Genetic and Environmental Pathways Underlying Personality Traits and Perceived Stress: Concurrent and Longitudinal Twin Studies

The present study examined the genetic and environmental etiology underlying the Big Five personality traits and perceived stress, concurrently and longitudinally. In study 1, we used the twin sample from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health IV) data. The results indicated that about 70% of the association between the Big Five personality traits and perceived stress was due to genetic influences. In study 2, we used the twin sample from the Midlife in the United States Survey (MIDUS I and II) to examine the genetic and environmental influences underlying the longitudinal relations between the Big Five personality traits and perceived stress. The results suggested that continuity in perceived stress was primarily accounted for by genetic influences, and changes in perceived stress were mainly due to nonshared environmental influences. The continuity in the association between the five personality traits and perceived stress was largely accounted for by genetic factors, and nonshared environmental factors made greater contributions to changes in the association between personality traits and perceived stress. Among the Big Five personality traits, the genetic components in conscientiousness and neuroticism made substantial contributions to the genetic link between personality traits and perceived stress across both studies. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Authoritarian Predispositions and Attitudes Towards Redistribution

Authoritarian predispositions are associated with a preference for order, certainty, and security. Using data from European Social Surveys (ESS), we show that this association extends to attitudes towards redistributive policies. We demonstrate that support for redistributive policies that emphasize the government’s responsibility to provide old age, health, and unemployment benefits are positively associated with authoritarian predispositions. We also provide evidence that perceived economic threats moderate this relationship such that, for individuals who perceive higher levels of economic threat, the relationship between authoritarian predispositions and support for government responsibility is stronger. These results show that authoritarian predispositions are not only associated with social preferences but also attitudes towards economic policies.     

Genetic and Environmental Influences on the Development and Stability of Executive Functions in Children of Preschool Age: A Longitudinal Study of Japanese Twins

Executive functions (EF) are an important predictor of later adaptive development. A number of environmental influences, such as parenting, have been suggested as important promoters of EF development. However, behavioural genetic research has demonstrated that many environmental influences could be affected by genetic influences. Therefore, it is important to consider genetic variations when investigating environmental influences on EF development in children. To date, few studies have used genetically informative designs to assess the etiology of EF development during the preschool years, a period of rapid development. As a result, it remains unclear how and to what extent the environmental influences that are not confounded by genetic influences affect EF development during this developmental period. The present study explored EF development during the preschool years using a longitudinal and genetically informative design and a non‐Western population. Japanese twins were visited at their homes and individually tested on EF measures at 24, 36, and 48 months of age. Phenotypic correlations and confirmatory factor analyses suggested that EF are less cohesive at 24 months of age and emerge as a common single factor at 36 and 48 months. Additionally, longitudinal and multivariate behavioural genetic analyses indicated that the EF developmental change during this period is promoted by both shared and nonshared environmental influences as well as genetic influences, while EF stability is brought about by shared environments. The present findings elucidated the etiology of EF development during the preschool years and confirmed that this period is an important transitional stage for EF development. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Role of Cognitive Style in the Link Between Genes and Political Ideology

There is growing interest in how genes affect political beliefs. To better understand the role of genes in politics, we examine the relationship between cognitive style (the need for cognition, the need for cognitive closure) and various measures of political attitudes (issue‐based ideology, identity‐based ideology, social ideology, economic ideology, authoritarianism, and egalitarianism). We show, for the first time, that the need for cognition and the need for cognitive closure are heritable and are linked to political ideology primarily, perhaps solely, because of shared genetic influences; these links are stronger for social than economic ideology. Although prior research demonstrated that Openness to Experience shares genetic variance with political ideology, we find that these measures of cognitive style account for distinct genetic variance in political ideology. Moreover, the genetic Openness‐ideology link is fully accounted for by the need for cognition. This combination of findings provides a clearer understanding of the role of genes in political beliefs and suggests new directions for research on Big Five personality traits and ideology.     

