What does it mean that political party affiliations can be significantly influenced by genes?

Since I believe pretty much everything is a combiation of genes and environment, it doesn’t surprise me political affiliation might be. However, it is a little surprising to me that possibly genes is more influential than environment. I would generalize, but am not supplying any data, so I could be wrong, that conservatives tend to be more religious. Religion is probably influenced somewhat by genes. There have been studies showing there is a religious center in the brain. Maybe also certain ethnicities are more likely to be liberal, because of what they have been through culturally over time, and so there might appear to be a genetic correlation among those groups.

How did they insure that they had separated nature and nurture?

It wouldn’t surprise me at all, especially since there’s some evidence of the same thing for religion. As to what it means in everyday life, I’m not sure. To combat our genes leading us astray, perhaps we should do a better job of teaching critical thinking skills. Early and often. Anyone can have illogical or irrational thoughts and beliefs, but critical thinking (theoretically) enables us to overcome those knee-jerk instincts and make sound(er) decisions.

@ETpro All I know is that they use some pretty sophisticated statistical techniques to try to sort these things out. Statistics provide results in terms of probabilities, which means that only sometimes does a relationship hold. In social science, if a factor can explain 20% of an outcome, that is considered pretty big. I don’t know what it is in genetics.

The point is that even though there is a significant relationship (one that isn’t there by chance), and it explains a significant portion of the outcome (more than, say, 15%, that doesn’t mean the relationship holds often enough or strongly enough to really be able to make predictions of any use.

However, it may help us understand a part of why political views can run in families. I’m not sure what “understanding” really means, though. We need a philosopher, now.

I think maybe they are talking about Jeans. If I can’t afford to buy new jeans when they wear out and have to patch and make them last, I am more likely to vote for a candidate that promises programs that can get me a better job so I can get better jeans. Thus, Politics is Jeanetically driven.

Nice one, @majorrich. Got a chuckle out of me.

Possibly the people with the survival heavy instincts are more apt to be right leaning and are more apt to fight or survive more aggressively and achieve more, faster?

@woodcutter That doesn’t seem the case. The blue States are the richest. Poverty is indemic in the deep red States.

Considering that my belief is that the “normal” tea party member is of below average intelligence, I expect genes have something to do with the choice. Of course being raised in an authoritarian environment would make a person thing that neoconservatives and neo- fascists think that situation is normal. The less intelligent and those with an easily led ignorance would gravitate towards parties where others do the thinking for them.

Of course that is the conservative strength. The members are used to being small cogs in a large machine and therefore easily led. That is a combination of nature and nurture.

Liberals and progressives are more prone to think for themselves. That’s why leading them is like herding cats. Of course that’s the democrats weakness. The members are big cogs in small machines. Hopefully they can hold together long enough to deter the loss of freedom and prosperity threatened by a Romney win.

@ETpro So the blue state business owners mostly vote democrat?

Something else but it could be a total coincidence, Do those with a chemical /brain imbalance tend to lean leftist?

@woodcutter I couldn’t tell you how other business owners vote. I own a business and didn’t like what Bush’s economic policies did to it in the Great Recession. So when Mitt Romney campaigned on being George W. Bush in overdrive, I said no thanks.

I would think that those with a brain chemistry imbalance would be more likely to be leftist, since they are more dependent on health care being provided free. They are likely to be disabled and unable to care for themselves, and conservatives don’t believe that the government has any business helping them.

@wundayatta Are you suggesting that hereditary right leaning people are not apt to have that chemical defect, or that they are apt to succeed more and not need public assistance?

@woodcutter I don’t see how you get that from what @wundayatta wrote, but I of course cannot answer for wunday. People woth mental health problems are more likely to need public assistance, so they tend to vote democrat, because the right wing doesn’t seem to have much sympathy or understanding for those people. Parts of the right wing to hyperfocus on the individual and not how things affect society at large.

@woodcutter I don’t know. I don’t know many conservative types. There aren’t a lot where I live. I know that there may be a link between genes and political views. I know for certain there is a link between genes and chemical imbalances. Whether the two issues and sets of genes are related, I have no idea and have never seen any information about.

I love to speculate. I wouldn’t mind if craziness were a liberal thing and conservatives tended to be less crazy. I wouldn’t even be surprised if that is the case. I think conservatives are less imaginative, on average, and I think imagination is associated with craziness. I am being very loose in my terminology here, mostly because I see craziness as a positive thing.

So yeah, if you are conservative, you will probably be less imaginative, and also perhaps more stable and able to care for yourself. You will be unable to understand why others can’t care for themselves, and will think it has to do with a character flaw, not a chemical imbalance, the same as many cons see gayness as a choice instead of a genetic thing.

There’s a role for conservatives in this world, but it is kind of limited and they really do try to limit the world for the rest of us, which is a problem. I think they “succeed” in one sense of the term—the financial sense—but not in most other ways. In particular, I think they tend to be rather clueless about their limitations in terms of creativity and empathy.

@wundayatta That pretty much sums it up, or, that is what I was thinking. The conservative type may be empathetic to the degree that they would opt to aim someone needing help in a direction that will cause them to be successful under their own power, meaning perhaps they see potential in everyone because they after all, are the faith people.

@woodcutter Good point!