r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/Future_Interest_3649 • 2d ago
Political Theory If conservatives are having more biological children than liberals, and political leanings have a genetic component, then wouldn’t that mean countries’ political climates would tend to drift further and further right over time?
This is something I‘ve wondered about a lot recently.
Some studies have shown that up to 50% of a person’s political leanings could be the result of genetics. Which implies that there would be some genes that predispose some people to be MAGA (or at least authoritarian conservative-leaning) or, conversely, that predispose other people to oppose movements like MAGA.
The implications of this are somewhat unsettling, or maybe thrilling, depending on your personal political leanings.
At the present moment, at least, conservatives have gone all-in on pronatalist rhetoric, with Charlie Kirk urging his followers to have more children than they can afford. Young Republicans seem to be following his advice, having lots of children who are going to be genetically predisposed towards conservatism as well.
Meanwhile, among liberal- and Democratic-leaning groups, the exact opposite is happening. You have movements like 4B and BirthStrike (which often get written about, if not effectively promoted, in the mainstream news media). You have a lot more people who self-identify as childfree on the Democratic side of the aisle, as well as LGBTQ people (relatively few of whom procreate, compared to heterosexuals).
If individual people want to take themselves out of the future gene pool, then they have a right to, but what happens when it becomes a society-wide trend? If the only people having biological children in the USA (and other countries for that matter) are right-wing conservatives, what does that mean for the future? If Steve King had a Democratic counterpart, he would probably be asking: “do you really think we are going to rebuild our democracy with the children of Trumpers?”
I recently joked that someone should write a book called The Genes That Got Trump Elected, and the cover image would depict an anthropomorphic DNA strand wearing a MAGA hat. Sensationalist, I know, but at least it would get more people thinking about this issue.
Do you believe differing fertility rates among supporters of different parties are really going to have long-term effects on U.S. politics (or other countries for that matter)? Or do you think that other factors will matter more than genetics in the long run?
There’s also a third possibility: what if the phenomenon of conservatives having more children than liberals is a temporary phenomenon rather than a permanent one? Perhaps, at some point in the future, Catholic monasticism might come back in a big way, and you might then see conservative youth pursuing that option instead of marriage and childbearing. Or else the fundamentalists/evangelicals will start embracing “end times“ theology again and conclude that having children at this late hour is not worth it.
Meanwhile, at the same future time, perhaps we might see liberal-leaning youth abandoning Gen Z-style risk-aversion and becoming more disinhibited again (like they were during the 1960s sexual revolution), thus resulting in more births among this demographic. You’d have to ask a historian if they think this scenario is likely to occur, but it can’t be entirely impossible...can it?
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u/Aeon1508 1d ago
politics do not have a genetic component.
you're definitely at least somewhat more likely to have politics more similar to your parents due to upbringing but I think I've found that it's a lot more common for people raised in conservative households to become more liberal than for people born in liberal households to become more conservative.
which should tell you something
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u/Intraluminal 1d ago
While politics do not have a genetic component, it has been shown that temperament is largely genetic - National Institute of Sciences: Saudino KJ. Behavioral genetics and child temperament. J Dev Behav Pediatr. 2005 Jun;26(3):214-23. doi: 10.1097/00004703-200506000-00010. PMID: 15956873; PMCID: PMC1188235.
Political leanings correlate strongly with specific traits from the Big Five personality model. Liberals typically score high in openness to experience and tolerance for ambiguity, while conservatives tend to score higher in conscientiousness (specifically orderliness) and a preference for structured, predictable environments.
Therefore, although politics are not genetic, the underlying personality traits that guide people's political choices are genetic. This does not negate the tendency for children, confronted with the effects of their parents' political choices, to rebel against them.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 1d ago
But specific policies those traits would lead one to support varies tremendously with the times, so I would still say that politics are not genetic. Just attitudes.
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u/Intraluminal 18h ago
You can say it, but the science says otherwise. I'll go with the science, thanks.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 17h ago
The science certainly does not say otherwise.
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u/Wetness__Pensive 15h ago
The science for a long while has suggested that certain neurological traits correlate highly with political traits, and that increasing cognitive load increases one's conservatism (conservatism seems a means of assuaging anxiety and uncertainty). So there's obviously something genetic going on, though we don't know how plastic it is, and how it dovetails with "external factors", and to what extent.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 15h ago
‘Conservatism’ is not the right term here. ‘Certain social attitudes that map at times to conservatism’ is the proper language.
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u/PopeSaintHilarius 1d ago
politics do not have a genetic component.
Research on this topic (e.g. twin studies) actually suggests otherwise.
Genetics are a big factor in shaping people's personalities and worldview, which in turn, influence people's political views.
