Genetic and environmental influences on the stability of political attitudes
(2024) In Personality and Individual Differences 229(October 2024).- 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... (More)
- 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.
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Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/e75bbc0f-ca81-4e31-a06c-612e6be064cd
- author
- Rasmussen, Stig HR ; Weinschenk, Aaron ; Ksiazkiewicz, Aleksander ; Hjelmborg, Jacob B.H. ; Sonne Nørgaard, Asbjørn and Klemmensen, Robert LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2024
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- Personality and Individual Differences
- volume
- 229
- issue
- October 2024
- article number
- 112777
- pages
- 8 pages
- publisher
- Elsevier
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85197487483
- ISSN
- 1873-3549
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.paid.2024.112777
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- e75bbc0f-ca81-4e31-a06c-612e6be064cd
- date added to LUP
- 2024-08-12 12:36:53
- date last changed
- 2024-09-02 15:34:59
@article{e75bbc0f-ca81-4e31-a06c-612e6be064cd,
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.<br/><br/>}},
author = {{Rasmussen, Stig HR and Weinschenk, Aaron and Ksiazkiewicz, Aleksander and Hjelmborg, Jacob B.H. and Sonne Nørgaard, Asbjørn and Klemmensen, Robert}},
issn = {{1873-3549}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{October 2024}},
publisher = {{Elsevier}},
series = {{Personality and Individual Differences}},
title = {{Genetic and environmental influences on the stability of political attitudes}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2024.112777}},
doi = {{10.1016/j.paid.2024.112777}},
volume = {{229}},
year = {{2024}},
}