Scientists Identify "Liberal Gene" "Never mind education, background, or ethnicity, researchers suggest—political leanings may be encoded in your genes. Scientists at UC San Diego and Harvard University have identified a genetic variation that, when considered in tandem with how many friends somebody had in high school, was likely to make somebody swing left. "It is the crucial interaction of two factors—the genetic predisposition and the environmental condition of having many friends in adolescence—that is associated with being more liberal," the authors write. This held true regardless of gender, age, or background, leading researchers to conclude that "ideology is affected not just by social factors, but also by a dopamine receptor gene called DRD4." http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/weird/Scientists-May-Have-IDd-Liberal-Gene-105917218.html
People would be surprised to know the extent to which we are influenced by our genes. Even minute personality traits and preferences. We really are our genes to a great extent.
So why is the many friends factor not billed as the crucial one? from the study as reported in Discover: America has a high percentage of 7R variants, as do other nomadic or immigrant peoples - long sedentary populations, such as most Asian cultures, have much lower percentages of 7Rs.
Nonetheless, we have a powerful ability to transcend our genetic programming. Our uniquely massive forebrain gives us the unique power to override instinctive behavior with reasoned and learned behavior. As I have often pointed out, the most astounding example of this is the fact that we are a pack-social species, programmed by instinct to live in small extended family units whose members have trusted and cared for each other since birth, regarding other packs as hostile competitors for scarce resources. Yet 12,000 years after the Neolithic Revolution, here we are living very nearly as a herd-social species, granting minimal respect and support to anonymous strangers, and living in harmony and cooperation with people on the other side of the planet who are nothing more than abstractions to us, because reasoning and learning tell us that this is a far more pleasant life than the instinctive way. Of course the genetic programming is still there, and one of us backslides into caveman behavior often enough to make sure the rest of us don't forget it. Nonetheless, notwithstanding the dire alarms of the news media, this is rare enough that most of the time it doesn't substantively affect our ability to keep civilization, a most unnatural, counterinstinctive way of life, running more-or-less smoothly.
I wouldn't say civilization is counter-instinctive. I find the idea of an inclusive world where even a random stranger is 'one of your kind' immediately more reassuring and safe than one where that random stranger is your enemy. I'm not sure that that comes from reasoning and learning.
I dont think so. I think our brains or what people refer to as their "mind" has more to do with these things and also life experiences. Look at how so many peoples views change as they age. One area where there may be a gene for is sexuality because that usually doesnt change, in terms of a preference where you would notice a drastic alteration because that usually doesnt change. Its the old "nature .vs nurture" argument...its an old argument.
But your gigantic forebrain has been doing battle with your instincts since your parents started raising you. At this age you've been separated from a good many of your instincts. What you find "reassuring and safe" is as much what your parents taught you as what you inherited from your Stone Age ancestors. Put yourself in the Paleolithic Era, when you have to chase your food across the landscape and there is no way to store a significant surplus, so your clan is always one bad year away from a famine. Then watch the clan from the next valley march into your hunting and gathering territory and start poaching your scarce, precious resources. We don't have to speculate, compelling evidence is all around us. Virtually all pack-social animal species operate this way. Wolves, lions, gorillas, horses, none of them are gracious to the intrusion of another pack onto their hunting or grazing territory, except during an exceptionally bountiful year when there's more food than anybody can eat. Yes, they all might accept a single individual who survived the annihilation of his pack or who was thrown out by the alpha male or female; after all a little chlorine in the ol' gene pool never hurt anybody. (Well not gorillas, but anthropologists suggest that Paleolithic humans ritually traded children with other clans.) But the appearance of another pack in their territory means war.
Who's to say we've not continued to evolve through civilization to become more harmonious cohabitators? Perhaps civilization put new selective pressures on us and the result was a tamer, more domesticated version of h. sapiens. However, not all of us are tame. There are lots of impulsive people out there, who wouldn't bat an eye to cut a throat to get what they want. Those people often find themselves in jail. But your point--that we are able to override instinct--is still a somewhat valid point. In fact, I'm pretty sure there are specific purpose brain regions that give us that ability. Another point I'd make is that if we're not aware of the arbitrary preferences genes give us, then we're helpless to not be influenced by them.
Don't we still behave like that? (i.e. "White Flight", the whole poor blacks vs poor Mexicans, middle class vs lower class...etc there are a lot of us vs them scenarios that everyone has probably been a part of a sometime) We are still hostile to new groups invading what we consider to be our territory, our resources, our culture and way of life. We as humans seem to fit your definition of pack-social behavior to a tee. We can play nice with other strangers as long as they keep their distance just like other pack social creatures. It doesn't seem like we've really changed all that much.
I think there's a "middle way"-there's a potential that any random person might be okay/helpful/non-malignant-or the opposite: that they might be a menace. I think (maybe) it's people of a liberal bent who are more generally open to the possibility of non-malignness, while conservatives are more inclined to believe the opposite. Also maybe conservatives are more inclined to believe the opposite on a broader array of factors (I'm thinking nonconformity to norms here). Not that given any particular issue, a liberal can't be a flaming bigot, or a conservative can't be surprisingly openminded. Funny how people exist in three dimensions like that.
I think this study is done "tongue in cheek." Draw whatever conclusions you want from it, but it's not important.
I can almost guarantee you that it was not done "tongue in cheek." The reason we're seeing more of these types of studies is because we live in a time in which we have ginormous amounts of computational power and stores of genomic information together. It's therefore easier to find correlations. You can expect to see a lot more "studies" like this in the future, as well as NOT see many more fascinating studies which don't have provocative headlines. People are often surprised to hear "A gene for liberalism" or a "gene for stupidity" or "a gene for stuttering" or whatever it is. People who are genuinely curious about this will learn what scientists mean by this, and find out that it's not really that surprising and that it doesn't discount important environmental factors, because these people will go out and read books and learn about genetics. It certainly doesn't suggest any kind of genetic determinism. I guess what it is that I am suggesting is that people read books about genetics.
