Wilf Family Department of Politics, New York University, New York, NY 10012;
Department of Economics, School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1081HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Dec 14;118(50). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2022715118.
Twin and adoption studies have shown that individual differences in political participation can be explained, in part, by genetic variation. However, these research designs cannot identify which genes are related to voting or the pathways through which they exert influence, and their conclusions rely on possibly restrictive assumptions. In this study, we use three different US samples and a Swedish sample to test whether genes that have been identified as associated with educational attainment, one of the strongest correlates of political participation, predict self-reported and validated voter turnout. We find that a polygenic score capturing individuals' genetic propensity to acquire education is significantly related to turnout. The strongest associations we observe are in second-order midterm elections in the United States and European Parliament elections in Sweden, which tend to be viewed as less important by voters, parties, and the media and thus present a more information-poor electoral environment for citizens to navigate. A within-family analysis suggests that individuals' education-linked genes directly affect their voting behavior, but, for second-order elections, it also reveals evidence of genetic nurture. Finally, a mediation analysis suggests that educational attainment and cognitive ability combine to account for between 41% and 63% of the relationship between the genetic propensity to acquire education and voter turnout.
双胞胎和收养研究表明，政治参与的个体差异部分可以通过遗传变异来解释。然而，这些研究设计无法确定与投票相关的基因或它们施加影响的途径，并且它们的结论依赖于可能具有限制性的假设。在这项研究中，我们使用三个不同的美国样本和一个瑞典样本，来检验那些与教育程度相关的基因（政治参与的最强相关因素之一）是否可以预测自我报告和验证的投票率。我们发现，一个能够捕捉个体接受教育的遗传倾向的多基因评分与投票率显著相关。我们观察到的最强关联出现在美国的中期选举和瑞典的欧洲议会选举中，这些选举往往被选民、政党和媒体视为不那么重要，因此为公民提供了一个信息较少的选举环境。一项家庭内分析表明，个体与教育相关的基因直接影响他们的投票行为，但对于二阶选举，也有证据表明存在遗传教养。最后，中介分析表明，教育程度和认知能力共同解释了获得教育的遗传倾向与投票率之间 41%至 63%的关系。
