It has often been assumed that a person's political beliefs and ideologies are a result of "nurture" - the beliefs shared by one's nuclear family - but a new study says that "nature" is what causes some to lean politically conservative while others lean politically liberal. And nature has a name: DRD4.
The Dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4) has been dubbed the "adventure gene" and has even been studied as a gene linked to fairness. In a recent study, researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have shown for the first time that not only do genes affect our social beliefs, but that Singaporean Chinese females who possess a particular variant of the Dopamine D4 receptor gene lean more to the right, according to a press release.
According to professors Richard P. Ebstein from the Department of Psychology and Chew Soo Hong from the Department of Economics at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the DRD4 receptor gene that codes for a receptor for the brain chemical, dopamine, has previously been shown to be associated with risky, impulsive behaviors, including financial risk and has been sometimes termed as the "adventure" gene, referring to its role in risky behavior.
The duo surveyed 1,771 Singaporean Chinese undergraduates from NUS to determine whether the person identifies as conservative or liberal. Blood and DNA samples were also taken from the participants.
Everyone has the DRD4 gene - every one of us - but the tests at NUS showed that less than 50 percent of the study subjects had the variant of the gene that is tied to high-risk behavior and attitudes. The women with a variant of Dopamine D4 receptor gene - the 4R/4R variant - showed a predisposition to low risk attitudes and political conservatism.
"Our findings have shown that despite a country's political system or even culture, political ideology is in part hard wired by our genes," Chew explained, according to the press release. "The results of our Singapore study also suggest that attempts to change ideology may be difficult since some of our beliefs are built in and hence less sensitive to peer pressure and propaganda from various sources."
"Our results and those from studies of other complex human behaviors suggests that many genes contribute to these traits and the challenge today is to continue to find all the genes involved," Ebstein added. "Importantly, genetic effects only explain some of the differences between subjects' ideology and we are also interested in how the environment in partnership with genes shapes how we think about ideological issues."
The findings were published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the Royal Society Section B.
