Collaborative Research: Genes and Politics: Providing the Necessary Data

人们普遍认为，人们一生中发生的各种事件和经历是他们政治信仰和行为的来源，但行为遗传学的研究使用经典的双胞胎设计，始终发现另一个重要的来源是生物学；具体地说，它发现人们遗传了政治倾向。这些倾向并不等同于基因决定论，但令人惊讶的是，政治取向的变化甚至有一部分来自基因。到目前为止，用于得出政治取向遗传性结论的数据有限。主要关注身体状况和心理健康的学者偶尔会问一系列关于政治信仰的简短问题，但这些信仰的细节和强度从未得到遗传学家的评估。此外，政治行为的遗传性(人们是否投票、参加竞选活动、捐款、加入利益集团、接触官员、追随政治或试图说服他人？)还没有被确定。这个项目汇编了第一个关于美国双胞胎的政治取向和行为的完整数据集。因此，它不仅使对政治信仰的遗传性的第一次估计成为可能，而且使对这些信仰的强度和由这些信仰产生的政治行为的第一次估计成为可能。该项目的一个值得注意的更广泛的影响是，一旦传播，这个全面的数据集将第一次允许主流政治学家对环境和基因对政治的贡献进行自己的分析。行为遗传学家收集的现有数据集既是专有的，也包含有限的政治内容。结合这一项目收集的数据使社会科学家能够将他们的经验性工作与生命科学的工作结合起来，从而有助于鼓励对社会科学和生物科学进行早就应该进行的融合，并更全面地说明人类状况的性质，更具体地说，是大规模政治的根源。

The various events and experiences that occur during the course of people's lifetimes are widely assumed to be the source of their political beliefs and behaviors, yet research from behavioral genetics, using the classic twin design, consistently finds that another important source is biology; specifically, it finds that people inherit political predispositions. These predispositions do not equate to genetic determinism, but the fact that even a portion of the variation in political orientations springs from genetics is surprising.To date, the data employed to draw conclusions regarding the heritability of political orientations have been limited. Scholars whose primary concerns are physical conditions and mental health occasionally ask brief batteries of questions about political beliefs, but the details and intensities of these beliefs have never been assessed by geneticists. Moreover, the heritability of political behaviors (do people vote, work in campaigns, contribute money, join interest groups, contact officials, follow politics, or try to persuade others?) has not been ascertained. This project compiles the first complete data set on the political orientations and behaviors of twins in the United States. As such, it makes possible the first estimates of the heritability of not just political beliefs but also the intensity of those beliefs and the political behaviors generated by those beliefs.One notable broader impact of this project is that, upon dissemination, this comprehensive data set will be the first to allow mainstream political scientists to conduct their own analyses of the environmental and genetic contributions to politics. Existing data sets collected by behavioral geneticists are both proprietary and contain limited political content. The data collected in conjunction with this project allow social scientists to integrate their empirical work with that in the life sciences, thus helping to encourage a long-overdue melding of the social and biological sciences and a more complete accounting of the nature of the human condition and more specifically of the sources of mass-scale politics.