Scientists Find Liberal Gene

Academic researchers are still trying to find a way to explain the left-ward drift of students without accounting for public schools. “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,” Hannah Gregory reports on the UCSD News Center.  “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. Appearing in the latest edition of The Journal of Politics published by Cambridge University Press, the research focused on 2,000 subjects from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.  By matching genetic information with maps of the subjects’ social networks, the researchers were able to show that people with a specific variant of the DRD4 gene were more likely to be liberal as adults, but only if they had an active social life in adolescence.”

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

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