Homo Politicus Was Born This Way: How Understanding the Biology of Political Belief Promotes Depolarization

Homo Politicus Was Born This Way: How Understanding the Biology of Political Belief Promotes Depolarization. Alexander Severson, Boise State University. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5aaee6274eddec9e7a191db5/t/5db34cf7896fba3217a91b4b/1572031736718/Severson+%282019%29.pdf

Abstract: Most individuals perceive ideological beliefs as being freely chosen. Recent research in genopolitics and neuroscience, however, suggests that this conviction is partially unwarranted given that biological and genetic factors explain more variance in political attitudes than choice and environmental factors. Thus, it is worth exploring whether exposure to this research on the biological and genetic basis of political attitudes might influence levels of affective polarization because such exposure might reduce the perceived moral culpability of partisan outgroups
for the endorsement of oppositional beliefs. In this paper, I employ an online survey experiment on Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 487) to assess whether exposure to research on the genetic and biological etiology of political attitudes influences warmth toward partisan outgroups and preferences over political compromise. I present evidence that nontrivial numbers of participants in the treatment group reject the underlying science and do not update their genetic trait attributions for political attitudes. However, I also find that when the treatment is successful at increasing biological and genetic trait attributions, exposure to this research depolarizes strong-identifying partisans. Moreover, as partisans increasingly endorse biological and genetic trait attributions for political attitudes, they increasingly hold favorable attitudes toward political outgroups. These patterns suggest a potentially profitable inroad for political polarization interventions going forward.

Keywords: polarization; biopolitics; ideology; trait attributions; survey experiment

Exerpts from the introduction:

On June 1, 2019, Democratic primary candidate Andrew Yang tweeted, “According to
twins [sic] studies between one-third and one-half of political alignment is linked to genetics;
that is most of us are born somewhat wired to be liberal or conservative. If this is the case
we need to build bridges as much as possible. It’s not just info or culture” (Yang 2019).
Yang’s tweet is notable as it suggests that one potential strategy to reduce growing partisan
antipathy (Iyengar et al., 2012; Kalmoe and Mason 2019) is to raise public awareness of recent
research in political science which demonstrates that a sizable proportion of individual-level
variation in political attitudes can be explained by biological and genetic factors (Dawes and
Fowler 2008; Hatemi and McDermott 2012). The unstated assumption of this argument is
that it is difficult to hold members of political outgroups responsible for the endorsement
of oppositional political beliefs when variation in such beliefs is best predicted by ascriptive
factors over which individuals have no control. Thus, in this view, awareness of the biological
substrates of political attitudes and of the minimized role of personal choice in generating
those attitudes should increase political tolerance toward partisan outgroups as “born that
way”-style explanations partially absolve members of partisan outgroups of the perceived
evilness of their belief systems (Snead 2011; Schneider, Smith, and Hibbing 2018).

However, it is also imaginable that exposure to information on the biological and genetic sources of political attitudes could further animate partisan tensions. Instead of this
information being used to exculpate members of political outgroups of the perceived offense
of their beliefs, exposure to this information might cause individuals to view the partisan
gulf as elementally unbridgeable. In this perspective, exposure to the degree of determinism
implied by biological models of political attitudes could reduce perceptions that members of
political outgroups are capable of opinion-change. Thus, if the political attitudes of partisan outgroups are viewed as increasingly resistant to change given the biological forces which
underlie them, then it follows that partisans might increasingly disengage from meaningful
social interactions with those across the aisle and come to devalue having conversations with
their outpartisan counterparts. Moreover, belief in the relative fixity of the political attitudes
of partisan outgroups could potentially translate into the adoption of more exaggerated and
essentialist views of the other (Haslam and Whelan 2008).


