Genes, psychological traits and civic engagement

Abstract

One contribution of 13 to a theme issue 'Solving the puzzle of collective action through inter-individual differences: evidence from primates and humans'. Civic engagement is a classic example of a collective action problem: while civic participation improves life in the community as a whole, it is individually costly and thus there is an incentive to free ride on the actions of others. Yet, we observe significant inter-individual variation in the degree to which people are in fact civically engaged. Early accounts reconciling the theoretical prediction with empirical reality focused either on variation in individuals' material resources or their attitudes, but recent work has turned to genetic differences between individuals. We show an underlying genetic contribution to an index of civic engagement (0.41), as well as for the individual acts of engagement of volunteering for community or public service activities (0.33), regularly contributing to charitable causes (0.28) and voting in elections (0.27). There are closer genetic relationships between donating and the other two activities; volunteering and voting are not genetically correlated. Further, we show that most of the correlation between civic engagement and both positive emotionality and verbal IQ can be attributed to genes that affect both traits. These results enrich our understanding of the way in which genetic variation may influence the wide range of collective action problems that individuals face in modern community life.

On the genetic and environmental sources of social and political participation in adolescence and early adulthood

“…Regarding the environmental contribution, environmental factors not shared by family members acting to decrease the similarity of family members (i.e., non-shared environmental effects) were strongest, whereas shared environmental effects (i.e., factors making people from the same family more similar) are considerably smaller or even negligible. Similar results were found for individual differences in acts of civic engagement, volunteering, charitable giving, and social activities [ 15 , 21 ]. However, we are not aware of behavior genetic studies that have looked at the genetic and environmental contributions to the variance in SOP operationalized as integration in a variety of social groups.…”

“…[ 20 ]). All items were answered with yes or no and combined into an additive index, with higher values indicating higher POP [ 15 ]. Cronbach’s alpha across all family members was .584, which is consistent with results for similar scales in the previous literature [ 11 ] and acceptable for such a brief scale summing rather heterogeneous behaviors subsumed under the multifaceted construct of POP [ 1 ].…”

“…However, we are not aware of behavior genetic studies that have looked at the genetic and environmental contributions to the variance in SOP operationalized as integration in a variety of social groups. This concept of SOP taps into a special form of social participation aimed at social integration per se and not necessarily at civic duty or social responsibility compared to previous studies interested in civic engagement and volunteerism in a narrower sense [ 15 , 21 ]. Individual differences in PI also seem to be primarily due to genetic differences and variation in individual environmental experiences, with only small effects of the shared environment [ 14 , 22 ], leading Klemmensen et al [ 9 ] to the conclusion that PI might be a dispositional trait and part of a person’s political personality.…”

Solving the puzzle of collective action through inter-individual differences

“…Dawes et al [34] test the heritability of cooperativeness in humans in terms of civic engagement, using data from a longitudinal twin study. They assess civic engagement based on voting in elections, volunteering for community service and contributing to charitable causes, which all involve an incentive to free-ride on the cooperativeness of others.…”

An Experimental Examination of Demand-Side Preferences for Female and Male National Leaders

“…The literature provides substantial evidence in support of gender effects associated with stereotyping and other demand-related factors, but there is a great deal of variance left to be explained regarding how gender-based considerations affect leadership preferences. Research shows that biological factors also contribute to human behavior (e.g., Chagnon and Irons, 1979 ; Scarr and McCartney, 1983 ; Bouchard, 2004 ; Faulkner et al, 2004 ; Iofrida et al, 2014 ; Manuck and McCaffery, 2014 ), including political behavior (e.g., Alford and Hibbing, 2004 ; Alford et al, 2005 ; Kanai et al, 2011 ; Arceneaux et al, 2012 ; Hatemi and McDermott, 2012 ; Aarøe and Petersen, 2013 ; Merolla et al, 2013 ; Adams et al, 2014 ; Dawes et al, 2014 , 2015 ; French et al, 2014 ; Shah et al, 2015 ; Stewart et al, 2015 ; Klofstad, 2016 ; Murray, 2017 ; Weinschenk and Dawes, 2017 ). The research presented here suggests that another key effect, evolution by natural selection, a foundational explanation for the diversity and function of living organisms, may explain additional variance.…”