Choosing sides: The genetics of why we go with the loudest

Zoltán Fazekas and Levente Littvay
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Zoltán Fazekas: University of Vienna, Austria
Levente Littvay: Central European University, Hungary

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2012, vol. 24, issue 3, 389-408

Abstract: Recent developments in spatial voting have moved beyond finding the most appropriate utility function and started to assess individual differences in decision strategy. The question is not if a proximity or directional worldview performs better in general, rather under what conditions do people pick one strategy over the other? We draw on psychological theories to develop a survey-based measure of individual decision strategy and take a behavior genetic route to explaining the individual differences. We argue that dispositional traits shape whether an individual develops a directional or proximity worldview of the political arena. Utilizing a classical twin design, we capitalize on the documented relationship between partisanship and a directionalist worldview. We find that, in the Minnesota Twin Political Survey, both the strength of party identification and directional voting are moderately (~20 percent) but significantly ( p

Keywords: behavior genetics; directional voting; partisanship; spatial modeling; twin study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:24:y:2012:i:3:p:389-408

DOI: 10.1177/0951629812437750

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