Conclusion

To summarize, in this paper, I used an online survey experiment to assess whether
exposure to recent scientific findings on the neurobiology and heritability of political belief
influenced affective polarization and preferences over compromise. Theoretically, a priori, it
was unclear whether such a strategy would increase or decrease levels of affective partisan
polarization. On the one hand, a subset of researchers in philosophy and moral psychology
have found that individuals tend to be more forgiving when they perceive that individuals
have less control over their decisions (Young 2009; Baumeister and Brewer 2012; Shariff et al.
2012). Conversely, other researchers in social psychology have found that individuals become
more antisocial when their belief in free-will and choice is undermined (Vohs and Schooler
2008; Baumeister, Masicampo, and DeWall 2009; MacKenzie, Vohs, and Baumeister 2014).
Thus, one of the goals of the present research was to provide a preliminary test of these two
divergent theoretical predictions to assess which, if either, held in the context of the debate
about the degree of determinism of political belief.
In this paper, I present evidence, consistent with recent work by Schneider, Smith, and
Hibbing (2018) and Willoughby et al. (2019), that most people view ideological beliefs and
partisanship as being largely determined by personal choice and to a lesser degree by socialization. Individuals are either unaware of or are psychologically-resistant to the idea that political
beliefs are even partially the byproduct of biological and genetic processes. Further, although
the experimental manipulation increased beliefs that ideology is biologically-determined, the
manipulation was not uniformly effective. However, among those who responded to the manipulation, affective polarization decreased in a rather pronounced fashion, particularly among
strongly-identifying partisans. Moreover, across both conditions, increased endorsement of biological and trait attributions correlated positively with the endorsement of warmer attitudes
toward political outgroups. Finally, my study demonstrated that exposure to such a frame
does not appreciably shift attitudes toward political compromise or whether participants felt
it was important to have ideologically-diverse discussant partners.
However, it is worth noting a few limitations to the present paper which suggest promising avenues for future research. First, the current design cannot rule out the possibility that
any narrative which outsources responsibility for political beliefs to an external locus may
promote depolarization. To this end, future studies should contrast the strength of depolarization effects between frames which emphasize the underlying biological science of ideology
against frames which emphasize the role of socialization factors, frames which would similarly
imply that individuals are not fully-responsible for their own political beliefs. Secondly, in
the present study, I did not directly measure perceptions of the moral culpability or blameworthiness of political outgroups. Future work should investigate whether exposure to frames
which minimize the role of personal choice in the construction of political belief, in turn, alter
perceptions of the moral responsibility of endorsing specific political beliefs. Relatedly, future
work might also explore whether different components of political beliefs (e.g., support for
policies; support for candidates) are perceived as more intentional than others. Third, the
present study made use of a convenience sample conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk.
While previous work suggests that the use of online convenience samples can recover valid
treatment effect estimates (Mullinix et al. 2015; Coppock 2019), future work could replicate the present findings using a more nationally-representative sample. Finally, although my
results suggest that depolarization interventions which exclusively emphasize the biological
science of ideological belief alone are not likely to engender sweeping depolarizing effects, they
do suggest, perhaps hopefully, that exposure to this type of research neither increases the
partisan affective gulf nor harms the likelihood of cross-party interactions. Thus, concerns
about the potential negative or antisocial effects of encountering such frames, at least in the
context of political belief, may be overstated.
Given that most of us reflexively think that we choose and are responsible for our own
political beliefs, it can be admittedly troubling to confront the possibility that we may not
exercise as much control over these beliefs as our intuition seems to suggest. We proudly
weaponize bumper stickers and traffic in taunt-infused comment-thread witticisms in the war
against the political “other”, all in part because we believe that the other side chooses to
believe what they believe freely and unencumbered. The root of our frustrations, of increased
political violence and partisan discrimination (Lelkes and Westwood 2017), seems to hinge on
this often unquestioned assumption that we exercise agency over our belief systems. However, the emergent neurobiological and genetic science of political belief suggests that this
assumption is misguided and in lieu of accented partisan violence and taunting, potentially
dangerous. It seems odd, albeit perhaps quintessentially human, to believe that our political
beliefs are somehow completely separable from the biological and genetic programming which
circumscribes all of our cognitions. However, in disavowing this belief and accepting that our
own ideologies are partially the byproduct of biological and genetic processes over which we
have no control, we may end up promoting a more tolerant and kinder civil society.