Do Political Attitudes and Religiosity Share a Genetic Path?

Abstract

Social scientists have long recognized and sought to explain a connection between religious and political beliefs. Our research challenges the prevalent view that religion and politics constitute separate but related belief sets with a conceptual model that suggests the correlation between the two may be partially explained by an underlying psychological construct reflecting first principle beliefs on social organization. Moreover, we also push this challenge further by considering whether part of the relationship between political and religious beliefs is the result of shared genetic influences, which would suggest that a shared biological predisposition, or set of biological predispositions, underlies these attitudes. Using a classic twin design on a sample of American adults, we demonstrate that certain religious, political, and first principle beliefs can be explained by genetic and unique environmental components, and that the correlation between these three trait structures is primarily due to a common genetic path. As predicted, this relationship is found to hold for social ideology, but not for economic ideology. These findings provide evidence that the overlap between the religious and the political in the American context may in part be due to underlying principles regarding how to understand and organize society and that these principles may be adopted to satisfy biologically-influenced psychological needs.Key words: Behavior genetics; religion and politics; twin study; ideologyThe data employed in this project is publicly available and collected with the financial support of the National Science Foundation in the form of SES-0721378, PI: John R. Hibbing; Co-PIs: John R. Alford, Lindon J. Eaves, Carolyn L. Funk, Peter K. Hatemi, and Kevin B. Smith, and with the cooperation of the Minnesota Twin Registry at the University of Minnesota, Robert Krueger and Matthew McGue, Directors. Rather than thinking about religious beliefs influencing political attitudes through an intentional cognitive process (e.g. The Bible says homosexuality is wrong, therefore I oppose gay marriage) or political attitudes leading to changes in religious affiliation upon entering adulthood (Putnam and Campbell 2012), this study examines whether these belief systems overlap at least in part because they both represent an individual's preferences for "bedrock principles of group life," such as a preference for maintaining traditional moral values in society (Smith, Oxley, Hibbing, Alford and Hibbing 2011b). Our research challenges the prevalent view that religion and politics constitute separate but related belief sets with a conceptual model that explains both political and religious beliefs as rooted in the same underlying psychological construct reflecting first principle beliefs on social organization. Moreover, we also push this challenge further by considering whether part of the relationship between political and religious beliefs is the result of shared genetic influences, which would suggest that a shared predispo...

Good Looks as a Source of Moral Permissiveness*

“…That is, these results suggest that differences in economic opportunity, regardless of whether they manifest in differential economic outcomes, may spur a backlash against the rich. Similarly, the above results speak to the literature on the genetic origins of political preferences (Alford, Funk, and Hibbing, ; Friesen and Ksiazkiewicz, ; Petersen, ), reinforcing one mechanism whereby genes may lead to particular socially relevant attitudes. To the extent they affect physical attractiveness, genes can induce differential treatment by others and open doors to more (or fewer) opportunities, thereby shaping beliefs about morality by some of the same means as they affect personality (Harris, ); this also connects to previous findings on the role of how physical strength shapes political attitudes (e.g., Sell, Hone, and Pound, ).…”

It could happen to you: how perceptions of personal risk shape support for social welfare policy in the American States

“…personally harmed or helped by the policy, a situational factor conditioned by her propensity to accept that risk, a relatively stable personality trait (Ehrlich and Maestas 2010). In this way, we depart from previous studies that treat events and personality traits as factors that have independent and additive, as opposed to conditional, influences on policy opinion (Svallfors et al 2012;Gadarian and Albertson 2014;Friesen and Ksiazkiewicz 2015).…”

The Contingent, Contextual Nature of the Relationship Between Needs for Security and Certainty and Political Preferences: Evidence and Implications

“…As for other forms of conservatism, some evidence suggests small overall effects of religiosity on right‐wing attitudes (Friesen & Ksiazkiewicz, ; Jost et al, ; Malka et al, ) that vary in strength, and even direction, across denominations (Layman & Green, ) and levels of exposure to political discourse (Malka et al, ; Malka & Soto, ). We discuss these sources of variability in subsequent sections.…”

“…Indeed, research suggests that religiosity-as an orientation that furnishes individuals with an orderly framework for making sense of reality-is consistently related to indicators of needs for security and certainty (e.g., Jost et al, 2014;Saraglou, 2002aSaraglou, , 2002bVail et al, 2010). 5 Moreover, analyses using genetically informative designs indicate that religiosity is both stable and heritable and that the overlap between religiosity and key existential and epistemic needs may be due to shared genetic influences (Friesen & Ksiazkiewicz, 2014;Lewis & Bates, 2013).…”

“…Given its robust ties to needs for security and certainty, we might expect religiosity to relate more strongly and consistently to social conservatism than economic conservatism. Indeed, religiosity has its largest and most reliable links with issues related to sexual morality (Davis & Robinson, 1996;Friesen & Ksiazkiewicz, 2014;Jost et al, 2014;Layman, 2001;Malka, Lelkes, Srivastava, Cohen, & Miller, 2012).…”