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Achievement Goal Orientations Shift with Age

Students engage in learning activities with different achievement goal orientations. Some students pursue learning for learning sake (i.e. mastery goal orientation), some are driven by gaining favourable judgement of their performance (i.e. performance approach goal orientation), and others focus on avoiding negative judgement (i.e. performance avoidance goal orientation). These goal orientations are linked with academic achievement, and troublingly, students report decreasing levels of goal orientations across the school years. However, little is known concerning the mechanisms that drive this decline. In a large (N = 891 twin pairs) cross‐sectional genetically informative sample (age = 8 to 22 years), we found that older students reported lower goal orientations. Then, we identified shifts in the magnitude of genetic and environmental variance in each goal orientation. For example, variance in mastery goal orientation was primarily associated with environmental factors during the elementary school years. As students entered high school, genetic influences increased, replacing shared environmental influences. Finally, we situated these findings in the larger nomological network by testing associations with psychological constructs (e.g. personality and cognitive ability) and contextual variables (e.g. parents, schools, and peers). The development of academic motivation is complex with many interconnecting factors that appear to shift with age © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Political involvement moderates the impact of worldviews and values on SDO and RWA

The Dual Process Model (DPM) of social attitudes and prejudice proposes that Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) and Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) reflect two distinct motivational processes. In two studies, we investigated how political involvement moderates the impact of social worldviews and value‐based dimensions on SDO and RWA. We proposed that political involvement constrains SDO, RWA and their antecedents into a tighter left–right ideological dimension, therefore transforming the double dissociation pattern of the DPM into a double additive pattern. As expected, for stronger political involvement, Study 1 (N = 237) showed that SDO and RWA were a function of both the competitive jungle and the dangerous world worldviews, whereas Study 2 (N = 143) pointed out that SDO and RWA were both connected with the value dimensions of self‐enhancement and conservation.     

Uses and Abuses of Ideology in Political Psychology

Ideology is a central construct in political psychology. Even so, the field's strong claims about an ideological public rarely engage evidence of enormous individual differences: a minority with real ideological coherence and weak to nonexistent political belief organization for everyone else. Here, I bridge disciplinary gaps by showing the limits of mass political ideology with several popular measures and components—self-identification, core political values (egalitarian and traditionalism's resistance to change), and policy indices—in representative U.S. surveys across four decades (Ns ~ 13 k–37 k), plus panel data testing stability. Results show polar, coherent, stable, and potent ideological orientations only among the most knowledgeable 20–30% of citizens. That heterogeneity means full-sample tests overstate ideology for most people but understate it for knowledgeable citizens. Whether through top-down opinion leadership or bottom-up ideological reasoning, organized political belief systems require political attention and understanding to form. Finally, I show that convenience samples make trouble for ideology generalizations. I conclude by proposing analytic best practices to help avoid overclaiming ideology in the public. Taken together, what first looks like strong and broad ideology is actually ideological innocence for most and meaningful ideology for a few.     

Right-Wing Ideology as a Predictor of Collective Action: A Test Across Four Political Issue Domains

Despite a vast literature documenting motivations for collective action, the role of sociopolitical ideologies, including right-wing ideologies, in predicting collective action is underresearched. Literature on right-wing ideological beliefs suggests that those higher in right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) or social dominance orientation (SDO) hold specific attitudes or endorse specific policies, in part, because of factors such as perceived fear-based threat or empathy. In the present research, structural equation modeling (SEM) was run on pooled data from a diverse Canadian university sample and two American adult samples (total N = 1,469). Participants completed measures of RWA, SDO, fear-based threat, empathy, and domain-specific collective action. Results showed that RWA and SDO both related positively to collective action targeting societal moral breakdown but negatively to collective action aimed at equalizing race relations or fighting climate change. Whereas the indirect effects of right-wing ideologies via fear-based threat or empathy were significant in all four domains for SDO, the indirect effect of RWA was only significant in the climate change domain. Implications are discussed.     

Authoritarianism and Social Dominance in Western and Eastern Europe: The Importance of the Sociopolitical Context and of Political Interest and Involvement

The present study tests whether the magnitude of the relation between Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) is stable across and within cultures, whether their differential relations with value orientations and sociopolitical attitudes remain stable in spite of these possible differences, and whether their differential relations point to a different genesis. For these purposes, two student samples (total N = 684), three adult samples (total N = 553), and a political activist sample (N = 69) were gathered in Belgium, and one adult sample (N = 235) was collected in Poland. Both cross- and intracultural differences in the strength of the RWA-SDO relation emerged. These can be attributed to specificities in sociopolitical context and differences in political socialization, interest, and involvement. In spite of these fluctuations, in the strength of the RWA-SDO relation, regression analyses revealed high stability of the relation between RWA-SDO and sociopolitical attitudes, and mediation analyses supported the hypothesis of their different genesis.     

