The heritability of foreign policy preferences.
Attitudes towards foreign policy have typically been explained by ideological and demographic factors. We approach this study from a different perspective and ex amine the extent to which foreign policy preferences correspond to genetic variation. Using data from the Minnesota Twin Family Study, we show that a moderate share of individual differences in the degree to which one's foreign policy preferences are hawkish or dovish can be attributed to genetic variation. We also show, based on a bivariate twin model, that foreign policy preferences share a common genetic source of variation with political ideology. This result presents the possibility that ideology may be the causal pathway through which genes affect foreign policy preferences.
Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3265, USA. Skyler@unc.edu
Skyler J
SJ
Cranmer
Christopher T
CT
Dawes
D005260:Female; D005824:Genetics, Behavioral; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011057:Politics; D012931:Social Environment; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014429:Twins, Dizygotic / Q000193:education / Q000235:genetics; D014430:Twins, Monozygotic / Q000193:education / Q000235:genetics; D014857:Warfare / Q000941:ethics