Correlations between social dominance orientation and political attitudes reflect common genetic underpinnings

Despite popular intuition, positive world beliefs poorly reflect several objective indicators of privilege, including wealth, health, sex, and neighborhood safety

OBJECTIVES

We tested whether generalized beliefs that the world is safe, abundant, pleasurable, and progressing (termed "primal world beliefs") are associated with several objective measures of privilege.

METHODS

Three studies (N = 16,547) tested multiple relationships between indicators of privilege-including socioeconomic status, health, sex, and neighborhood safety-and relevant world beliefs, as well as researchers and laypeople's expectations of these relationships. Samples were mostly from the USA and included general population samples (Study 2) as well as focused samples of academic researchers (Study 1) and people who had experienced serious illness or trauma (Study 3).

RESULTS

Studies 1-2 found mostly negligible relationships between world beliefs and indicators of privilege, which were invariably lower than researcher predictions (e.g., instead of the expected r = 0.33, neighborhood affluence correlated with Abundant world belief at r = 0.01). Study 3 found that people who had experienced serious illness (cancer, cystic fibrosis) only showed modest differences in beliefs from controls.

CONCLUSIONS

While results do not preclude that some individuals' beliefs were meaningfully affected by life events, they imply that such changes are smaller or less uniform than widely believed and that knowing a person's demographic background may tell us relatively little about their beliefs (and vice versa).

Attachment and Political Personality are Heritable and Distinct Systems, and Both Share Genetics with Interpersonal Trust and Altruism

The attachment and caregiving domains maintain proximity and care-giving behavior between parents and offspring, in a way that has been argued to shape people's mental models of how relationships work, resulting in secure, anxious or avoidant interpersonal styles in adulthood. Several theorists have suggested that the attachment system is closely connected to orientations and behaviors in social and political domains, which should be grounded in the same set of familial experiences as are the different attachment styles. We use a sample of Norwegian twins (N = 1987) to assess the genetic and environmental relationship between attachment, trust, altruism, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and social dominance orientation (SDO). Results indicate no shared environmental overlap between attachment and ideology, nor even between the attachment styles or between the ideological traits, challenging conventional wisdom in developmental, social, and political psychology. Rather, evidence supports two functionally distinct systems, one for navigating intimate relationships (attachment) and one for navigating social hierarchies (RWA/SDO), with genetic overlap between traits within each system, and two distinct genetic linkages to trust and altruism. This is counter-posed to theoretical perspectives that link attachment, ideology, and interpersonal orientations through early relational experiences.

The genetic underpinnings of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation explain political attitudes beyond Big Five personality

OBJECTIVE

Political attitudes are predicted by the key ideological variables of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO), as well as some of the Big Five personality traits. Past research indicates that personality and ideological traits are correlated for genetic reasons. A question that has yet to be tested concerns whether the genetic variation underlying the ideological traits of RWA and SDO has distinct contributions to political attitudes, or if genetic variation in political attitudes is subsumed under the genetic variation underlying standard Big Five personality traits.

METHOD

We use data from a sample of 1987 Norwegian twins to assess the genetic and environmental relationships between the Big Five personality traits, RWA, SDO, and their separate contributions to political policy attitudes.

RESULTS

RWA and SDO exhibit very high genetic correlation (r = 0.78) with each other and some genetic overlap with the personality traits of openness and agreeableness. Importantly, they share a larger genetic substrate with political attitudes (e.g., deporting an ethnic minority) than do Big Five personality traits, a relationship that persists even when controlling for the genetic foundations underlying personality traits.

CONCLUSION

Our results suggest that the genetic foundations of ideological traits and political attitudes are largely non-overlapping with the genetic foundations of Big Five personality traits.

State Resident Handedness, Ideology, and Political Party Preference: U.S. Presidential Election Outcomes Over the Past 60 Years

Pearson correlation, partial correlation, and multiple regression strategies determined the degree to which estimates of the level of left-handedness in each of the 48 contiguous American states related to citizen political ideology and to Democratic-Republican presidential popular vote over the past 60 years. Higher state levels of left-handedness were associated significantly with liberal ideology in each of the presidential election years from 1964 to 2016. Comparable ideology data were not available for 2020. Higher state levels of left-handedness also were associated with a greater degree of Democratic candidate popular vote support in each of the presidential election years from 1964 to 2020 except for 1976. The mean size of these 28 significant Pearson correlations involving the two political criteria was .62 (SD = .12) with a range of .38-.80, indicating handedness alone could account for a mean of 40.1% (SD = 14.9) of the variance in the two political preference variables. Corresponding multiple regressions showed that when state-level Big Five personality, White population percent, urbanization, and income variables were given the opportunity to enter the equations, handedness still emerged with a significant regression coefficient in 26 of the 28 equations. The two exceptions occurred for 1968 with either political preference criterion. It is speculated that such relations are grounded in hypothesized but poorly understood genetic links between handedness, personality, and political beliefs and attitudes, and, that a foundational genetic predisposition to left-handedness in a population may have much greater impact on correlates than overt levels of left-handedness.

