An understanding of how our genes may be tied to our political choices and social bonds could help lessen our partisan discord- if we let it.
Conflict seems to be a part of the human spirit. A good story needs conflict, otherwise we’re apt to find it dull. A story about making a sandwich is not going to be very interesting, even if it looks like it would be a good sandwich. Ingredients will be laid out, and a sandwich will be made. There is no suspense, no tension. Sandwich aficionados will know this to be not completely true, as there is a certain unpredictability, even magic, in the creation of a good sandwich, and the hoped for outcome cannot be completely assured. Nonetheless it’s telling that “making a sandwich” is not a major fictional genre. However if I go to the kitchen to make that sandwich, and I see my son is reaching for the last two pieces of bread, now it’s interesting (to me). Steel cage death match is assured, and a story worthy of a last a direct-to-DVD movie is born.
Even if a story doesn’t appear to have conflict, we’ll insert it in our reading, just to add interest. For example, one bestselling book which has lots of conflict throughout, starts out with a story that’s ostensibly conflict free. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” It’s just a slice of life story- except before there was life- a simple portrayal of everyday events-except there was no day yet, that comes later. Nonetheless, I read conflict into this story. There is a tension between order and chaos, between something and nothing. It’s like a sandwich story, except with higher stakes. Whether or not Moses meant to have that in there, conflict exists.
Like conflict, depositing people into categories of ‘us vs them’ is not necessary for a good story, but it seems to help.
Another common story element is a clear delineation of who the good people in the story are, and who are the bad people. Although modern literature, outside of the oeuvre of Tom Clancy and ilk, may not support simplistic definitions of who is good vs bad, at least the depiction of “us” vs “them” is usually made clear. Even with anti-hero’s, like Holden Caulfield in the perennial high school assignment of Catcher in the Rye, or for the moderns among us, Deadpool, or Jayne in Firefly, it’s clear that these characters are “us”, they are on our team. Whoever they are angry at (or in the case of Jayne and Deadpool, about to kill) is “them”.
This dichotomization of good vs evil, or us vs them, our crowd vs the others, isn’t as essential as conflict for a good story, but without it the author has to spend an extra effort helping us know who to root for. It may not be necessary for a story, but it certainly fits with how most of us see the world, to one degree or another. Kurt Vonnegut felt compelled to write of his eschewing of this story element,
“I went to the University of Chicago for a while after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody.
They may be teaching that still.
Another thing they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, ‘You know – you never wrote a story with a villain in it.’
I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war.”
Though a need for “us vs them” is common, how we define these two groups has a lot of variation. Nationality is a common way to delineate these sets. Clothing choice works too, in a pinch. Religion use to be a reliable method, as was race. There are many other tags we use, of course. Generally our field marks for who is on the good side will connect with power, in some form or other. Fortunately many of these attributes seem to be falling by the wayside. Surveys of how “warm” one feels towards people of other races or religions show a steady decrease over the last fifty years in the difference between our feelings for people in our group vs how we feel towards people outside it.
Possibly that Coke commercial from the 1970’s, I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony), had an effect.
On the other hand, we clearly haven’t achieved world peace yet. We’ve stopped using some tags to classify people as “other”, but we haven’t abandoned a need to keep people out of our group. In fact, resentment towards people of opposite political affiliations has increased:
In a recent study of this phenomenon, people were asked to rate scholarship applications. The vast majority of participants, whether Democrat and Republican, preferentially chose to give students who were members of their own parties a scholarship, even when the candidate from the other party had stronger academic credentials. Race mattered too, but not as much (both whites and blacks preferred African Americans as recipients). This should be astonishing (which is a nice way to say “appalling”). Given a candidate for an academic scholarship with a better academic record, we nonetheless tend to choose candidates that will vote the same as us. Given that most students don’t bother to vote, this decision is wrong on multiple levels.
We’re beginning to abandon some old favorite methods of declaring some people to be “other”, but our political party preferences are becoming a new way to classify someone as outside the pale.
The study also examined if our political views could affect our judgement. Using an implicit bias test, they found that American participants were far more biased politically than they were racially (you can try the test here). The researchers found this surprising. “The common story is most Americans don’t care about politics”, commented one author of the study. “They don’t understand politics, they don’t understand policy. So you wouldn’t expect Americans to have strong preferences. That’s where I started.”
The participants in this study certainly were not non-political, and several surveys confirm this that this bias is growing and widespread. In 1960, about 5% of Republicans and Democrats would be“somewhat upset” or “very upset” by a “mixed party” marriage by their children. In 2008 that had risen to over 20%, and in 2010 almost 50% of Republicans (and 30% of Democrats) would object to their son or daughter marrying across party lines. British participants, asked a similar question about Conservative vs Labor party affiliation showed a similar, if less pronounced, trend.
