Genetic and environmental influences on the stability of political attitudes

Stig Hebbelstrup Rye Rasmussen, Aaron Weinschenk*, Aleksander Ksiazkiewicz, Jacob von Bornemann Hjelmborg, Asbjørn Sonne Nørgaard, Robert Klemmensen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal/Conference contribution in journal/Contribution to newspaperJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Article number112777
JournalPersonality and Individual Differences
Volume229
ISSN0191-8869
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2024

Keywords

  • Heritability
  • Ideology
  • Latent growth model
  • Political orientations
  • Twin model

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