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Fritz
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Genetics of Politics
« on: 2008-02-10 19:49:19 » |
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I was taking a well deserved break in front of the TV and watching CNN. Between the Baton Rouge shooting and Bush visiting the tornado victims on Friday, they ran a story that stated People were genetically predisposed to vote Republican or Democrat.
I have gone through, best I can on dialup, of the CNN's website but have been unable to find the story. I was conscious at the time.
I thought this was an interesting Meme to propagate, since it implies a self limiting of freewill and hence ideas contributing to change, yet it is an idea which could lead to a change in view of how we function :-)
So, did CNN broadcast a recursive inclusion ?
I will keep looking for the story .....
Fritz
I did find the articles below during my hunt:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=5&articleID=8BD37481-E7F2-99DF-34D1A46C2CB1775E
Scientific American Magazine - November, 2007
The Genetics of Politics
A study finds that biology strongly governs voter turnout
Aristotle once noted, “Man is by nature a political animal.” What may be the first study to investigate this idea scientifically now controversially suggests that Aristotle may have been right—the desire to vote or abstain from politics might largely be hardwired into our biology.
When it comes to predicting who will vote, researchers have looked at “everything but the kitchen sink,” says political scientist James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego. Theorists speculate on factors such as age, gender, race, marital status, education, income, home ownership, political knowledgeability and church attendance. But studies indicate that each one exerts only a small effect.
Fowler notes that people who vote often do so even when they know their lone ballot will not change the outcome of an election. “It’s almost like voters are programmed to keep voting, even when their common sense tells them it is probably useless,” he states. At the same time, “many people never vote, no matter what. So I started to wonder if there was something very basic at the biological level.”
Fowler and his colleagues thus turned to identical and fraternal twins. If the decision to vote is based in part on genetics, they reasoned, identical twins should behave more alike than fraternal twins, because identical twins share all of their DNA, whereas fraternal twins share only half on average.
The researchers matched data from the Southern California Twin Registry with publicly accessible electronic voter registration and turnout records from Los Angeles County. Their analysis of voting histories for 326 identical and 196 fraternal twins suggests that genetics was responsible for 60 percent of differences in voting turnout between twin types, with the rest coming from environmental or other factors.
Fowler and his colleagues also investigated a larger, more nationally representative database from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, or Add Health. This study not only asked if participants voted but also inquired about participation in other political activities, such as whether they contributed to campaigns or attended political rallies or marches. The researchers’ data on 442 identical and 364 fraternal Add Health twins indicate that genetics underlies 72 percent of differences in voting turnout and roughly 60 percent of differences in other political activity. Fowler, who presented the research at the American Political Science Association meeting in August, claims that preliminary results from the Twins Days festival in Twinsburg, Ohio, also support the findings.
Fowler adds that his team’s work does not suggest that genetics can determine whom people will vote for, only whether or not they are likely to vote. He also emphasizes that environment most likely plays a significant role in voting: “There is still a lot we can do to shape political behavior in spite of our genetic tendencies.”
If genes do in part control voting, a single gene is unlikely to be responsible—hundreds of genes are probably involved, suggests behavioral geneticist Robert Plomin of King’s College London. Fowler hypothesizes that because “we obviously did not vote in large-scale elections in the Pleistocene,” the drive to vote or participate in politics may be linked with genes underlying more ancient behaviors, such as innate dispositions toward cooperation. The search for any such genes in our primate relatives could help determine “whether we share the neurobiological underpinnings of cooperation or whether humans are unique in this respect,” Fowler adds.
Plomin states that “these findings are strong,” but in his analysis of the same data, he concludes that genetics was responsible for 40, and not 60, percent of differences in voting turnout between twin types. Forty percent is still “a lot,” he admits, and is also the average estimate of heritability seen in twin studies of personality, suggesting that voting is an example of a genetically influenced personality trait in general.
Behavioral neuroscientist Evan Balaban of McGill University, however, cautions that relying on twin studies as the sole evidence of links between genetics and behavior is a mistake. About two thirds of identical twins actually share the same bloodstream while fetuses, so greater similarities between twins could be attributable not only to sharing genes but “to sharing more similar levels of hormones and other compounds each fetus produces during development,” he explains. “So there is a pattern of similarity these researchers have documented that needs to be explained, but genetics is not the only explanation for it.”
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http://freewill.typepad.com/genetics/2005/03/politics_in_the.html
Politics in the Age of Genetics
In America, Democrats (liberals) believe that everyone has the potential to become anything they choose, given access to a the right government programs (education, medical benefits, social security). Any mental disability can be overcome with treatment. Anyone can become the CEO of a large company, or President of the United States with the right opportunity and education.
Republicans, on the other hand, believe that there's a natural hierarchy in society, which is God's design (in other words, don't ask questions). Some people are just naturally subservient, dumb or unmotivated -- yet anyone with the inborn desire and talent can rise up and become a leader, as long as government does not stand in their way.