It seems a bit like a seesaw, the importance of one of our discriminatory tags goes down, so another has to go up. Maybe we’re not ready for utopia, it’s as if we have an inborn need for some level of conflict in our society, just like we do in our fiction. As we decrease our use of religion, race, gender or sexual preference in deciding who is for us or against us, we are forced chose another criteria to put people in the “other” group, and the balance is restored, we maintain a constant number of people in the outside group. This may be good for weapons sales, but is less so for world peace. But is our need to put people out of our crowd really fixed? Don’t we have a choice in this?
Does there really have to be a constant size to the number of people that we put outside our “in crowd”?
Unless a balance between good and evil is an intrinsic part of the universe, and that hasn’t shown up in the Hubble space telescope photos yet, there shouldn’t be a need to have a set number of people in the wrong vs the right groups. So why does it appear to be a constant? The answer may be biological. One clue of this comes from the prevalence of social behavior; we are finding that our complex behaviors may be as much due to basic biology as they are to our human reason. Social interactions are found in all classes of organisms, from bacteria (who can engage in what is called “quorum sensing” to coordinate a number of behaviors), plants (which can interact with each other in a number of ways, including mycorrhizal networks, also called the “Wood Wide Web”), and of course in animals. Almost every organism is a social organism, and thus the notion that biology is a key factor in determining our social behavior is increasingly undeniable. And thus, determination of who and how many get to be in our in-crowd, may, in fact, be an intrinsic part of our physical makeup.
Our behaviors, we are discovering, are wired into our genes. Though we may like to think of ourselves as governed by reason, that genetics plays a strong role in our complex social behaviors shouldn’t be too surprising. It’s easy to imagine pressures on our ancestors that would select for genetic variability that affects how we decide our group membership. Under some circumstances, being open to other groups would be beneficial, for example when resources are plentiful, and sharing between communities could provide for more opportunities for hunting or mate selection. In contrast, when resources are limited then a drive to form tighter groups, probably based largely on kinship, could be more evolutionarily favorable. Even though logic usually dictates against it, you’re more likely to loan money to your brother-in-law than to a neighbor.
In other words, sometimes it’s good to have a loose characterization of “us”, sometimes it’s better to have a tighter rule. Evolutionary selection for both of these two traits could help ensure that the genetic drivers of both behaviors stay present in our gene pool. These genetic determinants could create our definition of what makes up “our” group, and likely help set the size of this group too. Genetic variants that affect our sensitivity to threats, how membership within the “in-group” or “out-group” is determined, or our preference for how tight we want our in-group to be, all could be important players in helping us decide who gets to be in our crowd.
Our genetic makeup might be determining both our political affiliation, as well as how we decide how to put people in our group.
The above is a “Just So” story, a plausible sounding explanation without real proof, but there is increasing evidence supporting that our group preferences have a genetic component. A common method to discern the effects of genetics vs environment (nature vs nurture) are twin studies, in which we expect to see a stronger sharing of traits between identical twins rather than fraternal twins. A recent study using this method found that genetics was strongly associated with in-group favoritism, and this seemed to overlap with a genetic contributor towards favoring traditionalism and authoritarianism. Another study, which used family relationships other than just twins, and thus allowed for a larger study population, found a similarly strong link between genetics and many political and social attitudes or preferences.
How our genes specifically affect our determinants of political preferences and who is in our in-group isn’t yet clear. The family study found a strong link between genetics and our political affiliations, as well as our feelings towards the death penalty, gay rights, and capitalism. Probably these were not factors that were selected for during our evolution- though it’s very possible that field studies of primates are missing out on some important behavioral subtleties (what would a chimp placard saying “OCCUPY THE SAVANNAH” look like?). It’s likely that our genes help define our broad attitudes about social conduct and what cues we use to signal group membership. Some people may be more genetically predisposed to favor maintenance of our cultural norms, and others are more open to change. These factors, in turn, help determine our specific attitudes, like with what political party we identify.
Obviously these factors can interact in complicated manners. Someone may be genetically more willing to go against society’s norms, and thus be more likely to engage in behavior deemed risky or unusual by society. This is a trait found in many entrepreneurs and people favoring the politics of the left. However a person’s success via these risky endeavors (i.e., they get rich with their business) may lead to them adopting attitudes that favor societal norms, as their wealth is more secure when little is allowed to change. The initially out-group favoring leftist entrepreneur thus becomes rich, old and cranky, and is now an in-group favoring conservative. Unless you live in California, that is, where you are now called a venture capitalist and your new found wealth is channeled back into the out-groups, and you still vote on the left (as long as taxes stay reasonably low and you get invited to the right parties). The argument isn’t that genetics is a totalitarian driver of our political and personal attitude, but a significant contributor in a complex process.
