Neuropolitics.org

The Poligenic Wars
(The War of the Conservative and Liberal Gene Pools?)

Every four years, American Conservatives and Liberals engage in a relatively civilized debate over who should be President, and voice their opinions in an organized and predominately non-violent fashion. The pre-election bitterness usually subsides shortly after election day, and Conservatives and Liberals then go about their daily lives of working together, socializing together, and generally getting along well together--with the exception of their DNA.

Shaking hands, but attacking each other's DNA?

Wars, however, can be fought in many ways, and each gender has its own way of dealing with undesirables. The male tendency is through violence, and the female tendency is through sex.

In either method, the outcome reduces the genetic presence of the undesirables, either in the short term, as with violent warfare, or the longer term, via the restriction of reproductive opportunities. Gene warfare between two populations is often violent. However, within a population, reproductive selection predominates in gene distribution.

Liberals and Conservatives seem to do a pretty good job of putting their differences aside when they need to, but would they go so far as to combine with each other's genes?

We asked the 2,104 participants in our Fall 2005 survey if they would marry someone with political or religious beliefs opposite to their own. In the graph below, we see the "Yes" responses to the question "Would you marry someone with opposite political beliefs?".

All Ages: Those Who Would Marry Someone With Opposite Political Beliefs - By Political Cohort By Gender (VL=Very Liberal, L=Liberal, M=Moderate, C=Conservative,VC=Very Conservative)

With the possible exception of the Moderate male, the respondents to our survey are using political beliefs as a principal criteria for mate selection. This is especially true with females.

Very Liberal females were the most likely to apply politics in mate selection, as only 4.7% indicated they would marry someone with opposite political beliefs. Very Conservative females were next, at 9.8%. The regular Liberal females were at 24.5%, and the regular Conservative females were at 29.1%. The Moderate females were the most tolerant of the females, but still only at 36.1%. These rates are very low, and indicative of how significant politics are in female mate selection.

The males are much more tolerant, but still were applying political criteria in mate selection. The Very Liberal males were the least likely to marry someone with opposite political beliefs, came in at 23.6%. This was followed by the Very Conservative males, at 30.6%. The regular Liberal males followed at 38.3%, followed by the regular Conservative males at 39.0%. The Moderate males would apparently marry anyone, and came in at 70.4%.

The Liberal cohorts, both male and female, were more likely to apply politics in mate selection than the Conservative cohorts. But we must note that this is age dependent, as the younger a person is, the less likely that politics will be a factor.

The under 25 cohorts were more likely to accept politically opposite views, as we see in the graph below.

Under 25 Years Old: Those Who Would Marry Someone With Opposite Political Beliefs - By Political Cohort By Gender

The graph is similar to the All Ages graph above, except almost all of the Under 25 cohorts were more willing to marry someone with opposite political views, except for the Very Conservative females, which drop slightly, from 9.8% to 7.1%. The relaxation of political criteria among those Under 25 may be indicative of the stronger influence of child bearing considerations on mate selection. As both females and males grow older, they were more likely to select against people with opposite political beliefs (the Very Conservative female was the only exception).

While Liberals on average use politics more in their mate selection criteria, what about religion? We asked another question, "Would you marry someone with opposite religious beliefs?". The results are in the graph below.

All Ages: Those Who Would Marry Someone With Opposite Religious Beliefs - By Political Cohort By Gender

This time the Liberals were more likely to select mates with opposite religious beliefs, and the regular Liberals of both genders now are equal to the Moderates, which were our most tolerant group with politically opposite mates. The Conservatives (both regular and very) were more likely to use religion rather than politics in their mate selection criteria.

If we now look at our hormonally active Under 25 cohorts in the graph below, we see that the Conservatives and the Moderates of both genders

Under 25 Years Old: Those Who Would Marry Someone With Opposite Religious Beliefs - By Political Cohort By Gender

actually are more likely to avoid mates with opposite religious beliefs, whereas the Liberals were more likely to accept them, with the possible exception of the Very Liberal males. The regular Liberal males were exceptionally tolerant.

Discussion

These results indicate that political criteria are applied in mate selection by Conservatives, Liberals, and even Moderates. Mate selection by religious criteria has been well documented, but not political selection, and theories to explain it are correspondingly scarce.

The Liberals in our survey were more likely to select a mate based on political affiliation. The Conservatives were more likely to select a mate based on religious affiliation. The Moderates were also more inclined to select mates based on religious affiliation, but overall, were the most tolerant of the political cohorts.

In the hormonally elevated Under 25 age groups, we see a general relaxation of political criteria in mate selection. This relaxation is probably caused by the offspring effect, or the selection of the optimal genes for breeding, regardless of the political orientation of their possessor.

However, this offspring effect was not conistently applied for religious criteria. The Under 25 Liberals were generally less likely to apply religious criteria, which was consistent with their reactions to political criteria. However, the Moderates, Conservatives, and Very Conservatives in the Under 25 age group were more likely to apply religious criteria in mate selection than were the older cohorts.

This propensity to place politics and religion above other mate selection criteria is more prevalent in females. But what advantage do females gain by selecting for specific religious or political traits in others? And how long have they been doing it? After all, organized religious beliefs date back less than 20,000 years--what male behavioral traits were females selecting for before then?

Geoffrey Miller has proposed that people use political attitudes as a proxy for personality characteristics when selecting a mate. This may also be true for religious selection. Strict mate selection by religious orientation has had some impact on the numbers of autosomal recessive genetic disorders in certain religious groups.

Both female and male sexual selection tactics have been guiding the human gene pool, and have been selecting out undesirable attributes since the inception of the human species. But is this selection by politics and religion causing genetic drift in the United States and other countries?

The United States exhibits political and religious clustering that was strongly evident in the most recent Presidential election. The Liberals tend to predominate in cities in latitudes above 36 degrees, near the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, or the Great Lakes. The Conservatives tend to predominate in inland rural and suburban areas in latitudes under 45 degrees.

High concentrations of a particular political or religious group will reduce the mating pool for the non-members of those groups. The Liberal tolerance of cities and the Conservative preference for suburban areas drive their respective migration patterns and provide a measure of segregation between them. This increases the probability of political-religious homogeneity in mate selection. Add this to deliberate mate selection based on political-religious criteria, and you have a substantial hurdle to gene mixing between divergent political-religious groups.

But are Conservative genes different from Liberal genes? In our Sunlight Theory of Political Preference, on this web site, we proposed the theory that elevated exposure to sunlight promoted the synthesis of the sex hormones, which in turn elevated the activity of the left hemisphere's dopaminergic system, which in turn increases the probability of conservative political preferences in caucasians. Conservatism is literally being baked into the residents of the sun belt. We also suspect a similiar impact with heat, but that mechanism has a different biology.

While environmental influences are critical, we do suspect that certain alleles responsible for neural specialization vary in their frequency between Conservatives and Liberals. This notion is based on the Liberal tendency for depressive and anxiety disorders, of which there is substantial evidence for a genetic predisposition.

The tendency for Liberals and Conservatives to prefer mates based on political and religious criteria certainly can change the frequencies of certain alleles that may ultimately promote Liberal or Conservative tendencies. Are the increasing hostilities between Liberals and Conservatives reducing their inter-marriages? More to come.


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