I believe the Republicans are correct in one respect - published studies certainly show that we are unequal in our innate talents.
The Democrats are right that we can pursue anything we choose. But we are not free in what we choose, because our choices emanate from our innate feelings and desires. Speaking for myself, I don't choose to become President -- because I don't crave power and I don't enjoy the limelight; it makes me uncomfortable. No one taught me to feel uncomfortable, it's just who I am, and that obviously differs from who other people are. We are free to follow our chosen path (after we make a choice), but we are not free in our desires.
I believe the Democrats are wrong to assume that many people would chose to become a CEO or the President if only social obstacles were removed. Bill Clinton is one example of someone who was raised with modest means (by an abusive step-father and a mother who gambled) and became President. His natural intellect helped him win the attention of mentors. He didn't need a state-run mentoring program. His natural political talents helped him build a base of support. He faced enormous barriers, yet was motivated (from within) to overcome them.
Being poor is not an obstacle to success. Some people rise up every generation, so they show it can be done. Those people attribute their success to hard work, and would be insulted by any implication that it's simply inborn motivation. But it's true nonetheless. A rat will press a lever day and night until it dies of exhaustion, if the "pleasure zone" in its brain is artificially stimulated with each press. Similarly, those with innate motivation will work tirelessly for their goals. It doesn't mean they will reach their goals, but motivated people can be extremely resourceful and relentless in their quest.
You can't teach desire and motivation. It comes from within. It determines the choices you want to make. It makes the other choices seem undesireable. Programs like Head Start have been shown to have limited affect beyond the first couple of years. Because Head Start can't motivate you, and it can't motivate your potential mentors. They are people, too. Mentors look for the best and brightest, someone who makes them feel good and furthers their agenda.
The best case that the Democrats can make is that they help the sick, unmotivated, poor, and uninspired, retain their human dignity. Some people do get better with therapy or treatment. We are all morally equal, even as we are not equal in innate talent, so this policy is gracious and kind-hearted. And most voters probably fall into this category.
Politically, it is suicide, however. As soon as the genes are discovered that explain the differences in motivation and desire across society, we as individuals and society will tirelessly find a way around our natural limits. We will want a new party to protect our choices over our genes, and our ability to select our children's genes.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Fritz
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Spin Detector
« Reply #1 on: 2008-03-08 18:31:00 » |
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This got some use during the 2006 Canadian Elections and now has been tried out on the US election speeches, thought was worth sharing.
Fritz
http://www.cs.queensu.ca/home/skill/uselection/index.html
David Skillicorn and Ayron Little, School of Computing, Queen's University, skill at cs dot queensu dot ca, 613 533 6065.
Update: Barack Obama has changed his word usage in a major way, starting over the weekend of February 23rd-24th, and very obvious in the Ohio debate of February 26th. It is unlikely that he has done this consciously -- rather he has reframed the situation to himself in a way that allows him to be much more open than he has been up to now. It seems likely that he has concluded, or been told, that his position is unassailable, and he will be the nominee. So his level of spin has dropped precipitately. We will have to wait and see whether this affects how he comes across in this new persona.
People leak their mental state whenever they communicate, via changes in the way they use small words: prepositions, pronouns, and auxiliary verbs. One facet of communication that can be detected this way is deception, which itself ranges from outright lying to socially-acceptable negotiation. Here we consider the form of deception that occurs in politics: spin, the way in which politicians subtly change what they say to appeal to the widest possible audience, while maintaining a level of deniability. We look at the speeches by the candidates for the U.S. presidential election from the beginning of 2008 to the middle of February.
Here are some results for speeches by the current con
Candidate Speech number Score Speech details
McCain 29 4.7 Feb 7th, CPAC
Clinton 1 2.9 Jan 3rd, Iowa
McCain 28 2.9 Jan 19th
McCain 26 2.8 Jan 8th
McCain 30 1.8 Feb 13th
Clinton 3 1.6 Jan 8th
Clinton 12 1.5 Feb 19th
Clinton 11 1.3 Feb 16th
Clinton 2 1.0 Jan 4th
Clinton 4 0.95 Jan 11th
Clinton 7 0.9 Jan 28th
Obama 15 0.3 Jan 22nd, Economic Speech
Clinton 8 0.2 Jan 31st
Obama 19 0.1 Jan 29th, Reclaiming the American Dream, Kansas
Clinton 10 -0.1 Feb 9th, Virginia Jefferson-Jackson Dinner
Clinton 6 -0.3 Jan 24th, Solutions for the American Economy
Obama 24 -0.7 Feb 12th
Obama 23 -0.8 Feb 9th
Clinton 9 -0.9 Feb 5th, Super Tuesday
Obama 17 -1.0 Jan 28th
Obama 18 -1.2 Jan 28tha
Obama 20 -1.5 Jan 30th
Obama 13 -1.5 Jan 3rd
Obama 21 -1.7 Feb 5th
Obama 25 -1.8 Feb 13th
Clinton 5 -1.8 Jan 14th,SEIU 32BJ Event Honoring the Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr
Obama 22 -2.0 Feb 7th
McCain 27 -2.2 Jan 12th, Americans For Prosperity Michigan Summit
Obama 14 -2.6 Jan 20th
Obama 16 -2.6 Jan 26th
There are some obvious results here: John McCain has the lowest level of spin (justifying the straight talk reputation he claims); followed by Hillary Clinton; while Barack Obama shows a definite tendency to spin his message.
