Is political ideology heritable?

The most common perception about how our way of thinking is shaped is that it is caused by environmental elements, such as family, school and the social context.

However, science seems to disagree. There are several aspects of our way of thinking that seem to depend on our genes, which has motivated researchers to address a very complex issue: political ideology.

Is political ideology heritable? In the last five decades, attempts have been made to resolve this question, giving an answer that makes us think.

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To what extent is political ideology heritable?

For some time, psychologists and scientists interested in politics have tried to find out what are the conditions for a person to be a supporter of one or another ideological current. Political ideology is the set of beliefs that a person has regarding their idea of ​​what an ideal society should be like, in addition to having a political project of how to achieve it.

As is clear from this definition, this aspect of each individual is something extremely complicated, which has made that not only the way in which it is studied has changed, but also the way in which it was treated as a construct.

Traditionally, political ideology was viewed as a one-dimensional construct., with a continuum going from more liberal to more conservative, has been seen to be truly multidimensional, involving various aspects more typical of economic and social dimensions.

Several studies in psychology have focused on understanding and explaining how personality and motivational factors influence political ideology. In collaboration with this, political scientists have focused on various factors that could be behind a bias towards one. or another political project, including the socialization of the family, demographic variables and, in accordance with what has been seen by psychologists.

But Perhaps the most surprising factor that has been taken into account has been that of behavioral genetics.. Research that has focused on this aspect has tried to determine whether ideology Politics is heritable, an object of study that has been gaining greater prominence in the last five decades.

twin studies

Twin studies are a classic tool when it comes to finding out what the heritability of personality traits, diseases and other aspects is. The basic idea behind them is to compare what is seen in monozygotic twins, that is, those that are genetically identical or clones of each other, with dizygotic twins, who share about half their genes and are essentially like any other sibling.

Generally, when monozygotic twins are seen to have a greater similarity between a particular trait compared to dizygotic siblings, the Researchers take this fact as evidence that that particular trait depends on genetic factors, factors that both identical twins have inherited.

Thanks to these studies, it is possible to measure the heritability of a certain trait, that is, the degree of variation of that trait attributed to genetics. This idea should not be confused with that of what is the inherited proportion of that trait, but rather the percentage that depends on genetics. To understand it better, if we say that a certain trait has a heritability of 0.30, we are saying that about 30% of the differences seen in individuals is attributable to genetic factors, while the remaining 70% would be due to either environmental factors or to stochastic phenomena.

Regarding the question of political ideology, several studies have reported that the heritability of this aspect would be close to 40%. Likewise, some aspects have also been taken into account that, to a certain extent, are related to ideology. politics, such as social rules, order and behavior patterns, which have also been seen to be heritable.

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Ideology throughout life

Although twin studies are useful, one way to find out how heritable a trait is is to observing how stable it is throughout an individual's lifetime and comparing it to the general population.

Regarding this, there is a fairly divided idea in the general population. There are those who consider that political ideology is a very unstable phenomenon as it grows, which would defend the idea that environmental factors were the ones that have more weight. On the other hand, there are those who consider that ideology is a very stable aspect throughout life. life, or at least has a predictable development, which would defend the idea that it is highly heritable.

However, and like practically everything when it comes to explaining behavior and personality, political ideology is a factor. resulting from the combination of genetics with environment and, in fact, there are vital periods in which one or the other charges more leadership.

During childhood and adolescence, political ideology is more influenced by family socialization, the companies at school and free time in addition to having witnessed emotionally tense experiences, although not necessarily traumatic.

In adulthood and beyond, genes seem to take on more weight. This could be due in particular to the fact that, after coming of age, many people part with their main family nucleus, going to live in a rented apartment while studying at the university or working in another municipality.

How are genes related to politics?

Research has also focused attention on how genes would be behind the psychological mechanisms involved in political ideology. That is, what makes a set of pieces of DNA end up making the traits of personality and ways of seeing the world that define us as, for example, progressive people or conservative.

Despite strong evidence that there is a genetic basis for ideology, no direct relationship has been found between genes and our political worldview. This is not surprising, given that political ideology is too complex an issue to be expect that a single gene or a reduced set of them explain that we are voters of a party or other.

However, yes it makes sense to find out what is the indirect relationship between genes and ideology. Ideology is highly influenced by aspects such as personality traits, cognitive ability, style cognitive and religiosity, aspects that various investigations have shown to have a high component hereditary. Based on this, it makes sense to think that ideology is heritable, since aspects that define it are.

Bibliographic references:

• Dawes, C. T., and Weinschenk, A. c. (2020). On the genetic basis of political orientation. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 34, 173-178.
• Tuschman, A., (2013) Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us. USA. Prometheus.