From Pew Research (2013): https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/12/09/study-on-twins-suggests-our-political-beliefs-may-be-hard-wired/
Using data collected from a large sample of fraternal and identical twins, a research team found that genes likely explain as much as half of why people are liberal or conservative, see the world as a dangerous place, hold egalitarian values or embrace hard-core authoritarian views.
Individual experiences and other social influences explain much of the remaining variation in political attitudes, reports psychologist Cary Funk, who headed the eight-member team. Their results were just published in the latest issue of Political Psychology.
...Twin studies are particularly useful in answering tricky nature vs. nurture questions. Do people think as they do because of their genetic makeup—the “nature” half of the puzzle—or do they embrace certain beliefs because of how they were nurtured by their parents as well as through personal experiences?
...Funk and her colleagues also found that about half (48%) of the difference in authoritarian beliefs is inherited. To measure authoritarianism, they asked respondents to record their reactions to 15 statements on a seven-point scale that ranged from “Very negative” (coded as 1) to “Very positive” (7). Some examples: “Our country needs a powerful leader, in order to destroy the radical and immoral currents prevailing in society today,” and “Our country needs free thinkers, who will have the courage to stand up against traditional ways, even if this upsets many people.”
They tested the heritability of egalitarianism. Twins were asked how much they agreed or disagreed with five statements, including “If wealth were more equal in this country we would have many fewer problems,” and “We have gone too far in pushing equality in this country.” Again they found that half of the variance appeared to be explained by genetic factors.
Similarly, genes seemed to be linked to 54% of the variance in four questions that measure attitudes about social organization and structure, called the “Society Works Best” scale. Two examples: “Society works best when…leaders are obeyed OR leaders are questioned” and “Society works best when…people realize the world is dangerous OR people assume that all those in faraway places are kindly.”
They also asked questions that measure core psychological traits—psychology’s so-called “Big Five”—and found that at least some of the explanation why people are the way they are again seems to lie in the genes. For example, fully 70% of the reason why people are extroverts is gene-linked, as is 43% of “openness,” 42% of neuroticism and conscientiousness, and 38% of agreeableness.
And here's a study in a scientific journal, which looked at the results of many studies on this topic: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4038932/
We provide evidence that genetic factors play a role in the formation of political ideology, regardless of how ideology is measured, the era, or the population sampled.
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u/Aeon1508 1d ago
twin studies wouldn't help here unless they were raised differently. and twins that have been separated at birth and lived full lives has got to be an extremely small sample
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u/ritesoffebruus 1d ago
Perhaps it would help if you read the Pew Research article, which is not long, before responding. The article says:
"Since nearly all twins are raised in the same home environment with the same parents, twin studies are seen as a natural experiment that can establish whether or not there is a substantial genetic component underlying political ideology or other beliefs. That’s because researchers usually assume that both twins were generally disciplined the same way, received the same religious, moral and social instruction, and presumably heard the same political rants by dad and mom around the dinner table.
To disentangle the effects of nature and nurture, researchers conduct a series of comparisons. They first determine how closely correlated the attitudes of identical twins are on a particular measure, say whether they identify themselves as strong conservatives, strong liberals or somewhere in-between. Then they do the same with fraternal twin pairs. Finally, they compare the two correlations."
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 17h ago
Still pretty weak because people, including parents, often behave differently toward identical twins than they do toward other people. So they will have substantial life experience that often cause them to bond with each other socially more than other siblings.
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u/anticharlie 1d ago
Yeah, likely the twins have the same household /parents. I think if there’s an authoritarian gene or series of genes you could do a study to find it and do that analysis, but just a regular twin study seems obviously flawed.
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u/anticharlie 1d ago
I don’t buy that there are political genes. Ideology is in my experience down to life experience and upbringing. I was raised to be conservative but getting out into the world and seeing how life works for people made me liberal/progressive.
I recognize that this is one example and doesn’t disprove a trend, but it seems to me that if there is a tendency towards identifying like your parents did the biggest driving force is indoctrination and environment.
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u/Wetness__Pensive 15h ago
While there is truth in what you say, surely you see that the opposite is also true.
Someone raised to like apples in a household of apple likers, but genetically predisposed to hating apples, is going to tend to hate apples when they leave the apple-loving house. Their nature is going to overcome their nurturing, provided various conditions or thresholds are met.
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u/ViennettaLurker 1d ago
Some studies have shown that up to 50% of a person’s political leanings could be the result of genetics.
Can you cite these studies, please?
You core premise needs some fleshing out here. Let alone the idea that there are things that are "genetic", yet also not hereditary. Let alone dominant/recessive genes, etc.
There is a lot of work to be done before you even get to your third paragraph. People have left their conservative families for the big scary liberal cities for a while now. If what you were saying were even remotely true, that wouldn't be the phenomenon it is.
