The Journal of Politics, Vol. 73, No. 1, January 2011, Pp. 1–15

The assumption that the transmission of social behaviors and political preferences is purely cultural has been challenged repeatedly over the last 40 years by the combined evidence of large studies of adult twins and their relatives, adoption studies, and twins reared apart. Variance components and path modeling analyses using data from extended families quantified the overall genetic influence on political attitudes, but few studies have attempted to localize the parts of the genome which accounted for the heritability estimates found for political preferences. Here, we present the first genome-wide analysis of Conservative-Liberal attitudes from a sample of 13,000 respondents whose DNA was collected in conjunction with a 50-item sociopolitical attitude questionnaire. Several significant linkage peaks were identified and potential candidate genes discussed.

Peter K. Hatemi United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney and Queensland Institute of Medical Research
Nathan A. Gillespie Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics
Lindon J. Eaves Brion S. Maher Bradley T. Webb Andrew C. Heath Sarah E. Medland
Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics
Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics Washington University St. Louis
Queensland Institute of Medical Research Queensland Institute of Medical Research Queensland Institute of Medical Research
David C. Smyth
Harry N. Beeby
Scott D. Gordon
Grant W. Montgomery Queensland Institute of Medical Research Ghu Zhu Queensland Institute of Medical Research
Enda M. Byrne Queensland Institute of Medical Research Nicholas G. Martin Queensland Institute of Medical Research

http://www.vipbg.vcu.edu/vipbg/nathan//publications/Hatemi2011.pdf