Nature, Nurture And Your Politics

When most of us think about how we came to our political views, we often give a straightforward answer. We believe our stances on taxes, immigration or national security are shaped by those around us — our friends, parents, teachers. We assume our life experiences are the root of our political ideologies.

But what if there is something deeper in us that drives the music we listen to, the food we eat — even the politicians that we elect?

John Hibbing is a political scientist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Over the years, he’s studied how our political views may also be influenced by our biology. CONT.

Shankar Vedantam, Thomas Lu, Tara Boyle & Camila Vargas-Restrepo, Hidden Brain