Not by Twins Alone: Using the Extended Family Design to Investigate Genetic Influence on Political Beliefs

Variance components estimates of political and social attitudes suggest a substantial level of genetic influence, but the results have been challenged because they rely on data from twins only. In this analysis, we include responses from parents and nontwin full siblings of twins, account for measurement error by using a panel design, and estimate genetic and environmental variance by maximum‐likelihood structural equation modeling. By doing so, we address the central concerns of critics, including that the twin‐only design offers no verification of either the equal environments or random mating assumptions. Moving beyond the twin‐only design leads to the conclusion that for most political and social attitudes, genetic influences account for an even greater proportion of individual differences than reported by studies using more limited data and more elementary estimation techniques. These findings make it increasingly difficult to deny that—however indirectly—genetics plays a role in the formation of political and social attitudes.     

The Structure and Dynamics of Group Politics: 1964–1992

In the realm of politics the relevance of groups derives from their centrality to government institutions, the policy process, and election campaigns. In addition, individuals have a predisposition to rely on cues and shortcuts when making choices and forming preferences; groups are ideal for this purpose. Groups help orient individuals to their social world by providing standards, supplying information, and defining friend and foe. If groups are central to politics and political cognition then we should find an underlying political structure within which group attitudes can be organized, and through which other political attitudes, coalitions, and behaviors can be viewed. In our analysis we apply Rabinowitz (1976) Line of Sight method for ordering object pairs consistent with the Euclidean spatial model to the complete series of group thermometer ratings from the NES Presidential Election Studies, 1964 through 1992. The resulting eight group by group matrices are subjected to a series of multidimensional scaling models to determine the underlying structure of the group spatial distances. Our findings suggest that orientations toward groups can be satisfactorily mapped into a two-dimensional space defined by partisan and affective axes. Over this 30-year period we find that attitudes toward groups have become more emotional and less partisan in nature. Interpretation of the group space is further aided by the use of ideal-point regressions that make it possible to place voters, members of the New Deal coalition, and issue publics in the space defined by group attitudes.     

A psycho‐political profile of party activists and left‐wing and right‐wing extremists

Previous studies comparing ideological groups have been restricted to tests of between‐group differences in the means of relevant political psychological variables, thereby neglecting group differences in the variances, meanings and nomological networks of the tested variables. A first exploratory study used data from the European Social Survey (N = 7,314) comparing groups of political party members on the basis of their scores on a self‐placement left–right scale. The second study (N = 69) constituted an in‐depth test for the presence of differences between samples of political activists of moderate parties, communists, anarchists and right‐wing extremists. The results revealed that there is a fair amount of heterogeneity within left‐wing and right‐wing extremists, indicating a substantial amount of within‐group variance of social attitudes, values and prejudice. Moreover, the extremist ideologies are best approached as distinct ideologies that cannot be reduced to extreme versions of moderate ideology, and differences in the meanings and nomological networks of the various extremist ideologies were also obtained. It is erroneous to consider members of extremist groups as being ‘all alike’. The findings obtained from samples of political moderates are not a particularly solid basis for theories about extremism.     

Portugal's administrative elite: Social origins and political attitudes

The primary purpose of the research reported in this paper was to determine if the purge of high‐level civil servants associated with the Salazar‐Caetano dictatorship carried out after the Portuguese Revolution of 25 April 1974 was actually effective in changing the social origins and political attitudes of individuals composing this elite group. Using an abbreviated version of a questionnaire developed at the University of Michigan to study administrative elites in Western Europe, data on careers and political attitudes were gathered. Statistical analyses of these data revealed, inter alia, that there has been some, but not overwhelming, change in recruitment patterns of high‐level civil servants and some change toward greater tolerance for democratic politics and less elitism.     

Placing Racial Stereotypes in Context: Social Desirability and the Politics of Racial Hostility

Past research indicates that diversity at the level of larger geographic units (e.g., counties) is linked to white racial hostility. However, research has not addressed whether diverse local contexts may strengthen or weaken the relationship between racial stereotypes and policy attitudes. In a statewide opinion survey, we find that black‐white racial diversity at the zip‐code level strengthens the connection between racial stereotypes and race‐related policy attitudes among whites. Moreover, this effect is most pronounced among low self‐monitors, individuals who are relatively immune to the effects of egalitarian social norms likely to develop within a racially diverse local area. We find that this racializing effect is most evident for stereotypes (e.g., African Americans are “violent”) that are “relevant” to a given policy (e.g., capital punishment). Our findings lend nuance to research on the political effects of racial attitudes and confirm the racializing political effects of diverse residential settings on white Americans.     

