Family environments shape authoritarian traits differently than dominance preferences

Recent research published in Behavior Genetics reveals that family environments and genetic predispositions shape extreme political views differently depending on the specific attitude. A desire for social conformity is heavily influenced by household upbringing, while a preference for group dominance stems more from personal experiences.

Both Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation predict prejudice, support for extreme political movements, and discrimination tolerance. Researchers from Bielefeld University, Germany, and the University of Western Ontario sought to map how these influences combine and shift as people grow from adolescence into young adulthood.

Analyzing data from 1,440 German families, including twins and other relatives, the study found that genetics contribute equally to both personality traits, with authoritarianism influenced by both additive and nonadditive genetics, while social dominance is driven by additive genetic factors. However, authoritarianism shows a strong connection to family inheritance and upbringing, as parents favoring social conformity tend to choose partners with similar views, passing down genes and traditionalist home environments.

In contrast, social dominance shows almost no link to passive family inheritance, with parents' matching preferences for dominance being lower and the home environment playing a negligible role in shaping the trait in their children. Instead, a preference for group hierarchy is heavily shaped by individual experiences outside the family home.

Interestingly, the influence of the twin-specific shared environment increased as the participants aged, becoming highly relevant for 21-year-olds and 27-year-olds. This suggests that as young adults engage in more political discussions and solidify their political identities, shared social influences become more pronounced.