Nature vs. Nurture

1
Nature vs. Nurture

• Jenny Stuart
• Sara Lundblad

2
The search for the political gene

• Liberal Democrat MP Mathew Taylor was a adopted,
  and later in life discovered that both his
  farther and grandfather had both been Liberal
  Democrat Mps. This along with other such
  discoveries have prompted many studies. For
  example
• Twin Study
• Dr John Hibbing, University of Nebraska
• Date unknown

3
Procedure

• Pairs of fraternal and identical twins
• Were asked detailed questions about their
  political beliefs
• Assumed that both had been bought up in the same
  environment
• Assumed that identical twins had the same genetic
  makeup, and fraternal twins had 50 of the same
  genetic makeup
• Question example
• Pacifism
• Identical agreed at a rate of 0.34
• Fraternal twins agreed at a rate of 0.15
• Calculated
• (amount of times the fraternal twins agreed) -
  (amount of times the identical twins agreed) (
  figure of how strongly the twins views were
  shaped by their genes)

4
Discussions

• Ecological validity
• Twin Studies are debatably unreliable and not as
  clear cut as previously thought. This is because
  even if they have been separated birth, they have
  still shared their first environment, the womb.
• Only asked a couple of samples, so not enough
  variation in the results
• Does not state how different the twins
  environments really were
• Fraternal twins, have no more similar DNA than
  general siblings

5
Dr John Hibbing