Twin study on political views

CBL4

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But on the basis of a new study, a team of political scientists is arguing that people's gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly influenced by genetic inheritance. The new research builds on a series of studies that indicate that people's general approach to social issues - more conservative or more progressive - is influenced by genes.
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I forgot the link, here it is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/21/science/21gene.html

The study makes the following claim about genetic contribution to your views on the following issues:
School prayer - 41% determined by genes
Capitalism - 39%
Unions - 37%
X Rated Movies - 35%
Censorship - 30%
Abortion - 25%
Political party affiliation - 14%

CBL
 
Alright, now we can validate those who think being a Republican is in their blood :p


Seriously, how did the study control for environment? Its really no secret that political distribution is less than evenly distributed, it seems to be heavily influenced by religion, parents, income, whether you live in city or suburban, etc.
 
CBL4 said:
The study makes the following claim about genetic contribution to your views on the following issues:
School prayer - 41% determined by genes
Capitalism - 39%
Unions - 37%
X Rated Movies - 35%
Censorship - 30%
Abortion - 25%
Political party affiliation - 14%

CBL
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Dare I guess that this is a American study? In Europe no one cares a rats ass about School prayer, Unions, X Rated Movies, or Abortion.
 
Originally posted by Yahweh
Seriously, how did the study control for environment
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The classical twin study design relies on studying twins raised in the same family environments. Monozygotic (identical) twins share all of their genes, while dizygotic (fraternal) twins share only about 50 percent of them. So, if a researcher compares the similarity between sets of identical twins to the similarity between sets of fraternal twins for a particular trait, then any excess likeness between the identical twins should be due to genes rather than environment.

Researchers use this method, and variations on it, to estimate the heritability of traits: The percentage of variance in a population due to genes. Modern twin studies also try to quantify the effect of a person's shared environment (family) and unique environment (the individual events that shape a life) on a trait.
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http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr04/second.html

I thought this study was the perfect followup to the thread I started yesterday questioning the validity of twin studies.
http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58616
I could not have picked a more absurd genetic connection than this study claims.

CBL
 
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