Genetics and politics: trait foundations, technological advances, health, and privacy

Genetics influence the psychological underpinnings of political behavior. In this chapter, we explore five topics. First, we discuss the value of genetics for political science and how political science has contributed to understanding public attitudes regarding heritability. Second, we examine twin and family models in political science beyond estimating heritability for political traits, examining covariation and causation. Third, we review genome wide association studies in political science and examine polygenic indices for future studies. Fourth, we discuss how epigenetic factors could be applied to political science research. Fifth, we explore the study of public attitudes towards developments in the field of human genomics. We conclude that without studying genetics, not only may political science theories be incomplete or incorrect, but we as educators may be ill-prepared to confront pressing social issues, such as emerging genetic technologies, and to combat pernicious notions of biological essentialism and eugenics in society.