Collaborative Research: Genes and Politics: Providing the Necessary Data

人们一生中发生的各种事件和经历被广泛认为是他们政治信仰和行为的来源，然而行为遗传学的研究，使用经典的双胞胎设计，一致发现另一个重要的来源是生物学;特别是，它发现人们继承了政治倾向。 这些倾向并不等同于遗传决定论，但政治倾向的部分变异源于遗传这一事实令人惊讶，迄今为止，用于得出政治倾向遗传性结论的数据有限。 那些主要关注身体状况和心理健康的学者偶尔会问一些关于政治信仰的简短问题，但遗传学家从未评估过这些信仰的细节和强度。 此外，政治行为的遗传性（人们是否投票、参加竞选、捐款、加入利益集团、接触官员、关注政治或试图说服他人？）尚未确定。 该项目编制了关于美国双胞胎政治取向和行为的第一个完整数据集。 因此，它不仅可以对政治信仰的遗传性进行初步估计，还可以对这些信仰的强度以及由这些信仰产生的政治行为进行初步估计。该项目的一个显著的更广泛的影响是，在传播之后，这一全面的数据集将是第一个允许主流政治科学家对环境和遗传对政治的贡献进行自己分析的数据集。 行为遗传学家收集的现有数据集是专有的，包含有限的政治内容。 与该项目一起收集的数据使社会科学家能够将他们的经验工作与生命科学相结合，从而有助于鼓励早就应该融合的社会科学和生物科学，以及对人类状况的性质更完整的解释，更具体地说，是大规模政治的来源。

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.