A Genetic Basis of Economic Egalitarianism

Studies of political attitudes and ideologies have sought to explain their origin. They have been assumed to be a result of political values ingrained during the process of socialization until early adulthood, as well as personal political experience, party affiliation, social strata, etc. As a consequence of these environment-dominated explanations, most biology-based accounts of political preference have never been considered. However, in the light of evidence accumulated in recent years, the view that political attitudes are detached from any physical properties became unsustainable. In this paper, we investigate the origins of social justice attitudes, with special focus on economic egalitarianism and its potential genetic basis. We use Minnesota Twin Study data from 2008, collected from samples of monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs (n = 573) in order to estimate the additive genetic, shared environmental, and unique environmental components of social justice attitudes. Our results show that the large portion of the variance in a four-item economic egalitarianism scale can be attributed to genetic factor. At the same time, shared environment, as a socializing factor, has no significant effect. The effect of environment seems to be fully reserved for unique personal experience. Our findings further problematize a long-standing view that social justice attitudes are dominantly determined by socialization.     

Marriage systems and remarriage in 19th century Hungary: a comparative study

The paper tries to examine the intensity and possible influencing factors of remarriages in two distant communities of historic Hungary during the 19th century. It uses longitudinal data gained from parish registers and family reconstitution method and event history models for the analysis of remarriage. Having only incomplete information on the social status of widowed persons, we used sex, age at widowhood, period, duration of widowhood and family composition as independent variables in the models. The analysis could prove that there were considerable differences within the ‘Eastern marriage pattern’: the analysed Transylvanian community showed a higher propensity to remarry than the West Hungarian one. This result fits well into the differing demographic patterns of the two communities. The most probable causes of these differences were better mortality and differing social composition in the Hungarian village. High propensity to remarry and the high proportion of widower/widow marriages stress the unique character of the Transylvanian community. Otherwise the role of sex was decisive in remarriage, that of age and duration of widowhood were also considerable, while period effect could not be observed. The presence of working-age sons decreased the relative risk of remarriage significantly. In this respect there were no considerable differences between the studied communities, and the results are similar to those of other research.     

Cue utilization in the product authentication process: a framework and research agenda for product counterfeit prevention

Scholars suggest that consumers rely on heuristics to evaluate products. They employ both extrinsic and intrinsic cues to evaluate product quality and utilize the same cues to differentiate between counterfeit and genuine products. This has far-reaching public health, economic, product authentication, and even criminal justice policy implications due to the emerging ideas of criminalizing the purchase of counterfeit goods. In order to predict the viability and the possible effects of such a policy, a thorough understanding of consumer attitudes toward counterfeits, purchase motivation, and behavior, as well as of their ability to distinguish between genuine and counterfeit goods, is imperative. Building on cue utilization theory, this article develops a framework for understanding how consumers develop and utilize heuristics for product authentication in the context of intellectual property infringements and outlines a research agenda. Additionally, it helps to inform the development of prevention and enforcement efforts, in consumer education and enforcement agent training, as well as a basis for policy decisions.