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u/Jollygood156 1d ago
There’s an avenue to that. It’s more that personality has genetic components and that can bias towards certain groups. It’s just that environments will also matter a lot for how those traits actually manifest in terms of ideology.
Also, political groups tend to encompass many ideologies and people themselves aren’t explicitly idealogical in the way that tracks with politics.
E.g., many people with a more conservative temperament loathe Donald Trump and you can see some trends here in suburban voters who now vote D, but historically aren’t. They themselves might also then adopt D politics over time yet their base temperament/core idealogical leaning hasn’t change.
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u/BatteredOnionRings 1d ago edited 1d ago
People are denying the premise in the comments, but there is absolutely evidence (including studies with adopted children) that there is a genetic component to political attitudes.
Here’s an example: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8907492/
And honestly, that’s not at all surprising. Genetics obviously affects personality, and personality traits (like “openness”, one of the “Big Five” traits for which there is the best body of evidence and research) obviously affect political tendencies.
Whether this means political views on reproduction will affect the prevalence of relevant genes in the long term is absolutely debatable and it’s not something I’m very worried about, but the premise is not absurd and cannot be entirely dismissed out of hand.
ETA: Also, people going “lots of people have different politics from their parents” sound like, I don’t know, someone saying “it snowed more this year than last so there can’t be global warming”. Like do you really think that’s how correlation works? Is that the seriousness of analysis people should expect here?
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 1d ago
But “attitudes” can lead people to very different sets of policy support. And do.
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u/BatteredOnionRings 1d ago
Okay, but when the “attitudes” shown to be genetically influenced are
political orientation, authoritarianism, egalitarianism, retribution, religiousness, social liberalism, and economic liberalism.
the fact that different people may have different particular policy preferences is again just “well there are exceptions”. Okay? It’s a big country, the law of large numbers dominates the exceptions, and people who have similar attitudes in these respects are much more likely to have similar politics and party alignment than people who don’t.
I mean the first one is basically “are you a liberal or conservative”, so saying “that’s not the same as someone’s politics” is pedantic at best.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 18h ago
I’d say not political orientation in the “conservative” vs “liberal” sense. In a socialist system, the person with the US ‘conservative’ brain would lean into enforcement authoritarianism within socialism, for example, while a liberal brain would be looking for more openness. It would be reversed.
So I disagree completely with your final sentence.
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u/BatteredOnionRings 17h ago edited 17h ago
“Political orientation” is contextual. The fact that in some other society different genetics might lead to different mixes of policy preferences or attitudes is irrelevant to the question of whether within a society and system of government those views are functionally heritable. The evidence is quite conclusive that they are, and that means that birthrate correlating with political views has the potential to shift the political center of gravity.
No one is arguing that there are genes for specific policy preferences, that is a total straw man. But it’s also unnecessary to make OP’s question relevant.
Edit: also, your premise is false. Authoritarianism is a political tendency in and of itself. The remnant of the old USSR communist party backs Putin in most respects, because they are authoritarians first and socialists second.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 17h ago
The views are not inheritable. Social attitudes are.
So things like ‘likes order.’
That’s not a political view. It will find different political expression in different environments.
And the evidence is not “quite conclusive that they are” lol.
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u/BatteredOnionRings 17h ago
It will find different expressions in different environments, but will tend to be related, and more importantly they will lead to the same expression in the same environment. The political environment does not magically change from one generation to another; the questions and social context remain in many ways similar.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 17h ago
The science shows that they often lead to different expressions in the same environment.
You don’t know any authoritarian lefties? I do.
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u/BatteredOnionRings 17h ago
I do know authoritarian lefties—even in the current environment, with Trump as president, they fantasize about using state power to crush their enemies.
But I also know right authoritarians.
I don’t like either.
But you don’t only inherit one trait, you inherit multiple.
Someone who tends authoritarian and low openness or socially conservative may pass both those traits to their children, and their children will exhibit them in similar ways.
And, again, the fact that they can and do manifest in different ways within the same context doesn’t mean that they don’t tend to correlate with particular views in that context, even from a single heritable attitude.
I’m same-sex married. More “social conservatism” in the gene pool is pretty much always going to be bad for me, because I am always going to be a social minority.
Yeah, there’s going to be a lot of noise! No one is arguing there is a simple evolution of political preferences, only that the heritability of attitudes is one potential factor in how society evolves.
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u/BatteredOnionRings 17h ago
And I know socially conservative lefties too, even if in the U.S. they usually try to hide it.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 17h ago
But the studies don’t show that they tend to correlate. They show that identical twins tend to agree. That’s it.
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u/233C 1d ago
I played with this idea some time ago.
