Institute For The Future

Biological Explanations of Everything

Miller McCune highlights a recent study suggesting that there may be some genetic basis for the intensity of a person's political beliefs. In and of themselves, the findings are interesting--if not entirely convincing--but what struck me about the study weren't the specific conclusions about political intensity as such, but the broader point that I think this study highlights: We're increasingly looking for biological explanations for just about everything we do.

 

To their credit, the authors of this particular study, led by Peter Hatemi, present their findings while acknowledging some pretty significant limits to them. First, they say their study, which is based on a reasonably large set of twin-data, suggests that "half of the variance [in the intensity of political beliefs] is accounted for by genes and half by unique experience." Using a separate statistical technique, the effect of genetics on political intensity dropped to about 25 percent. The researchers also note that:

 

It is critical to avoid oversimplification in the understanding of genetic sources of variation. There is no gene “for” being a Republican or Democrat or for voting a certain way or for an opinion on abortion, or any other complex trait. Rather, we are exploring the underlying multidimensional mechanisms and multifactorial liabilities that accumulate to influence individual responses to political aspects of contemporary society. Such behavior cannot exist without a culture any more than it can without a genome.

 

 

In other words, the intensity of one's political beliefs appears to be part genetic, part cultural. No big surprise there.

 

That said, I'm not sure that the vagueness of maybe-this, maybe-that will make it into public discourse. Miller-McCune, which is a generally excellent publications--and which notes the various limits to the study in the body of the article--leads their write-up with "Your genes may determine whether you cling furiously to your political beliefs or cast them aside at a shift in the breeze." From a communications standpoint, this makes sense: Make the story sound interesting and important and bury the questions and limits and so on somewhere further down. But, of course, plenty of people never get past the headline.

 

Late last year, an Italian court altered the sentence of a prisoner based on a genetic mutation--marking the first time that genetic data had ever been deemed a mitigating factor, despite some significant questions about the validity of the science behind the decision (much less the legal ethics.) My sense is that as genetics and neuroscience move from beyond the doctor's office and into our daily lives--from measuring political intensity to musical preferences, we'll increasingly rely on biological explanations of everything--whether or not they are valid.