Building on psychological research linking essentialist beliefs about human differences with prejudice, we test whether lay belief in the biological basis of political ideology is associated with political intolerance and social avoidance. In two studies of American adults (Study 1: N = 288, Study 2: N = 164), we find that belief in the biological basis of political views is associated with greater intolerance and social avoidance of ideologically dissimilar others. The association is substantively large and robust to demographic, religious, and political control variables. These findings stand in contrast to some theoretical expectations that biological attributions for political ideology are associated with tolerance. We conclude that biological lay theories are especially likely to be correlated with prejudice in the political arena, where social identities tend to be salient and linked to intergroup competition and animosity.
AppelbaumP. S.ScurichN. (2013). Impact of behavioral genetic evidence on the adjudication of criminal behavior. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 42, 91–100.
2.
ArceneauxK. (2003). The conditional impact of blame attribution on the relationship between economic adversity and turnout. Political Research Quarterly, 56, 67–75.
3.
BastianB.HaslamN. (2006). Psychological essentialism and stereotype endorsement. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 228–235.
4.
BerinskyA. J.HuberG. A.LenzG. S. (2012). Evaluating online labor markets for experimental research: Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk. Political Analysis, 20, 351–368.
5.
BiusoE. (2008, 1214). The 8th annual year in ideas: Genopolitics. The New York Times Magazine, p. MM57.
6.
BrandtM. J.ReynaC.ChambersJ. R.CrawfordJ. T.WetherellG. (2014). The ideological-conflict hypothesis intolerance among both liberals and conservatives. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23, 27–34.
7.
CharneyE. (2008). Genes and ideologies. Perspectives on Politics, 6, 299–319.
8.
CheungB. Y.HeineS. J. (2015). The double-edged sword of genetic accounts of criminality: Causal attributions from genetic ascriptions affect legal decision making. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41, 1723–1738.
9.
CliffordS.JewellR. M.WaggonerP. D. (2015, 10–12). Are samples drawn from Mechanical Turk valid for research on political ideology?Research and Politics, 1–9.
10.
ColemanJ. M.HongY. (2008). Beyond nature and nurture: The influence of lay gender theories on self-stereotyping. Self and Identity, 7, 34–53.
11.
ConoverP. J.FeldmanS. (1981). The origins and meaning of liberal/conservative self-identifications. American Journal of Political Science, 25, 617–645.
12.
Dar-NimrodI.HeineS. J. (2011). Genetic essentialism: On the deceptive determinism of DNA. Psychological Bulletin, 137, 800–818.
13.
DevineC. J. (2015). Ideological social identity: Psychological attachment to ideological in-groups as a political phenomenon and a behavioral influence. Political Behavior, 37, 509–535.
14.
EllisC.StimsonJ. A. (2012). Ideology in America. New York, NY: Cambridge.
GelmanS. A. (2003). The essential child: Origins of essentialism in everyday thought. New York, NY: Oxford.
17.
GiftK.GiftT. (2015). Does politics influence hiring? Evidence from a randomized experiment. Political Behavior, 37, 653–675.
18.
GreenD.PalmquistB.SchicklerE. (2002). Partisan hearts & minds: Political parties and the social identities of voters. New Haven, CT: Yale.
19.
HaasI. J.CunninghamW. A. (2014). The uncertainty paradox: Perceived threat moderates the effect of uncertainty on political tolerance. Political Psychology, 35, 291–302.
20.
Haider-MarkelD. P.JoslynM. R. (2008). Beliefs about the origins of homosexuality and support for gay rights: An empirical test of attribution theory. Public Opinion Quarterly, 72, 291–310.
21.
HaslamN.BastianB.BainP.KashimaY. (2006). Psychological essentialism, implicit theories, and intergroup relations. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 9, 63–76.
22.
HaslamN.KvaaleE. P. (2015). Biogenetic explanations of mental disorder: The mixed-blessings model. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24, 399–404.
23.
HaslamN.LevyS. R. (2006). Essentialist beliefs about homosexuality: Structure and implications for prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 471–485.
24.
HatemiP. K.McDermottR. (Eds.). (2011). Man is by nature a political animal: Evolution, biology, and politics. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
25.
HeiderF. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
26.
HeineS. J.Dar-NimrodI.CheungB. Y.ProulxT. (Forthcoming). Essentially biased: Why people are fatalistic about genes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 55
27.
HibbingJ. R. (2013). Ten misconceptions concerning neurobiology and politics. Perspectives on Politics, 11, 475–489.
28.
HibbingJ. R.SmithK. B.AlfordJ. R. (2014). Predisposed: Liberals, conservatives, and the biology of political differences. New York, NY: Routledge.