The Pegida Movement and German Political Culture: Is Right‐Wing Populism Here to Stay?

This article outlines the rise and fall of the ‘Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West’ (Pegida), a right‐wing populist street movement that originated in the city of Dresden in October 2014 and peaked in January 2015. The Pegida movement combined fear of ‘Islamisation’ with general criticism of Germany's political class and the mainstream media. This ambivalent and largely undefined political profile proved its strength in mobilising a significant minority of right‐wing citizens in the local context of Dresden and the federal state of Saxony, but generally failed to spill over to other parts of Germany. The social profile of the Pegida movement, which included ‘ordinary citizens’ with centre‐right to far‐right attitudes, points to significant overlap between general disenchantment of the political centre ground in Germany with the political system, as outlined in recent sociological research, and the ability of a largely leaderless populism to mobilise in the streets.     

Shades of Faith: Religious Foundations of Political Attitudes among African Americans,Latinos, and Whites

Although there is considerable evidence that religion influences political opinions, it is unclear how this story plays out across different segments of the U.S. population. Utilizing the 2000 Religion and Politics Survey, we examine the effects of religious beliefs, behaviors, and affiliations on citizens’ attitudes relating to issues of egalitarianism. Our study is one of the few to comparatively analyze the link between religious measures and political outlooks for the nation's three largest ethno‐racial groups. The findings show that conservative Christianity is consistently associated with less tolerant and less egalitarian views among whites. Religious African Americans and Latinos, however, hold more equitable opinions about disadvantaged individuals. To further strengthen our arguments, we also replicate these results using the 2008 American National Election Study. Overall, we demonstrate that a single perspective on religion and public opinion does not apply to all groups.     

Does social capital increase public support for economic globalisation?

The dominant explanation of public attitudes vis‐à‐vis economic globalisation focuses on re‐distributional implications, with an emphasis on factor endowments and government‐sponsored safety nets (the compensation hypothesis). The empirical implication of these theoretical arguments is that in advanced economies, on which this article focuses, individuals endowed with less human and financial capital will be more likely to experience income losses. Hence they will oppose economic openness unless they are compensated by the government. It is argued here that including social capital in the analysis can fill two gaps in explanations relying on factor endowments and the compensation hypothesis. First, generalised trust – one key aspect of social capital – constitutes a personal endowment alongside human and financial capital. Second, structural social capital – another key aspect of social capital – can be regarded as a nongovernmental social safety net that can compensate for endowment‐related disadvantages of individuals. Both aspects of social capital are expected to contribute, for distinct reasons, to more positive views on economic openness. The empirical testing relies on survey data for two countries: Switzerland and the United States. For both countries, the results indicate that generalised trust has a strong, positive effect on public opinion of economic globalisation, whereas structural social capital has no effect.     

Expertise and Bias in Political Communication Networks

Citizens minimize information costs by obtaining political guidance from others who have already assumed the costs of acquiring and processing political information. A problem occurs because ideal informants, typically characterized by the joint presence of political expertise and shared viewpoints, are frequently unavailable or rare within the groups where individuals are located. Hence, individuals must often look beyond their own group boundaries to find such informants. The problem is that obtaining information from individuals located beyond their own groups produces additional costs. Moreover, the availability of ideal informants varies across groups and settings, with the potential to produce (1) context‐dependent patterns of informant centrality, which in turn generate (2) varying levels of polarization among groups and (3) biases in favor of some groups at the expense of others. The article's analysis is based on a series of small‐group experiments, with aggregate implications addressed using a simple agent‐based model.     

