07.02.2008

Determinist regurgitation

Simon Wells refutes the 'discovery' of political genes

According to Jim Giles, writing in the New Scientist, it is pointless to persuade someone to change their political views. As far as the US presidential race is concerned, Republican and Democrat campaigners may as well sit it out until polling day, because people’s politics are determined by their genes and so the winner must be as good as elected already (February 2).

Giles suggests that identical twins are more likely than non-identical twins to give the same answer to political questions. Certain genes are allegedly related to personality traits and these are linked to political opinions. According to psychologists, says Giles, personality can be categorised into five classes, relating to conscientiousness, openness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. These traits can then be used as a predictor of political opinion - so, for example, people with a high level of openness are twice as likely to be liberals. A characteristic of openness is sociability and this is connected with the level of neurotransmitters in the brain, which is controlled by genes.

Furthermore people with genes that are better at regulating the neurotransmitter serotonins, 5HTT and MAOA, tend to be trusting and, according to the hypothesis, therefore more likely to vote. Giles reports that another theorist, who is waiting for a grant, speculates that the neurotransmitter, dopamine, associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder, may be linked to those who like to impose order on the world and should therefore be found more frequently in conservatives.

Giles does at least acknowledge that the methodology that produces such ideas is open to question. For instance, responses about personality and politics will tend to be influenced by the way questions are framed and who is asking them. And how can personality traits be accurately measured? Quite significant problems, I would have thought. Nevertheless, the fact that Giles thinks such ideas are worth the time of day says something about him and New Scientist.

One of the scientists pushing these claims is John Alford of Rice University in Houston, Texas, whose “current research agenda concerns the biological basis of human political and social behaviour”. Another is Ira Carmen of the University of Illinois, who is interested in “exploring the dynamics of sociogenomics (the study of genes coding for social behaviour)”. A third scientist quoted in the article is John Jost, a psychologist at New York University who lists among his research topics “exploring the psychological basis of political ideology” and “whether certain situational factors (such as those pertaining to stability and threat) are capable of bringing about change in the endorsement of political attitudes.”

This is not the first time that attempts have been made locate a genetic cause for the behaviour of groups or individuals. And the logic of biological or genetic determinism has been to attempt the elimination of ‘bad’ genes. Madison Grant’s view - that “What is most necessary to the community is an increase of the desirable groups of population who represent a higher standard in the physical, intellectual and moral sense” - was widely regarded as common sense at the beginning of the last century (The passing of the great race New York 1916). Among the admirers of this book was Adolf Hitler. But the advocates of eugenics also included such figures as Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Both were enthusiastic devotees.

Despite the establishment disowning of eugenics following the holocaust, genetic determinism has made several reappearances. It flared up again as part of the conservative backlash to the radical-progressive movements of the 1960s - those for civil rights, gay and women’s liberation and anti-imperialism. In the mid-1970s, determinism made another comeback in the shape of ‘sociobiology’, coined by Edward Wilson with his 1975 book, Sociobiology: the new synthesis.

In the New Scientist Giles has retold an old story, with the help of more recent scientific papers - the most quoted research appears to be Alford’s study of twins - and connects them to what he calls an “emerging idea”. However, even to suggest that the answer to the question, ‘What determines the similarity of the political responses?’, must be genetics shows the paucity of the theoretical proposition.

But it is a theoretical trend for which there is no shortage of politically inclined sponsors. As yet no body of scientists has a claim over what makes us human and no research has seriously challenged the notion that people’s behaviour is primarily determined by their social environment - nurture, not nature. But, as with all social sciences, it is difficult to conclusively disprove genetic determinist theory. For this reason social theories that, however suspect, can be employed in the interests of our rulers are constantly regurgitated.

Engels wrote: “In short, the animal merely uses its environment, and brings about changes in it simply by its presence; man by his changes makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other animals, and once again it is labour that brings about this distinction” (‘The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man’: www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/index.htm). If this is not the case, then in what sense can we talk about human individuality, freedom, agency or responsibility?

Should not culture feature solidarity and a set of shared understandings that unites the whole of humanity? The only way this question will be settled is by way of the ultimate scientific experiment: a second human revolution.