Abused children grow up to be conservatives. How many conservatives were abused as children?

[fromderinside]

... I see it (epigenetics) as the opposite. I think of it as accelerating Darwinian adaptations. My hypothesis can accommodate both: if human r versus K adaptations are mostly epigenetic, then it would be same Darwinian principle at the core.

For me its primarily energy conserving a shortcut for recurring conditions and for often multi factored periodic environments like those underlying beetle explosions.

I'm thinking the increased autism complex appearance in western societies probably reflects, largely, an epigenetic social complex phenotype. Perhaps responding to relative resource abundance with mobility.

 

[ronburgundy]

Whatever the cause of the correlations may be, the correlations are nevertheless existent and the traits are heritable, so the biological explanation is secondary. My evolutionary thinking on the matter is that geography is not the only delimiter between r and K selection strategy, but within each geographic region there would be a sympatric (non-geographic) differential mating pattern, in which the K-strategy upper class mates with the upper class, and the r-strategy lower class mates with the lower class. This is most evident in the caste system of India, but it otherwise exists at least implicitly in every human society.

These traits are at most only 50% heritable, with much of that 50% actually being highly indirect and mediated by context-dependent environmental factors (e.g., inheriting skin color which impacts political conservatism depending upon racial inequalities and historical contingencies).

The fact that some % of each trait is heritable tells us nothing about whether the correlation between the traits is entirely, partially, or not at all due to genetics.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Whatever the cause of the correlations may be, the correlations are nevertheless existent and the traits are heritable, so the biological explanation is secondary. My evolutionary thinking on the matter is that geography is not the only delimiter between r and K selection strategy, but within each geographic region there would be a sympatric (non-geographic) differential mating pattern, in which the K-strategy upper class mates with the upper class, and the r-strategy lower class mates with the lower class. This is most evident in the caste system of India, but it otherwise exists at least implicitly in every human society.

These traits are at most only 50% heritable, with much of that 50% actually being highly indirect and mediated by context-dependent environmental factors (e.g., inheriting skin color which impacts political conservatism depending upon racial inequalities and historical contingencies).

The fact that some % of each trait is heritable tells us nothing about whether the correlation between the traits is entirely, partially, or not at all due to genetics.

The 50% heritability does not directly reflect the cause of group differences such as groups of differing skin color. It quantifies the cause of within-group variations. Within a given group, 50% of the criminal variations are most certainly due to genetic variations. That should be a central consideration for any argument that rests on correlation between spanking and any heritable trait.

 

[ronburgundy]

These traits are at most only 50% heritable, with much of that 50% actually being highly indirect and mediated by context-dependent environmental factors (e.g., inheriting skin color which impacts political conservatism depending upon racial inequalities and historical contingencies).

The fact that some % of each trait is heritable tells us nothing about whether the correlation between the traits is entirely, partially, or not at all due to genetics.

The 50% heritability does not directly reflect the cause of group differences such as groups of differing skin color. It quantifies the cause of within-group variations. Within a given group, 50% of the criminal variations are most certainly due to genetic variations. That should be a central consideration for any argument that rests on correlation between spanking and any heritable trait.

The 50% heritability estimates are not merely within-group, they are a % of the total variance and thus include between group differences. Also, race/skin-color is only one of infinite traits whose highly indirect effects could be mediated or moderated by environmental factors. Absolutely anything that interacts with cultural context to impact how people are viewed or treated could and likely would have some impact on variables like conservatism (e.g., sexual-orientation, attractiveness, height, emotional temperament, etc..).

Show me the study that demonstrates a 50% variance in crime within a single racial group explained by genes.

Plus, "crime" is not a variable in question. Most crimes are not "child abuse" and much child abuse is not even a crime. Their is huge cultural and ideological variability in how the things categorized as "abuse" by the OP research are viewed by people, in contrast to the lack of variance in how violent crimes like murder are viewed. Thus, whatever the genetic contribution to violent crimes in general, it is likely to be far greater than the genetic contribution to the specific actions variably viewed as "child abuse".

Yes, genetic factors might contribute to the OP correlations and thus undermine the OP argument of a direct causal link between abuse and conservatism. But the existing evidence for the genetic contribution to these variables still leaves it very plausible that genes have very little to do with this particular relationship. So, as of now, all we have are uninterpretable correlations with countless plausible competing explanations.