Researchers Find a 'Liberal Gene'

An anonymous reader writes "Liberals may owe their political outlook partly to their genetic make-up, according to new research from the University of California, San Diego, and Harvard University. Ideology is affected not just by social factors, but also by a dopamine receptor gene called DRD4. The study's authors say this is the first research to identify a specific gene that predisposes people to certain political views."

Comments

Re:Whew... So there is hope for a cure?

[mister_dave]

the liberal will gladly give their candy away to the children & the conservative will take the candy away from the little ones and hoard as much as they can get

Nope.

Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household

Re:Whew... So there is hope for a cure?

[chris mazuc]

From your link:

The single biggest predictor of someone's altruism, Willett says, is religion. It increasingly correlates with conservative political affiliations because, as Brooks' book says, "the percentage of self-described Democrats who say they have 'no religion' has more than quadrupled since the early 1970s." America is largely divided between religious givers and secular nongivers, and the former are disproportionately conservative. One demonstration that religion is a strong determinant of charitable behavior is that the least charitable cohort is a relatively small one -- secular conservatives.

How much more likely are they to give to non-religious charities (as in not the church they attend)? Most non-religious people don't go hang out somewhere on Sundays where there is a collection plate going around.

Re:Oh, just great

[rwa2]

Just wanted to bring Jonathan Haidt's "5 Moral Foundations" theory into the conversation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt

Or watch the TED video if you're too lazy to read
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/341

Should be easier to tie in dopamine receptor genes to one or more of those traits:

1. Care for others, protecting them from harm. (He also referred to this dimension as Harm.)
      2. Fairness, Justice, treating others equally.
      3. Loyalty to your group, family, nation. (He also referred to this dimension as Ingroup.)
      4. Respect for tradition and legitimate authority. (He also referred to this dimension as Authority.)
      5. Purity, avoiding disgusting things, foods, actions.

Strange about the introvert vs. extrovert thing... I would have surmised just the opposite... being an introverted engineer liberal type myself. And conservatives are the ones that typically go out to church to collect as a community.

Re:Hmmm...

[careysub]

And then there is this absolutely priceless anecdote about Billy Kristol, the scion of the founder of The Weekly Standard: http://thegspot.typepad.com/blog/2008/10/most-awesome-wi.html .

I remember back in the late '90s when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture to an economic philosophy class I was taking. It was a great lecture, made more so by the fact that the class was only about ten or twelve students and we got got ask all kinds of questions and got a lot of great, provocative answers. Anyhow, Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol back either during the first Bush administration. The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle's chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics. Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon's domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at The White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at UPenn and the Kennedy School of Government. With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. "I oppose it", Irving replied. "It subverts meritocracy."

In the end, conservatives always lose

[pnuema]

In the final analysis, liberals always win. If we didn't, we'd still be living in caves. Always remember that.

Re:Yeah, Right...

[Omestes]

And yet here we are with arguably the most liberal president and congress ever...

I'm arguing. Obama isn't very liberal, he's a conservative Democrat. Why am I arguing this, for the very reasons you state in your post. His actions are not very liberal in that he's basically acting like the conservatives before him. The only liberal thing he has done, so far, is the healthcare crap, which is more like welfare for Insurance companies than any actual liberal proposal.

I am a liberal (according to the silly politics test I'm further left than Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, though also more libertarian than Ron Paul), and Obama just looks like a slightly lesser conservative than Bush, Bush, or Reagan. Same with Clinton, to be honest. I don't think we've had a fully liberal president in the US since FDR.

Re:Oh, just great

[CommieLib]

The whole stimulus thing is a "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" proposition.

If you're a typical high school graduate, deficit spending in a downturn seems like a bad idea. If you're a college graduate (in something other than economics), it seems like a good idea. If you've got an Economics degree, you're not sure.

Here's the thing - all of so-called Keynesian economics revolves around an idea called "The Paradox of Thrift" - an error of composition that says while it may be good for an individual to save in hard times, if everyone does it, the aggregate demand curve shifts leftward and you sink ever deeper into a depression. "Stimulus" spending is a measure to thwart this.

If we accept all of this so far, there are still problems - a high marginal propensity to consume, like the American people have, means that the effect was minimal, i.e., the money would have been spent anyway. Will the money be spent in an economically stimulating way, or will it merely clean out the wish list of the politicians in power? Does the spending create perverse incentives? Does the marginal cost of borrowing outweigh the stimulus as compared to the marginal propensity to consume?

Like I said, these are all open questions IF YOU ACCEPT THE PARADOX OF THRIFT. But the Paradox of Thrift relies on a situation where people are literally, and not figuratively, sticking their money in mattresses. At least, they are neither consuming nor investing - they are holding cash. If you stick in a savings account at the bank - no POT. If you buy gold - no POT. If you invest in your 401k - no POT. This is all because the money is continuing to circulate as capital formation.

You can't fault Keynes for this - in his time, people really, literally, stuck money in their mattresses. This is just one of those things we continue to believe academically because it is INCREDIBLY politically expedient, just like ALL tax cuts pay for themselves (some might, under certain circumstances, at certain times). As an economist, I can stipulate conditions under which stimulus spending might work - but those conditions are not the conditions of the 21st century Western world.

And don't get me started about health care. The problem with health care is insurance, and the bill makes the provision of health care more reliant on insurance. It does something - it makes things far worse. The whole problem is that American refuse to save. Insuring certainties is a sure road to financial ruin - you're not going to outguess the actuaries.