Direct and indirect effects of social dominance orientation on hate speech perpetration via empathy and moral disengagement among adolescents: A multilevel mediation model

Although it is known that social dominance orientation directly affects hate speech perpetration, few studies have explored the mechanisms by which this effect takes place during adolescence. Based on the socio-cognitive theory of moral agency, we aimed to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the direct and indirect effects of social dominance orientation on hate speech perpetration in offline and online settings. The sample included seventh, eigth, and ninth graders (N = 3225) (51.2% girls, 37.2% with an immigrant background) from 36 Swiss and German schools who completed a survey about hate speech, social dominance orientation, empathy, and moral disengagement. A multilevel mediation path model revealed that social dominance orientation had a direct effect on offline and online hate speech perpetration. Moreover, social dominance also had indirect effects via low levels of empathy and high levels of moral disengagement. No gender differences were observed. Our findings are discussed regarding the potential contribution to preventing hate speech during adolescence.

Where not to look for targets of social reforms and interventions, according to behavioral genetics

Behavioral genetics typically finds that the so-called shared environment contributes little or nothing to explaining within-population variation on most traits. If true, this has important implications for where not to look for good targets of interventions: Namely all things that are within the normal range of variation from one rearing environment to the next in that population.

The reductionism of genopolitics in the context of the relationships between biology and political science

The past two decades have seen an increase in the use of theories, data, assumptions and methods of the biological sciences in studying political phenomena. One of the approaches that combine biology with political science is genopolitics. The goal of the study was to analyse the basic ontological, methodological and epistemological assumptions for the reductionism of genopolitics. The results show that genopolitics assumes methodological reductionism but rejects ontological and epistemological reductionism. The key consequences of the findings are the irreducibility of political science to biology and the complementarity of genopolitical explanations and political science explanations based on culturalism. If my findings prove to be correct, they give rise to the formation of a hypothesis regarding the anti-reductionist orientation of the contemporary links between political science and biology. An important step towards confirming or falsifying such a hypothesis will be exploring the reductionism of contemporary biopolitical approaches such as neuropolitics or evolutionary political psychology.

Linking primary emotional traits to ideological attitudes and personal value types

The present study aimed at investigating associations of both ideological attitudes and personal value types with the personality traits derived from the Affective Neuroscience Theory (ANT). For that, data of N = 626 (n = 403 men, n = 220 women, n = 3 identifying as neither a man nor a woman) participants of an online survey in the German language were analyzed. Relations of primary emotional traits derived from the ANT with Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), and personal value types, such as the higher-order value type dimensions "Conservation-Openness to Change" and "Self-Enhancement-Self-Transcendence", were examined by means of correlational analyses and structural equation modeling. Results revealed among others relations between low SEEKING, high ANGER and high RWA. Low CARE and high ANGER were associated with high SDO. Moreover, FEAR was related to the higher-order value type dimension ranging from Conservation to Openness to Change. ANGER was associated with the higher-order value type dimension ranging from Self-Enhancement to Self-Transcendence. The present results do not only expand knowledge on the personality traits associated with ideological attitudes and personal value types. Beyond this, considering the neuroanatomical, functional, and neurochemical correlates of the primary emotional traits SEEKING, ANGER, CARE, and FEAR, the present results may provide a roadmap for forthcoming studies aiming at examining biological correlates of ideological attitudes and personal value types, such as those works in the field of political neuroscience.

Does social intolerance vary according to cognitive styles, genetic cognitive capacity, or education?

BACKGROUND

Low education, low cognitive abilities, and certain cognitive styles are suggested to predispose to social intolerance and prejudices. Evidence is, however, restricted by comparatively small samples, neglect of confounding variables and genetic factors, and a narrow focus on a single sort of prejudice. We investigated the relationships of education, polygenic cognitive potential, cognitive performance, and cognitive styles with social intolerance in adulthood over a 15-year follow-up.