The Relationship between Cultural Values and Political Ideology, and the Role of Political Knowledge

Cultural theory maintains that four worldviews—egalitarianism, individualism, hierarchicalism, and fatalism—can be used to describe people and societies. We examine survey measures of two of those worldviews—egalitarianism and individualism—to understand their relationship with belief systems. Contrary to what one might expect based on the cultural theory literature, we find that people with low levels of political knowledge seem not to have coherent worldviews regarding these issues. In contrast, people with high levels of political knowledge respond to egalitarianism and individualism questions as if they were opposite ends of a single, liberal-conservative continuum, rather than two of four distinct worldviews. We conclude that cultural theory researchers should take account of the influence of political knowledge whenever they investigate worldviews.     

The Impact of Social Threat on Worldview and Ideological Attitudes

Research has shown that social threat correlates with ideological authoritarianism, but the issues of causal direction and specificity of threat to particular ideological attitudes remain unclear. Here, a theoretical model is proposed in which social threat has an impact on authoritarianism specifically, with the effect mediated through social worldview. The model was experimentally tested with a sample of undergraduates who responded to one of three hypothetical scenarios describing a future New Zealand that was secure, threatening, or essentially unaltered. Both threat and security influenced social worldview, but only threat influenced authoritarianism, with differential effects on two factorially distinct subdimensions (conservative and authoritarian social control attitudes) and with the effects of threat mediated through worldview. There was a weak effect of threat on social dominance that was entirely mediated through authoritarianism. The findings support the proposed theoretical model of how personal and social contextual factors causally affect people's social worldviews and ideological attitudes.     

The Structure and Sources of Right‐wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation

Right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) are widely used constructs in research on social and political attitudes. This study examined their hierarchical and correlative structure (across sexes, generations and rater perspectives), as well as how genetic and environmental factors may contribute to individual differences in them (using different rater perspectives and nuclear twin family data). We found a substantive common aspect (beyond shared artificial variance arising from socially desirable responding) underlying both RWA and SDO: aggression against subordinate groups. We discussed how this aspect could help to explain the commonly reported correlation between the two concepts in Western countries. Estimates of genetic and environmental components in RWA and SDO based on self‐reports were quite comparable with those based on peer reports. When controlling for error variance and taking assortative mating into account, individual differences in RWA were primarily due to genetic contributions including genotype–environment correlation, whereas variance in SDO was largely attributable to environmental sources shared and not shared by twins. The findings are discussed in terms of the utility of RWA and SDO as basic constructs to describe individual differences in social attitudes and with respect to the different patterns of genetic and environmental influences that underlie them. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Human values: Genetic and environmental effects on five lexically derived domains and their facets

Whereas a substantial genetic component of Conservatism and Religiosity is well documented, there is little evidence with respect to the behavior genetics of other aspects of human values. A sample of 157 monozygotic and 74 dizygotic twins reared together received the Austrian Value Questionnaire (AVQ), which measures a broad variety of value domains and their facets, found by the lexical approach in the German language. Family resemblance of Intellectualism, Harmony, Materialism, and Conservatism was best explained by additive or dominance genetic and non-shared environmental effects, whereas the influence of the environment shared by twins was negligible. In contrast, Religiosity was transmitted by additive genetic, shared and non-shared environmental influences. At the level of facets, the Intellectualism and Harmony showed a homogenous etiology while Religiosity, Materialism, and Conservatism were etiologically heterogeneous.     

Basic Personal Values and the Meaning of Left‐Right Political Orientations in 20 Countries

This study used basic personal values to elucidate the motivational meanings of “left” and “right” political orientations in 20 representative national samples from the European Social Survey (2002–2003). It also compared the importance of personal values and sociodemographic variables as determinants of political orientation. Hypotheses drew on the different histories, prevailing culture, and socioeconomic level of three sets of countries—liberal, traditional, and postcommunist. As hypothesized, universalism and benevolence values explained a left orientation in both liberal and traditional countries and conformity and tradition values explained a right orientation; values had little explanatory power in postcommunist countries. Values predicted political orientation more strongly than sociodemographic variables in liberal countries, more weakly in postcommunist countries, and about equally in traditional countries.     