An Insider–Outsider Theory of Popular Tolerance for Corrupt Politicians

This article addresses the puzzle of electoral support for corrupt politicians in emerging democracies by examining citizens’ varying attitudes toward political corruption. We make an important theoretical distinction between perceptions of and tolerance for corruption, and argue that these different attitudes vary across individuals depending on whether they are political insiders or outsiders. We test our theory using Afrobarometer survey data from 18 sub‐Saharan African countries and find that individuals included within clientelistic networks simultaneously perceive corruption as ubiquitous and are more tolerant of malfeasance. Meanwhile, those individuals with partisan or ethnic ties to the incumbent are less likely to consider corruption as widespread. Finally, we explore whether variation in attitudes toward corruption influences citizens’ voting behavior, and find that insiders are less likely to “vote the rascals out.”     

Consensus,constraint, and political polarization in recent presidential elections

By reexamining the structure of political attitudes among Americans in the period 1956–72, using both the items and coding scheme as given inThe Changing American Voter (1976) by Nie and his associates and using only domestic attitude items, but including all available responses, we have found that the major type of change between the 1950s and the 1970s is not an increase in internal constraint (ideological thinking of any sort) but an increase in political attitude polarization. Further, this analysis indicates that when interitem associations are used to measure constraints present in the entire population, a major source of political attitude constraint is ignored—the constraints present within the social, political and demographic groupings within the society. The major types of attitude constraints in our society are likely to be external to the attitudes themselves. Understanding electoral outcomes will necessitate understanding the nature of electoral coalitions formed across social and political groupings.     

The Relationship between Genes,Psychological Traits,and Political Participation

Recent research demonstrates that a wide range of political attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors can be explained in part by genetic variation. However, these studies have not yet identified the mechanisms that generate such a relationship. Some scholars have speculated that psychological traits mediate the relationship between genes and political participation, but so far there have been no empirical tests. Here we focus on the role of three psychological traits that are believed to influence political participation: cognitive ability, personal control, and extraversion. Utilizing a unique sample of more than 2,000 Swedish twin pairs, we show that a common genetic factor can explain most of the relationship between these psychological traits and acts of political participation, as well as predispositions related to participation. While our analysis is not a definitive test, our results suggest an upper bound for a proposed mediation relationship between genes, psychological traits, and political participation.     

The relationship between political attitudes and political participation: Evidence from monozygotic twins in the United States,Sweden, Germany,and Denmark

Many studies have shown that political efficacy, interest in politics, and political knowledge are strongly related to political participation. In most analyses, these variables are described as having a causal effect on participation. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the relationship between political attitudes and participation is confounded by familial factors. By using the discordant twin design, which relates within-pair differences in political attitudes to within-pair differences in political participation, we are able to examine the relationship net of confounding factors rooted in genes and the early rearing environment. Using four samples of monozygotic twins from the United States, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark, we find that the relationship between political attitudes and political participation is confounded to a large extent. This study makes an important contribution to the literature on political attitudes and political participation given the longstanding idea that attitudes cause political participation. Our findings also have practical implications for those interested in elevating levels of political participation. In addition, they have important implications for how scholars theorize about, model, and examine political participation in the future.     

Disagreeing about Disagreement: How Conflict in Social Networks Affects Political Behavior

At the center of debates on deliberative democracy is the issue of how much deliberation citizens experience in their social networks. These “disagreements about disagreement” come in a variety of forms, with scholars advocating different empirical approaches (e.g., Huckfeldt, Johnson, and Sprague 2004 ; Mutz 2006 ) and coming to different substantive conclusions. We address these discrepancies by going back to the basics: investigating the consequences of conceptual and measurement differences for key findings relating interpersonal political disagreement to political attitudes and behaviors. Drawing on the 2008–2009 ANES panel study, we find evidence that different measures of disagreement have distinct effects when it comes to individuals’ preferences, patterns of engagement, and propensities to participate. We discuss the implications for the study of social influence; as interpersonal disagreement can mean different things, scholars should think carefully about how to study it and should exercise caution when making pronouncements about its empirical and democratic consequences.     

Assortative Mating on Ideology Could Operate Through Olfactory Cues

Mates appear to assort on political attitudes more than any other social, behavioral, or physical trait, besides religion. Yet the process by which ideologically similar mates end up together remains ambiguous. Mates do not appear to consciously select one another based on ideology, nor does similarity result from convergence. Recently, several lines of inquiry have converged on the finding that olfactory processes have an important role in both political ideology and mate selection. Here we integrate extant studies of attraction, ideology, and olfaction and explore the possibility that assortation on political attitudes may result, in part, from greater attraction to the scent of those with shared ideology. We conduct a study in which individuals evaluated the body odor of unknown others, observing that individuals are more attracted to their ideological concomitants.     