METHODS

We used data from the prospective population-based Young Finns Study (n = 960-1679). Social intolerance was evaluated with the Social Intolerance Scale in 1997, 2001, and 2011; cognitive performance with the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery in 2011; cognitive styles in 1997; and socioeconomic factors in 1980 (childhood) and 2011 (adulthood); and polygenic cognitive potential was calculated based on genome-wide association studies.

RESULTS

We found that nonrational thinking, polygenic cognitive potential, cognitive performance, or socioeconomic factors were not related to social intolerance. Regarding cognitive styles, low flexibility (B = -0.759, p < .001), high perseverance (B = 1.245, p < .001), and low persistence (B = -0.329, p < .001) predicted higher social intolerance consistently in the analyses.

DISCUSSION

When developing prejudice-reduction interventions, it should be considered that educational level or cognitive performance may not be crucial for development of social intolerance. Adopting certain cognitive styles may play more important roles in development of social intolerance.

Quiet ego is associated with positive attitudes toward Muslims

Well-known predictors of prejudice toward Muslims include social dominance and authoritarianism. However, a gap exists for variables reflecting a rejection or mitigation of ideological motivations associated with prejudice toward Muslims. We examined if quiet ego was related to positive attitudes toward Muslims, and whether this could be explained by lower levels of authoritarianism, social dominance, and the motivation to express prejudice. We explored this possibility across two studies of adults in the United States (N = 376; N = 519). In Study 1, regression results showed quiet ego was directly associated with positive attitudes toward Muslims. Study 2 utilized path analyses and found that the direct relationship between quiet ego and positive attitudes toward Muslims was explained by associations between quiet ego and lower endorsement of authoritarianism, social dominance, and the internal motivation to express prejudice toward Muslims. Moreover, these associations held when accounting for several correlates of intergroup attitudes.

The ecology of wealth inequality in animal societies

Individuals vary in their access to resources, social connections and phenotypic traits, and a central goal of evolutionary biology is to understand how this variation arises and influences fitness. Parallel research on humans has focused on the causes and consequences of variation in material possessions, opportunity and health. Central to both fields of study is that unequal distribution of wealth is an important component of social structure that drives variation in relevant outcomes. Here, we advance a research framework and agenda for studying wealth inequality within an ecological and evolutionary context. This ecology of inequality approach presents the opportunity to reintegrate key evolutionary concepts as different dimensions of the link between wealth and fitness by (i) developing measures of wealth and inequality as taxonomically broad features of societies, (ii) considering how feedback loops link inequality to individual and societal outcomes, (iii) exploring the ecological and evolutionary underpinnings of what makes some societies more unequal than others, and (iv) studying the long-term dynamics of inequality as a central component of social evolution. We hope that this framework will facilitate a cohesive understanding of inequality as a widespread biological phenomenon and clarify the role of social systems as central to evolutionary biology.

Justice sensitivity is undergirded by separate heritable motivations to be morally principled and opportunistic

Injustice typically involves some people benefitting at the expense of others. An opportunist might then be selectively motivated to amend only the injustice that is harmful to them, while someone more principled would respond consistently regardless of whether they stand to gain or lose. Here, we disentangle such principled and opportunistic motives towards injustice. With a sample of 312 monozygotic- and 298 dizygotic twin pairs (N = 1220), we measured people’s propensity to perceive injustice as victims, observers, beneficiaries, and perpetrators of injustice, using the Justice Sensitivity scale. With a biometric approach to factor analysis, that provides increased stringency in inferring latent psychological traits, we find evidence for two substantially heritable factors explaining correlations between Justice Sensitivity facets. We interpret these factors as principled justice sensitivity (h² = 0.45) leading to increased sensitivity to injustices of all categories, and opportunistic justice sensitivity (h² = 0.69) associated with increased sensitivity to being a victim and a decreased propensity to see oneself as a perpetrator. These novel latent constructs share genetic substrate with psychological characteristics that sustain broad coordination strategies that capture the dynamic tension between honest cooperation versus dominance and defection, namely altruism, interpersonal trust, agreeableness, Social Dominance Orientation and opposition to immigration and foreign aid.

