Chris Mooney has written an article, published by CNN, that suggests some people are liberals or conservatives because of their inherited genes. Blame it on your ancestors!
Mooney states that studies of adult identical twins and fraternal twins show that the former tend to be far more politically similar to one another than the latter. This “twin study” methodology certainly has its limitations, but it is a well established way of studying the degree to which genes influence traits, since “identical” twins share all of their DNA but fraternal twins share only half of it. The left-right twin studies suggest that 40% or more of the variance in our ideological views may be ultimately rooted in genetic influences. However, the subject is more complex than it first appears.
Mooney cautions, "Just because politics appears to be partly influenced by genes doesn’t make genes the dominant factor influencing our ideologies. Nor does it make them political destiny. It is vastly more complicated than that."
I'm not sure if this is scientific fact or just one person's wacky ideas. Either way, the article makes for interesting reading. What DID you inherit from your ancestors?
You can read Politics may be partly genetic, now what? by Chris Mooney at http://goo.gl/12vTg.
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