Previous research using traditional behavioural genetic methods have begun to map out to what extent variation in political and prosocial attitudes and behaviour is (in addition to environmental factors) also influenced by genetics. There is widespread recognition that genetic effects on complex social phenotypes are likely often strongly moderated, muted or inverted by environmental circumstances, but so far attempts to disentangle possible gene-environment interplay for these phenotypes have been sparse. This project aims to cross molecular genetic methods, such as polygenic indices, with causal inference-oriented methods from the social sciences, to investigate how political and prosocial attitudes and behaviour are shaped by the complex interplay between genetic and environmental factors. The project will use genetic as well as survey data from the Swedish Twin Registry, combined with rich Swedish register data on, among other things, validated election turnout, income and education.
This project is hosted at Uppsala university.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 programme under grant agreement number 101073237
essgn.org 