Citation

Eaves LJ, Silberg JL. Twin Res. Hum. Genet. 2017; 20(5): 371-373.

Affiliation

Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics,Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine,Richmond,VA,USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Australian Academic Press)

DOI

10.1017/thg.2017.51

PMID

28975877

Abstract

The genetic and social causes of individual differences in attitudes to gun control are estimated in a sample of senior male and female twin pairs in the United States. Genetic and environmental parameters were estimated by weighted least squares applied to polychoric correlations for monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins of both sexes. The analysis suggests twin similarity for attitudes to gun control in men is entirely genetic while that in women is purely social. Although the volunteer sample is small, the analysis illustrates how the well-tested concepts and methods of genetic epidemiology may be a fertile resource for deepening our scientific understanding of biological and social pathways that affect individual risk to gun violence.

Language: en

Keywords

attitudes; gun control; heritability; sex differences; twins