VCU faculty highlight intersection of social sciences and the life sciences

By Tammy Pham
University News Services

A current study that shows people’s political leanings might be genetic demonstrates how the social sciences and life sciences can intersect.

Published in the current issue of The American Political Scientific Review and written about in The New York Times, the study draws from twins research led by Lindon J. Eaves, Ph.D., professor of human genetics and psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Though Eaves was not directly involved in the study, he allowed three political scientists to analyze his survey data for it. They included John Hibbing, Ph.D., of the University of Nebraska, John R. Alford, Ph.D., of Rice University and Carolyn L. Funk, Ph.D., of VCU. They examined data from two ongoing studies that included findings from more than 8,000 sets of twins.

The researchers chose 28 questions most relevant to political behavior concerning issues such as the death penalty, taxes, school prayer, X-rated films and abortion. Overall, the twins’ answers leaned slightly toward either conservative or liberal views.

The researchers then compared the results from dizygotic, or fraternal, twins to monozygotic, or identical, twins by calculating how often identical twins agreed on a particular issue and subtracting the rate at which fraternal twins agreed upon the same matter.

Results from the study reflected the argument that people’s intuitive reactions to social issues are strongly influenced by genetics.

According to The New York Times, researchers believe gene pools are becoming more and more concentrated, as men and women tend to seek partners with similar principles and ideologies as their own.