Idealisation, genetic explanations and political behaviours: Notes on the anti-reductionist critique of genopolitics

The rapid development of genetic research, determined, among others, by the requirements of The Human Genome Project, and a gradual reorientation in the perception of the role of nature and culture in the process of shaping complex networks of human relations by some political scientists, result in the increasing application of genetic data and methods in research regarding political behaviours. One of the key philosophical objections against the studies of the genetic foundations of political behaviours is that of excessive reductionism. This is supposed to manifest itself in the inadequate selection of the level of analysis for the explained phenomenon, the incompleteness of explanations and their low utility. My findings show that this objection is not sufficiently supported by contemporary science. Both studies using classical behavioural genetic methodologies and studies using DNA-based methods show that genes most likely play a role in political behaviours. Emphasising the significance of genetic influences in the midst of multiple extra-genetic interactions generates highly idealised explanations. Using the conceptual apparatus of the deformational concept of culture, I have demonstrated that the omission of a number of important extra-genetic influences by researchers is a consequence of focusing on specific causal patterns. This omission, however, does not entail negating the influence of non-genetic factors and, importantly, it may not have to be permanent. Following this approach, if correct, the reductionism of research into the genetic foundations of political behaviours is a standard cognitive procedure applied in science.

The clashing nature of rebelliousness: Nontraditional attitudes and counter-normative behaviors show divergent associations with intelligence

OBJECTIVE

Prior literature indicates that nontraditional attitudes are linked to higher intelligence. However, such attitudes in adolescence often accompany counter-normative, delinquent-type behaviors, which are themselves negatively linked with intelligence. This points to the possibility of suppression in the relationship between intelligence and nontraditional attitudes.

METHOD

We analyzed a large community sample of 17 year olds (N = 3330) with data on intelligence, nontraditional attitudes, and a diverse collection of self- and teacher-reported counter-normative behaviors. Developmental questions for these relationships were examined through cross-sectional comparisons between the adolescents and their parents as well as longitudinal analysis of the adolescent sample across emerging adulthood.

RESULTS

Youth who endorsed nontraditional attitudes had lower school grades, earlier age at first sex, heavier substance use, and were perceived as more oppositional by their teachers. Each of these problem behaviors was inversely related to intelligence. Accordingly, the positive correlation between nontraditional attitudes and intelligence was much weaker in adolescents as compared to their middle-aged parents. Longitudinal analyses revealed that the association between nontraditional attitudes and intelligence strengthens in early adulthood.

CONCLUSIONS

Associations between intelligence and sociopolitical attitudes can be obscured even by seemingly distal psychological characteristics.

Toxic stress and burnout: John Henryism and social dominance in the laboratory and STEM workforce

Persons Excluded from science because of Ethnicity and Race (PEERs) face chronic exposure to interpersonal stressors, such as social discrimination, throughout their scientific careers, leading to a long-term decline in physical and mental health. Many PEERs exhibit John Henryism, a coping mechanism to prolonged stress where an individual expends higher levels of effort and energy at the cost of their physical and mental health. In this article, we discuss how social dominance may increase John Henryism within the STEM community; the causes, effects and costs of John Henryism; and highlight solutions to combat these social adversity stressors within the academic institution.

Social and ecological dominance orientations: Two sides of the same coin? Social and ecological dominance orientations predict decreased support for climate change mitigation policies

In this article, we examine the roles of social dominance orientation (SDO) and ecological dominance orientation (EDO) as predictors of climate change risk and threat perceptions and associated pro-environmental policy support. EDO is a novel measure that we devised based on social dominance theory to assess general preferences for an anthropocentric, hierarchical arrangement between humans, non-human animals, and the natural environment. Across two pre-registered studies ( N = 715; USA and Germany) our results indicate that SDO and EDO are uniquely associated with decreased support for climate change mitigation policies benefitting humans, non-human animals, and the natural environment. These relationships in turn are partially mediated by decreased climate change risk and threat perceptions. We successfully replicate our findings using a more behavioral measure as dependent variable. Notably, using a more behavioral measure (Study 2), EDO was significantly associated with pro-environmental behavior but not SDO, when threats are accounted for as mediators.

