Biology and political orientation - Wikipedia
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I find this fascinating to think about. It seems obvious that there would be genetic differences and differences in neural-organisation between left-wing people and right-wing people. They have different priorities and different values. (Obviously experiences, teachers, books, have a role too.)

ALFORD, J. R., FUNK, C. L., & HIBBING, J. R. (2005). Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted? American Political Science Review, 99(02), 153–167. doi:10.1017/s0003055405051579 found that monozygotic twins have closer political beliefs than dizygotic ones.

Hatemi, P. K., Gillespie, N. A., Eaves, L. J., Maher, B. S., Webb, B. T., Heath, A. C., … Martin, N. G. (2011). A Genome-Wide Analysis of Liberal and Conservative Political Attitudes. The Journal of Politics, 73(1), 271–285. doi:10.1017/s0022381610001015 found a bunch of genes that correlate with political orientation

Eaves, L., Heath, A., Martin, N., Maes, H., Neale, M., Kendler, K., … Corey, L. (1999). Comparing the biological and cultural inheritance of personality and social attitudes in the Virginia 30 000 study of twins and their relatives. Twin Research, 2(02), 62–80. doi:10.1375/twin.2.2.62 also points to some specific genes.

It's just fascinating thinking about how people are walking around with these genes in their cells that are pushing them to take part in the competing forces within a society.

  • Llituro [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Political orientation is a nonsense phrase. Trying to map biology to a one axis eurocentric political spectrum is about as stupid and misguided as saying the political compass is valid because it's got a whole nother dimension. This area of study will never be more than barely disguised fascist pseudoscience. Doesn't matter if a liberal is doing it.

    • Hmm [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      That might be why some of the studies asked about specific outlooks instead of doing what you just described.

      A twin study in 2005 examined the attitudes regarding 28 different political issues such as capitalism, unions, X-rated movies, abortion, school prayer, divorce, property taxes, and the draft. Twins were asked if they agreed or disagreed or were uncertain about each issue. Genetic factors accounted for 53% of the variance of an overall score. However, self-identification as Republican and Democrat had a much lower heritability of 14%. It is worthwhile to note that identical twins correlated in opinion at a rate of 0.66 while fraternal twins correlated in opinion by 0.44. This likely occurs because identical twins share 100% of their DNA while fraternal twins share on average only 50% of their DNA.[43][44]