Behavioral Public Administration: Combining Insights from Public Administration and Psychology

Behavioral public administration is the analysis of public administration from the micro‐level perspective of individual behavior and attitudes by drawing on insights from psychology on the behavior of individuals and groups. The authors discuss how scholars in public administration currently draw on theories and methods from psychology and related fields and point to research in public administration that could benefit from further integration. An analysis of public administration topics through a psychological lens can be useful to confirm, add nuance to, or extend classical public administration theories. As such, behavioral public administration complements traditional public administration. Furthermore, it could be a two‐way street for psychologists who want to test the external validity of their theories in a political‐administrative setting. Finally, four principles are proposed to narrow the gap between public administration and psychology.     

The moderating role of identification and campaign exposure in party cueing effects

In a democracy, citizens are expected to have political opinions. Previous research has shown that citizens, in part, form their opinions by following cues from political parties. Building on this literature, this article argues that these cueing effects are the result of individuals identifying with political parties, leading to parties as credible sources and alignment of attitudes to maintain in-group coherence (motivated reasoning). However, party cues can only be successful when individuals are actually exposed to these cues, which previous research has not explicitly studied. Using survey data (N = 20,893) collected from 21 EU member states, this study shows that cueing effects indeed depend on the strength of party identification and the degree of exposure. These results demonstrate the contingent nature of party cueing effects which are also changing as party loyalties decrease.     

Taking Threat Seriously: Prejudice,Principle, and Attitudes Toward Racial Policies

Drawing from group theories of race-related attitudes and electoral politics, we develop and test how anxiety influences the relative weight of prejudice as a determinant of individuals’ support for racial policies. We hypothesize that prejudice will more strongly influence the racial policy preferences of people who are feeling anxious than it will for people who are not. Using an experimental design we manipulate subjects’ levels of threat and find significant treatment effects, as hypothesized. We find that individuals’ racial policy attitudes are partially conditional on their affective states: individuals who feel anxious report less support for racial policies than those individuals who do not feel anxious, even when this threat is stimulated by non-racial content. More broadly, we conclude that affect is central to a better understanding of individuals’ political attitudes and behaviors.     

Oxytocin and the Biological Basis for Interpersonal and Political Trust

Political scientists have documented the many ways in which trust influences attitudes and behaviors that are important for the legitimacy and stability of democratic political systems. They have also explored the social, economic, and political factors that tend to increase levels of trust in others, in political figures, and in government. Neuroeconomic studies have shown that the neuroactive hormone oxytocin, a peptide that plays a key role in social attachment and affiliation in non-human mammals, is associated with trust and reciprocity in humans (e.g., Kosfeld et al., Nature 435:673–676, 2005; Zak et al., Horm Beh 48:522–527, 2005). While oxytocin has been linked to indicators of interpersonal trust, we do not know if it extends to trust in government actors and institutions. In order to explore these relationships, we conducted an experiment in which subjects were randomly assigned to receive a placebo or 40 IU of oxytocin administered intranasally. We show that manipulating oxytocin increases individuals’ interpersonal trust. It also has effects on trust in political figures and in government, though only for certain partisan groups and for those low in levels of interpersonal trust.     

The Catastrophic Link Between the Importance and Extremity of Political Attitudes

The catastrophe theory of attitudes (Latané and Nowak, 1994) predicts that unimportant attitudes act as continuous dimensions, with normal distributions and gradual changes in evaluation, while important attitudes act as categories, with bipolar or unipolar extreme distributions and catastrophic (abrupt) changes in evaluation. A major derivation from this theory is that attitude importance and extremity should be correlated, with more important attitudes being more extreme. This prediction was confirmed for 14 specific political issues at both the group and the individual level, as well as for political involvement and general liberalism. However, general political involvement was not related to the extremity of evaluation for specific issues; similarly, partisanship predicted extremity of general liberalism but not extremity on specific issues. Results suggest that attitude importance and extremity must be measured at corresponding levels of specificity in order for a relationship between them to hold. These results have implications for attitude change in both individuals and societies.