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Psychopathy Trait Dimensions in a Community Sample of Male Twins

Psychopathy appears to be comprised of two broad dimensions: impulsivity/antisocial behavior and interpersonal detachment/callousness. This study examined the extent to which variance in these 2 psychopathy trait dimensions was associated with common or unique genetic, shared, and nonshared environmental factors in two independent samples of reared together 16–18-year-old male twins. One sample included 142 monozygotic (MZ) and 70 dizygotic (DZ) pairs; the other sample included 128 MZ and 58 DZ pairs. Boys completed the Minnesota Temperament Inventory (MTI), a 19-item measure that contains separate subscales: Antisocial and Detachment. Variance in the Antisocial and Detachment scales was associated with additive genetic factors and neither scale was associated with shared environmental factors. As expected, the bivariate biometric analysis suggested genetic influence on the covariance of the scales. The results are consistent with theoretical models of psychopathy that posit some independence in the etiology of the two major trait dimensions of psychopathy.     

Collective Rights and Personal Freedoms: A Discursive Analysis of Participant Accounts of Authoritarianism

This article presents a discursive analysis of participant accounts of authoritarianism, with the aim of understanding how participants construct accounts about authority, when, and for what purposes. Participants completed a 30‐item Right‐Wing Authoritarianism scale and were then interviewed about how they went about this task. Analyses revealed that, despite an overall consistency when answering items on an authoritarianism scale, participants in this study did not consistently choose to produce authoritarian responses in contrast to the nonauthoritarian alternative. Instead, the construction and expression of authoritarian ideas was found to be directly related to two rhetorical features of conversing about authoritarianism: (1) the ideological dilemma of society versus individual and (2) the mobilization of arguments about social and personal threat that allowed participants to construct accounts about collective rights or personal freedoms. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for current debates about how authoritarianism should be theorized and studied.     

Prejudice in the pub: How alcohol and ideology loosen the tongue

This study (N = 124) tested the main and interactive effects of alcohol consumption, egalitarianism, and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) in relation to prejudice suppression in the natural environment of a British Public House (pub). Employing a quasi-experimental between-subjects design, participants who had consumed alcohol were worse at suppressing their prejudice than participants with no alcohol consumption. Further, the more participants endorsed egalitarian values, the more they were able to suppress their prejudice. This tendency was resistant to the effects of alcohol. By contrast, the stronger participants held RWA beliefs, the less they were able to suppress their prejudice. In addition, this tendency was accentuated by alcohol consumption. Results are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications.     

阅读能力个体差异的遗传基础—— 双生子研究的元分析

阅读能力的个体差异来源是行为遗传学的研究焦点之一。文章通过对80个阅读双生子研究的元分析发现：(1)遗传对阅读及其加工过程、基本认知技能具有中等强度影响; (2)不同阅读加工成分既受到共同遗传因素的作用, 又同时受到特异遗传因素的影响。(3)阅读与一般认知能力、数学能力在遗传上存在中等强度相关。这些结果表明了双生子研究对探索阅读的遗传机制具有分子遗传学所不可替代的价值, 文章还提出了如提升行为表型的测查质量等对未来研究的具体建议。     

Different Ways of Being Authoritarian: The Distinct Effects of Authoritarian Dimensions on Values and Prejudice

The traditional and still dominant approach to authoritarianism measures it as a unidimensional construct. However, in the past few years some studies have assessed the three hypothesized authoritarianism components (i.e., authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism) separately. The aims of this study are to verify that the three‐correlated‐factor structure fits the data better than the one‐factor model and to analyze the distinct effects of the three dimensions of authoritarianism on values and prejudice. A total of 169 Italian citizens responded to a questionnaire. As hypothesized, a structural equation model shows that the dimension of authoritarian submission is mainly related to the openness to change vs. conservation values opposition; the dimension of authoritarian aggression is more characterized on the self‐transcendence vs. self‐enhancement values opposition; conventionalism is mainly linked to traditional values. As concerns prejudice, this variable is predicted just by authoritarian aggression. Theoretical implications as concerns the conceptualization of authoritarianism are discussed.