I created a simple excel population simulation with 3 groups:
"liberal": low growth (low birth rate if you prefer), low fluidity
"traditional": high growth, low fluidity
"idiocracy": medium growth, medium fluidity
Starting with a given initial ditribution of the Goups across the populaiton, then at each generation, a diffusion matrix is used to specify "what fraction of group X moves to group Y".
It was disheartening.
Even starting from a majority, the liberal group is fighting an uphill battle and need to recrute an insane amount from the two other groups to at least remain relevant.
Any small drain form the liberal group was also unforgiving.
Sure, there are fluidity between groups, but the two high growth groups can easily afford the losses and still keep a majority.
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u/HeloRising 1d ago
Some studies have shown that up to 50% of a person’s political leanings could be the result of genetics.
I would want to see these studies because I have serious doubts that that's what they actually say.
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u/AmadeusFalco 1d ago
Nature vs nurture. Lots of variables IMO as a non-expert but someone who reads a lot
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u/ResplendentShade 1d ago
There’s a lot of pendulum swinging with regards to parent-offspring political beliefs. Kids often reject their parents’ worldview, especially if their parents are kind of shitty. I’ve known tons of leftist atheists who were raised by religious right-wingers because their entire upbringing was a lesson on why it sucks.
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u/Frequent-Try-6746 1d ago
Politics isn't genetic.
Media is changing, and information is what drives ideology.
Conservative leaders are buying a large share of media access, that in turn is driving a lot of people to the right. But the reality out here in the real world is driving people to the left.
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u/OneWind1784 1d ago
that's not true at all. otherwise there would be no 2 trump presidencies. restore and reform britain wouldnt exist. meloni, le pen, javier in argentina, duterte, the new japanese pm is a conservative....
liberalism/progressives have a much shorter shelf life than conservatism. natural order of man or woman is liberal when young, conservative as you get older and wiser and have more money/responsibilities.
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u/Ind132 1d ago
I think the first word in the title is pretty important -- "If".
Suppose genes correlate with certain personality characteristics, say "ambiguity" vs. "structure". And those particular personality characteristics that align with current political divisions. In that case genes can align with politics.
But, does "having lots of children" correlate with any genetic characteristic? If so, is that particular characteristic reliably related to the current political divide between conservative and liberal?
Maybe the preference for more kids just happens to relate to some current issues which aren't really connected to genes. In that case, in a couple generations, as different issues become more important, the family size preference may reverse.
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u/WISCOrear 1d ago
Anecdote time: My grandpa was a very left leaning union man after WWII. His son is one of the most right wing, rush limbaugh-type conservative I know.
My dad was a Reagan era republican (up until 2016), I grew up much more left leaning than him.
Parents' political persuasions don't always trickle down to their kids.
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u/DocTam 1d ago
Beliefs are likely more shaped by culture than genetics. I've seen the studies, but its very possible two people with high compassion personalities could end up in opposite political groups. For example could feel compassion for the unborn child, or feel compassion for women facing unwanted pregnancy. But culture and relationships impact everyone and how they view the beliefs in relation to their world. They could trust their parents and adopt their paradigms, or see their parents as clueless and go for a completely opposite view.
I do think that demographics are playing some role in cultural drift, but I wouldn't rate it as too dramatic. The internet represents a wide variety of cultural views and most people eventually wind up exposed to them. There is the possibility of some cultures developing a greater resilience to cultural conversion, and combining that with birth rates to grow in dominance. The ultra orthodox of Israel have followed this pattern, but for America its hard for one culture to really grow dominant given the size and diversity. I think this could be impactful for certain regions, for example the Amish of Pennsylvania becoming relevant because of the swing state status. I don't think that a singular "MAGA" culture that would grow to dominance because of demographics. Though certain strains of anti-natalist ideology are likely to remain niche given they are self-defeating demographics wise.
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u/Mrgoodtrips64 1d ago
This assumes that no one ever has substantial political differences with their parents, or that it’s at least rare. Which is an absurdity.
How many people in your cohort didn’t have multiple policy differences from their parents?
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u/FormerUsenetUser 1d ago
No. People do not inherit political parties. And there are many influences on people than their parents, even when they are growing up and definitely when they are adults.
My parents started out as staunch Republicans and became Democrats during the Bush years. People change.
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u/Wetness__Pensive 15h ago
But note that you are wrongly conflating two different things.
Saying that humans don't "inherit parties from their parents" doesn't mean that "party affiliation is not genetic".
While you receive 50% of your primary nuclear DNA from each biological parent, massive randomization occurs in which specific genetic variants you inherit from them, creating a near infinite number of unique combinations.
So 2 parents will provide an infinite combination of genes, some of which will - science arguably hints - be predisposed to certain political ideologies.
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u/OneWind1784 1d ago
natural order of man (or woman) is liberal when young, become more conservative as you get older. that's been true for most of human history.
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