Researchers from Cornell University and New York University investigated the underlying genetic effects on economic
and political preferences.
They used single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data obtained from 9,836 Swedish twins. A part of the Political Attitudes Battery questionnaire was used to measure five dimensions of political preference: immigration/crime, economic policy, environmentalism, feminism/equality and foreign policy. As for measuring economic policy, participants were asked to indicate their views of various proposals, such as “Decrease the public sector,” “Decrease taxes” and “Have more private companies in health care.” Answer options were presented in a Likert-like scale with five choices ranging from “Very good proposal” to “Very bad proposal.” The results revealed that moderate correlations may exist between economic policy support and the specific genetic markers evaluated.