For example, it’s been seen that variation in the dopamine D4 receptor gene may be important in affecting these kinds of behavior. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is involved in many aspects of brain function, including risk-based decision-making. Several studies have shown that this gene may be linked to risk taking or novelty seeking in people, as well as political attitudes. One study of over 1500 university students found that women with two copies of a particular dopamine D4 receptor variant were significantly more conservative. Another study, which surveyed the entire genome, also implicated the dopamine pathway, and additionally found many genes involved in NMDA and glutamate related receptors to be associated to political attitudes. These receptors are known to play important role in memory and the development of the brain. The total number of genes involved in helping us decide on our group membership is impossible to calculate, no gene will have specific roles just towards shaping our political attitudes. Instead, hosts of genes are being found that may help shape the behaviors that make one more or less comfortable with being in the in-group or exploring the out-group.
So what does this all mean? It’s become clear that we have a biological drive that helps us define and align with an “us vs them” dichotomy, the in-groups and the out-groups. These inborn drivers to put people in (or out) of our group help ensure that conflict is never far from the story of our lives. Of course we make conscious and reasoned decisions about membership in these groups, but our biology sets a basic preference for us that we cannot change, and these preferences shape our political views. Those more willing to be open to changes to our societal norms tend to side with the Democrat (or Labor) party, while those that value preserving our norms may tend to the Republican or Conservative party. This is not to say that those on the left side of the political spectrum don’t perceive an out-group. Those on the right and left very definitely both have their “us vs them”s, but they have different rules to decide who is in which group. And of course, nobody has just one in-group and one out-group. Everyone is in many groups, some of which can overlap in complicated patterns. Supporters of Bernie Sanders, or anyone ever involved in high school cliques, know that this is true.
Can genetics lead us to the promised land and end political discord? Maybe not, but it can at least be a road sign in the general direction.
Is an understanding of genetics a new messiah that can lead us out of this innate conflict? No, but maybe understanding the biological basis for our political feelings can help bridge the political divide. Two ways genetics could help: One, understanding that our desire to place people on our side or the other side is partially biology, and not solely a product of our reason, should help. However genetics has also shown us that our desire to eat another potato chip has more to do with a biology geared towards a caveman diet where high fat=nutritious, rather than a rational assessment of our actual caloric needs, and this knowledge does not stop us from eating said potato chip. Therefore this may not be too helpful, at least in the heat of a political argument. It’s hard to fight the biology of basic drives.
However a second aspect of this new understanding may offer us a better approach. We’ve made great strides in embracing diversity, though obviously much more work remains undone. We understand now that there is no justice, and no merit, in discriminating on the basis of race or gender. Our understanding of the biological and genetic underpinnings of these facets of our being has helped with this. We now know that, basically, we are all alike, despite our outward appearances. We may differ in skin color, but this is governed by just a few genes. Similarly, we may choose our political parties with a little more freedom than we choose our gender, but maybe not more than we choose our sexual preference. To some degree, we are born on the left or right side of the political spectrum.
It’s here that one can hope that genetics can help us have more understanding and compassion across our political divisions. Politics can be extraordinarily personal. As the studies discussed above show, our choice to be on the left or right is tied to a host of our personal traits and feelings. Being told that our choice is wrong can feel like an attack on our very core. However genetics now tells us that these attitudes of ours are partly outside of our control, are part of our shared evolutionary story. The biology-driven traits that help determine our political parties, whether we are comfortable with change or whether we favor maintenance of society’s norms, both have selective advantage in different circumstances. We are stronger for both sentiments being in our society than if we could purge one or the other from the land. Embracing this diversity among us is not only rational, but will make the world a more pleasant place.
Conflict is fine for stories, and easy-to-spot tags that set characters apart as the bad guy aren’t a problem either. After all, you only have a minute or two in which to capture your audience before the title sequence starts rolling, followed by the first commercial break. But as Kurt Vonnegut noted, that’s not what he was taught in school, and he did quite fine without villains in his stories. More importantly, life is different than fiction, and we clearly need to be doing a better job of getting past our differences in the real world. Can genetics help us bridge our divides? It should. Recognizing that our desire to put people into groups of us vs them is a reflection of our genetic and evolutionary story, and that those who disagree with us politically are responding to basic genetic drivers, just like we are with our political opinions, might just make our elections a little more peaceable.
Will we even be able to renounce a need for conflict such that we can embrace tales of sandwich making as an acceptable genre of fiction? Of that I’m less sure.
Title image: “Peace DNA” credit to reddit.com/user/blakesta
