The researchers' report, published in today's issue of the journal Science, suggests that genetic differences may help explain why some people favor capital punishment and the Iraq War, while others support gun control and foreign aid. It's part of a growing field, called "genopolitics," that is threatening to rewrite the rules of political science, which hold that political beliefs are shaped by people's environment and experiences. To work in the new field, political scientists are scrambling to learn genetics, neuroscience, and other aspects of biology.
"We're not arguing that biology is in any sense the whole story," said John R. Alford, an associate professor of political science at Rice University who was involved in the study. "We're just arguing that biology is a piece of the story and it's a completely ignored piece of the story."
Despite some detractors, this research continues to create excitement and attract more people from other disciplines to join in the work. Eager, multidisciplinary research teams are forming that may include geneticists, political scientists, behavioral economists, social psychologists, and neuroscientists. In that vein, Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at the University of Virginia explores the counterintuitive dimensions that belie narrow political analysis in an Edge article provocatively titled, "What Makes People Vote Republican?"
What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress.
But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.
Actually, I first read serious reporting and commentary on the influence of genes on political identity and behavior in the 2002 book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Behavior by Steven Pinker, acclaimed professor of cognitive and evolutionary psychology at Harvard. His chapter on "Politics" asserts but qualifies and gives context to the importance of the role of genes in influencing political attitudes.
Liberal and conservative political attitudes are largely, though far from completely, heritable...not, of course, because [these] attitudes are synthesized directly from DNA but because they come naturally to people with different temperaments. Conservatives, for example, tend to be more authoritarian, conscientious, traditional, and rule-bound. But whatever its immediate source, the heritability of political attitudes can explain some of the sparks that fly when liberals and conservatives meet. When it comes to attitudes that are heritable, people react more quickly and emotionally, are less likely to change their minds, and are more attracted to like-minded people...
That voices of the contemporary left and the contemporary right are [now] both embracing evolutionary psychology after decades of reviling it shows two things. One is that biological facts are beginning to box in plausible political philosophies...A popular bumper sticker in the 1990s urged, QUESTION AUTHORITY. Another bumper sticker replied, QUESTION GRAVITY. All political philosophies have to decide when their arguments are turning into the questioning of gravity. The second development is that an acknowledgment of [the existence of] human nature can no longer be associated [only] with the political right. Once the [liberal] Utopian Vision is laid to rest, the field of political positions is wide open...
The ideologies of the left and right took shape before Darwin, before Mendel, before anyone knew what a gene or neuron or a hormone was. Every student of political science is taught that political ideologies are based on theories of human nature. [But] why must they be based on theories that are three hundred years out of date?
I recommended this book by Steven Pinker in an e-mail a few years ago. I do so again, and as strongly as I can. Matt Ridley, a science writer and author of Genome--also worth reading--gushes that it's "the best book on human nature that I or anyone else will ever read. Truly a maganificent job."
But having said that, it is arguable that Professor Pinker's optimism about the implications of revealed science remains somewhat idealistic, even naive. For even if there were broad acknowledgment of the factual errors in these historical theories of human behavior--which many conservatives and liberals nonetheless remain attached to by temperament--politicians and others would nonetheless recognize the enduring effectiveness of political tactics that exploit those temperamental predispositions to attract or frighten people and win elections. Professor Haidt, above, is probably quite right and more practical in observing that many people relate best to the simpler, "Republican offer [of] 'moral clarity'—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate." And Steven Pinker, like many Democrats, may be appealing in vain to reason with his "long-winded," but more accurate explanations of human nature and their implications for a more complex American society and a more complex world.
http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=bfB9QZsymRTcQQws3Br2RP5yxzwThqGj
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html
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