Most Right-Wing Americans Deny the Role of Genes

Any academic or journalist who puts their head above the parapet to suggest that genes play a role in social inequality – in why some people are rich and others are poor – will soon find themselves denounced as “far-Right” or a “Nazi”. Such denunciations, aside from being little more than childish insults, give the misleading impression that people on the Right are far more likely to believe that genes matter.

In recent years, this impression has been reinforced by Donald Trump, who has attested on numerous of occasions to the supposed role of genes in his family’s success. “Do we believe in the gene thing? I mean I do,” he once proclaimed at a rally.

Yet statements of this kind are far from common among Right-wing politicians. And as a new YouGov poll makes clear, Republicans are barely more likely than Democrats to believe that genes play a role in social inequality.

YouGov’s poll was motivated by the contentious American Eagle ad that used the slogan “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”. It asked a sample of about 1,200 Americans a number of questions about genes and human differences.  

When asked whether “some people have better genes than others,” respondents who identified as “very conservative” were more likely than those who identified as “very liberal” to say “strongly agree” – though the difference between conservatives and moderates was small. And very conservative Americans were more likely to consider it appropriate to say someone has “good genes”.

However, when asked about specific traits, neither Democrats nor Republicans saw much role for genes. The results are shown below.

For each trait, YouGov asked respondents whether “genes”, “upbringing and environment” or “choices” matter most. (The bars represent the percentage of Democrats and Republicans in each category.) Note that this is a slightly odd formulation, since people’s choices are to a large extent a product of their genes and their environment.

In any case, there was substantial agreement between Democrats and Republicans over the role of genes – with a few exceptions. Democrats were less likely to say that genes matter most for sex and gender (the fruits of gender ideology). And Republicans were slightly more likely to say that genes matter most for intelligence. But on the whole, the two groups’ responses were very similar.

The main differences between them concerned the role they saw for “upbringing and environment” versus “choices”, with Democrats seeing a greater role for the former and Republicans seeing a greater role for the latter. For example, 77% of Republicans said people’s choices matter most for success in life, compared to only 54% of Democrats.

But remarkably, only 2% of each group said genes matter most for success in life and only 1% said genes matter most for income. Note that twin studies suggest genes play a major role in income differences, explaining more of the total variation than family background. Indeed, I would personally say that genes matter most for both income and success in life.

Overall then, YouGov’s poll clearly refutes the stereotype of the Right-wing genetic determinist. Only a tiny fraction of Republicans believe that genes matter most for where people end up. And of those who do believe genes matter most, about half are Democrats.