Relations between HEXACO personality and ideology variables are mostly genetic in nature

Existing work indicates that socio-political attitudes (or: ideology) are associated with personality, with Social Dominance Orientation and Right-Wing Authoritarianism relating most strongly to honesty-humility and openness to experience, the two value-related domains of the HEXACO framework. Using a sample of 7067 twins and siblings of twins (including 1376 complete twin pairs), we examined the degree to which these relations arise from common genetic and environmental sources. Heritability estimates for the HEXACO personality and ideology variables ranged from .34 to .58. Environmental factors shared by twins reared together showed negligible effects on individual differences in personality and ideology. At the phenotypic level, Social Dominance Orientation and Right-Wing Authoritarianism dimensions related most strongly to honesty-humility and openness to experience. These associations were mostly explained by genetic factors (48%–93%). Genetic correlations between openness to experience and the ideology scales ranged from –.29 to –.53; those between honesty-humility and the ideology scales ranged from –.31 to –.43. None of the environmental correlations exceeded | r| = .18. These results suggest that the relations between the two value-related domains of the HEXACO personality model and ideology are mostly genetic in nature, and that there is substantial overlap in the heritable components of personality and ideology.

Evaluating Belief System Networks as a Theory of Political Belief System Dynamics

A theory of political belief system dynamics should incorporate causal connections between elements of the belief system and the possibility that belief systems are influenced by exogenous factors. These necessary components can be satisfied by conceptualizing an individual's belief system as a network of causally connected attitudes and identities which, via the interactions between the elements and the push of exogenous influences, produces the disparate phenomena in the belief systems literature. We implement this belief systems as networks theory in a dynamic Ising model and demonstrate that the theory can integrate at least six otherwise unrelated phenomenon in the political belief systems literature, including work on attitude consistency, cross-pressures, spillover effects, partisan cues, and ideological differences in attitude consensus. Our findings suggest that belief systems are not just one thing, but emerge from the interactions between the attitudes and identities in the belief system. All code is available: https://osf.io/aswy8/?view_only=99aff77909094bddabb5d382f6db2622.

Motivated moral judgments about freedom of speech are constrained by a need to maintain consistency

Speech is a critical means of negotiating political, adaptive interests in human society. Prior research on motivated political cognition has found that support for freedom of speech depends on whether one agrees with its ideological content. However, it remains unclear if people (A) openly hold that some speech should be more free than other speech; or (B) want to feel as if speech content does not affect their judgments. Here, we find support for (B) over (A), using social dominance orientation and political alignment to predict support for speech. Study 1 demonstrates that if people have previously judged restrictions of speech which they oppose, they are less harsh in condemning restrictions of speech which they support, and vice versa. Studies 2 and 3 find that when participants judge two versions of the same scenario, with only the ideological direction of speech being reversed, their answers are strongly affected by the ordering of conditions: While the first judgment is made in accordance with one's political attitudes, the second opposing judgment is made so as to remain consistent with the first. Studies 4 and 5 find that people broadly support the principle of giving both sides of contested issues equal speech rights, also when this is stated abstractly, detached from any specific scenario. In Study 6 we explore the boundaries of our findings, and find that the need to be consistent weakens substantially for speech that is widely seen as too extreme. Together, these results suggest that although people can selectively endorse moral principles depending on their political agenda, many seek to conceal this bias from others, and perhaps also themselves.

Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Predict Annual Increases in Generalized Prejudice

Although right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) are the two most studied individual difference correlates of prejudice, debate remains over their status as enduring constructs that precede generalized prejudice. We contribute to this discussion using 10 annual waves of longitudinal data from a nationwide random sample of adults to investigate the stability and temporal precedence of RWA, SDO, and prejudice among members of an ethnic majority group ( Ns = 23,383–47,217). Results reveal high wave-to-wave rank-order stability for RWA, SDO, and generalized prejudice. Adjusting for their between-person stability, RWA and SDO predicted within-person increases in generalized prejudice. Results replicated when predicting (a) prejudice toward three specific minority groups (namely, Māori, Pacific Islanders, and Asians) and (b) anti-minority beliefs. These findings demonstrate that RWA and SDO are highly stable over 10 consecutive years and that they independently precede within-person annual increases in generalized prejudice and anti-minority beliefs.

Egalitarianism: psychological and socio-ecological foundations

Individual differences in social and political attitudes have their roots in evolved motives for basic kinds of social relationships. Egalitarianism is the preference for the application of the one of these relational models-equality-over that of another-dominance-to the context of societal intergroup relations. We present recent research on the origins of egalitarianism in terms of universal social cognitive mechanisms (activated as early as infancy), systematic (partly heritable) individual differences, and the affordances and constraints of one's immediate and macro-structural context. Just as the psychological impact of socioeconomic conditions depends on the mind being equipped to perceive and navigate them, so the expression of the evolved underpinnings of inequality concerns depends critically on social and societal experiences.