Verhulst Brad
Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298, USA.
Twin Res Hum Genet. 2012 Feb;15(1):42-51. doi: 10.1375/twin.15.1.42.
Traditional theories of political participation have emphasized its social and normative components; however, recent evidence suggests that political participation has a strong additive genetic component. Accordingly, it is necessary to reevaluate the traditional empirical findings and begin to integrate the two approaches. To do so, a variety of analyses were conducted that explore the modes of genetic and environmental transmission. I find that the empirical estimates of the relationships between the phenotypic level traits are highly consistent with what has been found in the traditional literature, the vast majority of the variance in political participation that is accounted for by the predictor variables is being accounted for at the genetic level, and not at the environmental level. Thus, the current findings suggest that the empirical results found in prior studies are quite likely very accurate. However, the interpretation of those empirical findings, as well as the subsequent theoretical implications, require serious revision.
传统的政治参与理论强调其社会和规范成分；然而，最近的证据表明，政治参与有很强的加性遗传成分。因此，有必要重新评估传统的实证研究结果，并开始整合这两种方法。为此，进行了各种分析，以探索遗传和环境传递的模式。我发现，表型水平特征之间关系的实证估计与传统文献中的发现高度一致，政治参与中由预测变量解释的绝大多数方差是在遗传水平上，而不是在环境水平上。因此，目前的研究结果表明，先前研究中的实证结果很可能非常准确。然而，对这些实证结果的解释以及随后的理论含义需要认真修订。
