Political Attitudes Develop Independently of Personality Traits

The primary assumption within the recent personality and political orientations literature is that personality traits cause people to develop political attitudes. In contrast, research relying on traditional psychological and developmental theories suggests the relationship between most personality dimensions and political orientations are either not significant or weak. Research from behavioral genetics suggests the covariance between personality and political preferences is not causal, but due to a common, latent genetic factor that mutually influences both. The contradictory assumptions and findings from these research streams have yet to be resolved. This is in part due to the reliance on cross-sectional data and the lack of longitudinal genetically informative data. Here, using two independent longitudinal genetically informative samples, we examine the joint development of personality traits and attitude dimensions to explore the underlying causal mechanisms that drive the relationship between these features and provide a first step in resolving the causal question. We find change in personality over a ten-year period does not predict change in political attitudes, which does not support a causal relationship between personality traits and political attitudes as is frequently assumed. Rather, political attitudes are often more stable than the key personality traits assumed to be predicting them. Finally, the results from our genetic models find that no additional variance is accounted for by the causal pathway from personality traits to political attitudes. Our findings remain consistent with the original construction of the five-factor model of personality and developmental theories on attitude formation, but challenge recent work in this area

The Genetic and Environmental Foundations of Political, Psychological, Social, and Economic Behaviors: A Panel Study of Twins and Families

Here we introduce the Genetic and Environmental Foundations of Political and Economic Behaviors: A Panel Study of Twins and Families (PIs Alford, Hatemi, Hibbing, Martin, and Smith). This study was designed to explore the genetic and environmental influences on social, economic, and political behaviors and attitudes. It involves identifying the psychological mechanisms that operate on these traits, the heritability of complex economic and political traits under varying conditions, and specific genetic correlates of attitudes and behaviors. In addition to describing the study, we conduct novel analyses on the data, estimating the heritability of two traits so far unexplored in the extant literature: Machiavellianism and Baron-Cohen’s Empathizing Quotient

Males do not reduce the fitness of their female co-twins in contemporary samples.

Lummaa et al. (2007) presented historical data collected from twins born in Finland between 1734 and 1888 which suggested that females (N = 31) born as part of an opposite sex (OS) twin pair were 25% less likely to reproduce than female twins (N = 35) born as part of a same sex (SS) pair. They hypothesized that this reduction in fitness was due to masculinization of the female fetus via prenatal effects of the hormones of a male fetus. Because such masculinization would presumably take place in modern populations as well, it would seem important to establish to what degree it does so, and if so, whether reproduction is affected. We therefore address the question of reproduction differences in individual female twins from same-sex (N = 1979) and opposite-sex (N = 913) dizygotic pairs in studies carried out in Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States. In all three samples, there were no differences in the number of children or age of first pregnancies in women from same sex pairs compared to those from opposite sex pairs. Similarly, there were no differences in psychological femininity between women from pairs of the same or opposite sex

Rheumatology training experience across Europe : Analysis of core competences

Publisher Copyright: © 2016 The Author(s). Copyright: Copyright 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.Background: The aim of this project was to analyze and compare the educational experience in rheumatology specialty training programs across European countries, with a focus on self-reported ability. Method: An electronic survey was designed to assess the training experience in terms of self-reported ability, existence of formal education, number of patients managed and assessments performed during rheumatology training in 21 core competences including managing specific diseases, generic competences and procedures. The target population consisted of rheumatology trainees and recently certified rheumatologists across Europe. The relationship between the country of training and the self-reported ability or training methods for each competence was analyzed through linear or logistic regression, as appropriate. Results: In total 1079 questionnaires from 41 countries were gathered. Self-reported ability was high for most competences, range 7.5-9.4 (0-10 scale) for clinical competences, 5.8-9.0 for technical procedures and 7.8-8.9 for generic competences. Competences with lower self-reported ability included managing patients with vasculitis, identifying crystals and performing an ultrasound. Between 53 and 91 % of the trainees received formal education and between 7 and 61 % of the trainees reported limited practical experience (managing ≤10 patients) in each competence. Evaluation of each competence was reported by 29-60 % of the respondents. In adjusted multivariable analysis, the country of training was associated with significant differences in self-reported ability for all individual competences. Conclusion: Even though self-reported ability is generally high, there are significant differences amongst European countries, including differences in the learning structure and assessment of competences. This suggests that educational outcomes may also differ. Efforts to promote European harmonization in rheumatology training should be encouraged and supported.publishersversionPeer reviewe

The genetics of political attitudes

Political behavior just as all human behavior has biological origins. This examination explains the variation in political behavior as being partly heritable potentially derived from evolutionary natural selection pressures, partly familial socialization and finally, partly unique experience. I present empirical evidence that the traditional environmental theories of political behavior, rational choice and behavioralism, do not adequately explain all the variance in human political behavior; neither theory attempts to take into account where preferences come from, rather they focus entirely on an individual\u27s reaction to their environment. Analyzing twin data from the perspective of biometrical genetic theory combined with the methods of behavior genetics, this study examines the additive genetic, common environment and unique environmental sources of political attitudes, party identification and vote choice