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A new study on Swedish adoptees suggests that political candidacy is a heritable trait.
The researchers found that the likelihood of standing as a political candidate doubled if one’s parent had been a candidate.
The researchers analyzed the database includes 10,717,814 non-adopted individuals and 155,865 adopted individuals, along with additional information regarding educational attainment, income, occupational status and political candidacy, to examine the intergenerational transmission of political behavior.
Overall, the probability of being a political candidate was about 2.3%. But among adopted individuals whose biological parents were candidates, the probability of being a political candidate jumped up to about 5%.
The results clearly suggest that having a biological parent who ran for office is a good predictor of the adoptee’s probability of running for office as adults, despite the fact that these children were adopted away early in life and have had no contact with their birth parents ever since. However, the results also indicate that adoptive parents’ political activity is a major source of intergenerational resemblance.
The findings indicate that political candidacy may be a genetically influenced trait. However, any genetic influence is just one factor among many that contribute to an individual’s decision to run for public office.
However, it is important to note that our results do not signal genetic determinism.
Our finding that biological parents’ behavior is a strong predictor of political candidacy among adoptees does not mean that there is direct causal link between a set of genetic factors and an individual’s propensity to run for office. Any genetic effect on a complex behavior such as running for office will undoubtedly be mediated by a large set of factors, some of which are malleable.
Full article here: https://www.psypost.org/2018/12/new-study-finds-evidence-that-political-ambition-can-be-genetically-inherited-from-ones-parent-52697
