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 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, providing an answer that gives us food for thought.
For some time now, psychologists and scientists interested in politics have tried to find out what the conditions are for a person to be a supporter of one ideological current or another. 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 can be seen from this definition, this aspect of each individual is something extremely complicated, which has meant 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 seen as a unidimensional construct with a continuum going from more liberal to more conservative, it has been seen that it is truly multidimensional, involving varied 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 several factors that could be behind feeling a predilection for one or another political project, including family socialization, demographic variables and, in accordance with what psychologists see.
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 elucidate whether political ideology 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 the heritability of personality traits, diseases and other aspects. The basic idea behind them is to compare what is seen in monozygotic twins, that is, those who are genetically identical or clones of each other with dizygotic twins, who share approximately half of the genes and are, in essence, like any other sibling.
Generally, when it is seen that in monozygotic twins there is a greater similarity between a specific trait compared to dizygotic siblings, researchers take this fact as evidence that that specific 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 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 or 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 that, to a certain extent, are related to political ideology have also been taken into account, such as social rules, order and behavior patterns, which have also been seen to be heritable.
Although twin studies are useful, one way to know how heritable a trait is is observe how stable it is throughout the life of an individual and comparing it with 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 one grows, which would defend the idea that environmental factors were the ones that have the most weight. On the other hand, there are those who consider that ideology is a very stable aspect throughout life, or that at least it 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 takes on more prominence.
During childhood and adolescence, political ideology is more influenced by family socialization company at school and free time in addition to having witnessed emotionally tense, although not necessarily traumatic, experiences.
As we reach adulthood and beyond, genes seem to gain more weight. This could be especially due to the fact that, after reaching the age of majority, many people leave their main family unit, going to live in a rental apartment while studying at 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 In other words, it is what makes a set of pieces of DNA end up giving rise to the personality traits and ways of seeing the world that define us as, for example, progressive or conservative people.
Although there is 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 a matter to expect a single gene or a reduced set of genes to explain why we are voters of one party or another.
However, yes It makes sense to find out what the indirect relationship between genes and ideology is Ideology is highly influenced by aspects such as personality traits, cognitive ability, cognitive style and religiosity, aspects that various research has shown have a high hereditary component. Based on this, it makes sense to think that ideology is heritable, since aspects that define it are.
