TY - JOUR
T1 - Genes, Personality Traits, and the Sense of Civic Duty
AU - Weinschenk, Aaron C.
AU - Dawes, Christopher T.
N1 - Funding Information:
The data for this study come from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS), which was conducted by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development. The study was designed to investigate patterns, predictors, and consequences of midlife development in the areas of physical health, psychological well-being, and social responsibility. Importantly, the study asked a number of questions about politics and personality traits, which we will describe in detail below. The MIDUS survey was conducted in 1995-1996. The baseline MIDUS study is based on data from four subsamples, which include a national RDD (random digit dialing) sample, oversamples from five metropolitan areas, a sample of siblings of individuals from the RDD sample, and a national RDD sample of twin pairs.13 In this article, we rely on the data from the sample of twin pairs. Twin pairs were recruited in a two-part sampling design. The first part of the design involved screening a representative national sample of approximately 50,000 households for the presence of a twin. Those who reported the presence of a twin in the family were then asked whether it would be acceptable for the research team to contact the twins to solicit their participation in the MIDUS study (60% gave permission to contact). All respondents were invited to participate in a phone interview and to complete two self-administered surveys. The twin subsample was administered a short screening survey to assess zygosity and additional twin-specific information.14
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, © The Author(s) 2017.
PY - 2018/1/1
Y1 - 2018/1/1
N2 - Political scientists have long known that the sense of civic duty is one of the strongest predictors of individual voter turnout, yet scholars are only just starting to study and understand the origins of this orientation. Recent genopolitics research has indicated that the sense of civic duty is heritable, and recent research in political psychology has illustrated that individual personality traits, many of which have a heritable component, shape feelings of civic obligation. In this article, we link these two lines of inquiry to better understand how individual differences shape the sense of civic duty. More specifically, we explore the relationship between personality traits, measured using the Big Five model; genes; and the sense of civic duty. We show that genetic factors account for between 70% and 87% of the correlation between civic duty and four of the Big Five personality traits. Overall, the results presented here expand our understanding of the process through which prosocial orientations, such as civic duty, are formed.
AB - Political scientists have long known that the sense of civic duty is one of the strongest predictors of individual voter turnout, yet scholars are only just starting to study and understand the origins of this orientation. Recent genopolitics research has indicated that the sense of civic duty is heritable, and recent research in political psychology has illustrated that individual personality traits, many of which have a heritable component, shape feelings of civic obligation. In this article, we link these two lines of inquiry to better understand how individual differences shape the sense of civic duty. More specifically, we explore the relationship between personality traits, measured using the Big Five model; genes; and the sense of civic duty. We show that genetic factors account for between 70% and 87% of the correlation between civic duty and four of the Big Five personality traits. Overall, the results presented here expand our understanding of the process through which prosocial orientations, such as civic duty, are formed.
KW - Big Five
KW - civic duty
KW - genes
KW - genopolitics
KW - personality traits
KW - prosocial
KW - voter turnout
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U2 - 10.1177/1532673X17710760
DO - 10.1177/1532673X17710760
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85037623147
SN - 1532-673X
VL - 46
SP - 47
EP - 76
JO - American Politics Research
JF - American Politics Research
IS - 1
ER -