Some of the speeches with unusual ranks are labelled with the occasion on which they were delivered. Not surprisingly, the tendency to spin increases when the candidate is in difficulties.
This analysis is based on work by James Pennebaker, from the University of Texas at Austin, who developed a model for deception in text. The model is based on the relative frequency of certain kinds of words.
The Pennebaker model predicts that deceptive text will be marked by:
• A decreased frequency of first-person singular pronouns, perhaps because of a speaker's attempts to distance himself or herself from what's being said;
• A decreased frequency of exception words, such as `however' and `unless', perhaps to keep the story simple;
• An increased frequency of negative emotion words, perhaps because of some instinctive distaste about deceiving; and
• An increased frequency of action words, perhaps to keep the story going so that inconsistencies might not be noticed.
The Pennebaker model scores each individual text based on these four different kinds of markers. However, deciding when the usage frequency of, for example, first-person pronouns is decreased requires some assessment of how frequent they are in the first place; and this varies in different contexts: freeform speech, formal business writing, and political speeches. Correlation among the different kinds of signature words is also potentially important. We have extended Pennebaker's model to incorporate context and correlation information. This turns out to be important. It also turns out to be useful to collect related words together and consider the frequency of classes of words. We use: first-person singular pronouns; the word "but"; the word "or"; exclusive words; negative emotion words; and action words. As in the model above, deception is signalled by decreases in words of the first four kinds; and increases in words of the last two kinds.
The model was applied to the speeches of party leaders in the 2006 Canadian Federal election with some success (results here). For what it's worth, the leader with the least amount of spin won that election.
McCain tends to score well because he uses the pronoun "I" heavily. In contrast, Obama tends to use "we", and this pronoun plays a much more complicated role in communication. For example, in two-person interactions, the lower-status person tends to use more first-person singular pronouns, so using "I" creates an impression of humility (which is not what people intuitively think). In contrast, while female use of "we" does seem to signal inclusiveness, male use of "we" is often used to soften an imperative, and so tends not to come across as inclusive.
Even knowing this model, it is hard for a politician to adjust to reduce his/her spin score. Language production is an unconscious process, and the "small" words are not easily controllable. A prepared speech can, to some extent, be polished; but performance in a debate cannot, and so is more revealing.
More Technical Stuff
To produce these results, we counted the frequency of 6 word classes derived from Pennebaker's deception model, and divided the counted frequencies by the length of the speech in which they appeared (so that long speeches did not appear more spinful just because they were longer). The columns of the matrix were zero-centred, and those columns corresponding to words where a reduced frequency is significant were negated (reversed around the origin). A singular value decomposition was used to create a perceptual space for both speeches and words.
This figure shows the perceptual space for speeches. McCain's speeches are shown as red dots; Clinton's as blue dots; and Obama's as blue stars. Notice that there is significant clustering for all three. The straight line is the axis that defines spin, the green end indicating low spin and the red end high spin. Although both McCain and Clinton are towards the green end of the spin axis, their speeches are quite different from each other.
The scores above were calculated by projecting the points onto the spin axis. The number associated with each point is the speech number from the table above.
We can learn about the role of classes of words in the deception model by considering a perceptual space of the six word classes, like this:
The further a point corresponding to a word is from the origin, the more significant it is as a marker for spin. We can see that first-person singular pronouns, action verbs, and the exclusive word "but" dominate. The points corresponding to the other word classes are very close to the origin and play very little role.
The magenta lines indicate which direction corresponds to increased signal for each word class (e.g. increased action verbs but decreased first-person singular pronouns).
The following plot shows both speeches and words in the same plot. Although the plot is very busy and cannot be rotated to see another angle, some interesting structure is visible.
The plot helps to understand what makes each candidate different, because the word-usage patterns and the position of the speech points must agree with each other. For example, we can see that McCain's speeches get such low scores for spin mostly because he uses large numbers of first-person pronouns -- he says "I" a lot. Clinton's speeches get lowish scores for spin because they contain lots of action verbs.
This work is an offshoot of my work in extracting mental state from text, primarily focused on counterterrorism, fraud, and other kinds of crime. More details can be found on my home page and ongoing discussion on my blog.
More details can also be found on James Pennebaker's home page.
Also see Pennebaker's blog about language in the U.S. election.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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