This article talks about
whether attitudes like whether America’s role in Iraq or the importance of one’s
physical appearance are “largely the product of environmental forces, a combination
of upbringing and culture” or something else. The article suggests that something else is the answer, that
attitudes are
“partly, though indirectly, heritable, but that attitudes with high
heritability influence people's actions more strongly than those with weaker
genetic bases.” Twin studies in
looking at whether environmental factors such as "nonshared
environment," or a person's individual experiences outside the family are
useful. Twin studies are consistently
stronger in predicting attitudes than genetic ones, at least among adults. The gathered data of “the team examined
data on 29,691 subjects--including 14,761 adult twins and their parents,
spouses, siblings and adult children--and concluded that the route to
transmitting attitudes within families is complex, probably reflecting a
mixture of assortative mating influences and direct parental transmission. The
team also found that family environment played a greater role in attitude
formation than in personality variables, strengthening the notion that
personality has a stronger genetic component than attitudes.” These studies are interesting as
beliefs and feelings are hard to capture and may change over time. One study interviewed
654 adopted and nonadopted young people about their levels of conservatism and
religious attitudes every year for four years, starting when they were 12. The study found that, “examining the
differences between adopted and nonadopted youngsters in how similar their
attitudes were to those of their parents, the team found a significant, though
relatively small, genetic influence for conservatism in youngsters as early as
the first year of the study, and almost no genetic link for religious
attitudes.”
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