The Influence of Major Life Events on Economic Policy Attitudes in a World of Gene- Environment Interplay

The role of "genes" on political preferences has gained wide attention across disciplines. However, the role of person-specific experiences has yet to be incorporated into models which explore the interconnected roles of genes and environment on political attitudes. Here, relying on a large sample of related individuals, this study empirically address geneenvironment interplay through explicating the influence that proximate events, such as losing one’s job, suffering a major financial loss, or getting a divorce, has on economic policy attitudes. The results indicate that the genetic and environmental variance on support for Unions, Immigration, Capitalism, Socialism, Property Tax, and Federal Housing is moderated by job loss, divorce, and other financial risk events. However, changes in the import of genetic influences were only temporary. Rather, after 2 years, the mean effects of the financial risk events remained on most attitudes, but the sources of individual differences did not. We conclude that univariate models which estimate the contributions of genes and environment to variation in political attitudes provide a robust baseline indicator of sources of individual difference, but they are not event and day specific. In this way, it appears genetic influences add stability, while environment cues change, and this process is continually updated.