TY - JOUR
T1 - New evidence on the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement
AU - Weinschenk, Aaron C.
AU - Dawes, Christopher T.
AU - Kandler, Christian
AU - Bell, Edward
AU - Riemann, Rainer
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Association for Politics and the Life Sciences.
PY - 2019/3/1
Y1 - 2019/3/1
N2 - We investigate the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement using a new data set containing information on a large sample of young German twins. The TwinLife Study enables us to examine the predominant model of personality, the Big Five framework, as well as traits that fall outside the Big Five, such as cognitive ability, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the underpinnings of political engagement. Our results support previous work showing genetic overlap between some psychological traits and political engagement. More specifically, we find that cognitive ability and openness to experience are correlated with political engagement and that common genes can explain most of the relationship between these psychological traits and political engagement. Relationships between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement exist even at a fairly young age, which is an important finding given that previous work has relied heavily on older samples to study the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement.
AB - We investigate the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement using a new data set containing information on a large sample of young German twins. The TwinLife Study enables us to examine the predominant model of personality, the Big Five framework, as well as traits that fall outside the Big Five, such as cognitive ability, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the underpinnings of political engagement. Our results support previous work showing genetic overlap between some psychological traits and political engagement. More specifically, we find that cognitive ability and openness to experience are correlated with political engagement and that common genes can explain most of the relationship between these psychological traits and political engagement. Relationships between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement exist even at a fairly young age, which is an important finding given that previous work has relied heavily on older samples to study the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement.
KW - Political engagement
KW - cognitive ability
KW - heritability
KW - personality
KW - twins
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85065829254&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/pls.2019.3
DO - 10.1017/pls.2019.3
M3 - Article
C2 - 31094675
AN - SCOPUS:85065829254
SN - 0730-9384
VL - 38
SP - 1
EP - 13
JO - Politics and the Life Sciences
JF - Politics and the Life Sciences
IS - 1
ER -