Studies

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-2-psx-10.1177_00323217211008788 for Educational Attainment Has a Causal Effect on Economic, But Not Social Ideology: Evidence from Discordant Twins by Stig Hebbelstrup Rye Rasmussen, Aaron Weinschenk, Asbjørn Sonne Nørgaard, Jacob von Bornemann Hjelmborg and Robert Klemmensen in Political Studies

https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/AMBPP.2020.17773abstract Since its inception as a motivational form based “primarily or uniquely in public institutions” (Perry and Wise 1990), the antecedents of public service motivation (PSM) have been debated and explored. However, to date no investigations of a possible genetic component of PSM exist and only few attempts have been made to disentangle youth and adolescence socialization effects from adulthood socialization effects. Investigating the relative impact of these variables is important as genetic or early life influences might additionally confound established empirical relationships. Empirically, we employ a twin-design, popular in the behavioral genetics tradition, on a data set of 1,801 twins from the Danish Twin Registry. In accordance with dominant interpretations of PSM we find a sizeable effect of adulthood environment. Additionally, we find that PSM is also heavily influenced by early life socialization and not at all by genetics. This is surprising, as other “other-oriented” concepts such as empathy, pro-sociality, altruism, and agreeableness have sizeable genetic components whilst their childhood socialization components are either negligible or minor in relative importance. Our study thus yields important insights into the uniqueness of PSM and we conclude by discussing implications for public sector management."

Denmark’s cultural and linguistic homogeneity is reflected in its highly proportional electoral system and governing institutions that are designed for consensual power sharing. Governments are formed according to the principle of negative parliamentarism which does not require a majority of parliament supporting a government, as long as there is not a majority opposing it. As a result of this system, Denmark has the highest occurrence of minority governments in the world. The main political divide in Denmark has traditionally been redistribution, often labelled the economic dimension of politics. Recently, however, the country has seen a trend felt throughout Europe according to which immigration has played an increasingly important role in political competition. Hence party competition in Denmark is increasingly two dimensional as the dimension of new politics has evolved.