29.
HodsonG.DhontK. (2015). The person-based nature of prejudice: Individual difference predictors of intergroup negativity. European Review of Social Psychology, 26, 1–42.
30.
HofstadterR. (1944/2006). Social Darwinism in American thought. Boston, MA: Beacon.
31.
HuddyL.MasonL.AaroeL. (2015). Expressive partisanship: Campaign involvement, political emotion, and partisan identity. American Political Science Review, 109, 1–17.
32.
IyengarS. (1991). Is anyone responsible? How television frames political issues. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
33.
IyengarS.SoodG.LelkesY. (2012). Affect, not ideology: A social identity perspective on polarization. Public Opinion Quarterly, 76, 405–431.
34.
IyengarS.WestwoodS. J. (2015). Fear and loathing across party lines: New evidence on group polarization. American Journal of Political Science, 59, 690–707.
35.
JayaratneT. E.YbarraO.SheldonJ. P.BrownT. N.FeldbaumM.PfefferC. A.PettyE. M. (2006). White Americans’ genetic lay theories of race differences and sexual orientation: Their relationship with prejudice toward blacks, and gay men and lesbians. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 9, 77–94.
36.
KellerJ. (2005). In genes we trust: The biological component of psychological essentialism and its relationship to mechanisms of motivated social cognition. .Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 686.
37.
KvaaleE. P.GottdienerW. H.HaslamN. (2013). Biogenetic explanations and stigma: A meta-analytic review of associations among laypeople. Social Science & Medicine, 96, 95–103.
38.
KvaaleE. P.HaslamN.GottdienerW. H. (2013). The ‘side effects’ of medicalization: A meta-analytic review of how biogenetic explanations affect stigma. Clinical Psychology Review, 33, 782–794.
39.
LevyS. R.StroessnerS. J.DweckC. S. (1998). Stereotype formation and endorsement: The role of implicit theories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1421.
40.
LewontinR. C.RoseS.KaminL. J. (1984). Not in our genes: Biology, ideology, and human nature. New York, NY: Pantheon.
41.
MasonL. (2015). ‘I disrespectfully agree’: The differential effects of partisan sorting on social and issue polarization. American Journal of Political Science, 59, 128–145.
42.
Morin-ChasséA. (n.d.). Does reading about genopolitics impact on people’s views about the mutability of and the responsibility for political traits?Unpublished manuscript.
43.
NoS.HongY. Y.LiaoH. Y.LeeK.WoodD.ChaoM. M. (2008). Lay theory of race affects and moderates Asian Americans’ responses toward American culture. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 991–1004.
44.
Pew. (2014). Political polarization in the American public: How increasing ideological uniformity and partisan antipathy affect politics, compromise and everyday life (Research report). Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.
45.
Pew. (2016). Partisanship and political animosity in 2016 (Research report). Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.
46.
RothbartM.TaylorM. (1992). Category labels and social reality: Do we view social categories as natural kinds? In SeminG. R. S.FiedlerK. (Eds.), Language, interaction and social cognition (pp. 11–36). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
47.
RudolphT. J. (2003). Who’s responsible for the economy? The formation and consequences of responsibility attributions. American Journal of Political Science, 47, 698–713.
48.
ShariffA. F.GreeneJ. D.KarremansJ. C.LuguriJ. B.ClarkC. J.SchoolerJ. W.…VohsK. D. (2014). Free will and punishment: A mechanistic view of human nature reduces retribution. Psychological Science, 25, 1563–1570.
49.
SheldonJ. P.PfefferC. A.JayaratneT. E.FeldbaumM.PettyE. M. (2008). Beliefs about the etiology of homosexuality and about the ramifications of discovering its possible genetic origin. Journal of Homosexuality, 52, 111–150.
50.
SkitkaL. J.TetlockP. E. (1993). Providing public assistance: Cognitive and motivational processes underlying liberal and conservative policy preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 1205–1223.
51.
SuhayE.JayaratneT. E. (2013). Does biology justify ideology? The politics of genetic attribution. Public Opinion Quarterly, 77, 497–521.
52.
SullivanJ. L.PieresonJ.MarcusG. E. (1982). Political tolerance and American Democracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
53.
WeinerB. (1995). Judgments of responsibility: A foundation for a theory of social conduct. New York, NY: Guilford.
54.
WeinerB.OsborneD.RudolphU. (2011). An attributional analysis of reactions to poverty: The political ideology of the giver and the perceived morality of the receiver. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15, 199–213.
55.
WilliamsM. J.EberhardtJ. L. (2008). Biological conceptions of race and the motivation to cross racial boundaries. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 1033.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
