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Twin studies
In cooperation with the Danish Twin Registry we
asked Danish twins about how they participate in
politics, where they place themselves on a right-
left political scale, how interested they are in poli-
tics and many other questions about social values
and political attitudes.
Twin studies are particularly well suited to iden-
tifying heritability in a given area. In this type
of study, we compare responses from fraternal
twins with responses from identical twins. If the
responses from the identical twins are more uni-
form than the responses from the fraternal twins,
we have reason to believe that there is a genetic
component in the expression of attitude.
There are two reasons for believing that this ‘ho-
mogeneity’ is due to heritability: (1) identical
twins are 100% identical, whereas fraternal twins
on average are 50% identical; (2) each set of twins
is exposed to the same early socialisation in their
nuclear families. Socialisation therefore cannot
explain the more uniform responses among the
identical twins, which leaves only the ‘homogene-
ity’ in biology to explain why the identical twins
are more alike.
The initial results
So what do the initial Danish twin studies show?
Surprisingly, it turns out that the hereditary com-
ponent in political participation is quite large. We
have measured political participation in activities
such as taking part in a demonstration, writing
to a politician etc. Approximately half of the vari-
ation we measure can be explained by a genetic
component.
The fact that we find largely the same results in
American twin studies conducted by our partners
makes the result even more sensational. It is re-
62 POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR
markable that heritability is significant for politi-
cal participation in a political culture that is so dif-
ferent from the Danish political culture.
In addition, we find that ‘political sense of effi-
cacy’, i.e. the feeling that one can make a differ-
ence in politics, to a very great extent stems from
the same basic genetic component that influences
political participation.
This is a very interesting result for research on
political participation. Earlier research has point-
ed out that the feeling of being able to make a
difference in politics is quite decisive for whether
individuals want to engage in politics. The notion
has been that the sense of political efficacy is so-
cialised and something you can acquire given the
right experiences and the right influences from
your surroundings. Our research shows that the
reason a correlation was established between the
two phenomena is that they stem to a large ex-
tent from the same latent genetic factor. In other
words, we are genetically predisposed both to a
great sense of political efficacy and to being politi-
cally active.
Another surprising result is that much of the vari-
ation in political interest can also be explained by
heredity. For those who are politically interested,
approximately 50% of the variation can be ac-
counted for genetically. Again, the result among
American twins is remarkably close to the Danish
results.
Future outcomes
Over the next few years we will be developing the
project via two paths: (1) We will be inves-
tigating how personality inter-
acts with genetics
in forming
political
Political interest – e.g. taking part in a political demonstration is not only a question of socialisation. Political interest is also
genetically determined. Photo: Raadal
attitudes and values. We know from psychology
that personality traits (e.g. extro- or introversion,
conscientiousness or carelessness etc.) are highly
hereditary – it is very difficult to teach an intro-
vert to become extrovert. Our idea is that the
influence of genetics on political behaviour and
attitudes is partly explained by the fact that genet-
ics affect people’s personality, which affects their
attitudes and disposition to be politically active.
(2) We will be investigating how the environment
people move around in interacts with both their
personality and with genetics. The idea is to in-
vestigate under which conditions genetic factors
are especially important,
and under which con-
ditions environmental
factors are significant in terms of explaining po-
litical behaviour and political attitudes.
Our grant from the VELUX FOUNDATION
allows us to follow the same twins over several
years, and we will be the first in the world to study
how nature and nurture affect political attitudes
and behaviour from a dynamic perspective. One
of many interesting questions is whether twins
who were previously very similar become increas-
ingly dissimilar as they complete different educa-
tions and gain different life experiences. The in-
terplay between nature and nurture is precisely a
dynamic process, and it will be interesting to see
if this process also affects the formation of politi-
cal attitudes, the sense of political efficacy and the
inclination to be politically active.
VELUX FOUNDATION
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HUMANITIES