Is dopamine destiny (in politics)?

Every boy and every gal/ That's born into the world alive/ Is either a little Liberal/ Or else a little Conservative

All four US presidential assassins, as well as failed Reagan assassin John Hinckley, were younger brothers.

Younger brothers are three times more likely to have circled the globe than firstborns.

From 1860 to 1996 the Republicans nominated first-borns twice as often as the Democrats did to the Supreme Court.

Study of marijuana use among students by psychology professor Richard Zweigenhaft found that 33 percent of eldest children had tried the drug during senior year at college, 38 percent of middle-borns and 48 percent of the youngest.

Firstborns are 1.9 times more likely to support conservative ideas like ‘faith in Divine providence’, while later-borns are 3.1 times more likely to support liberal theories. However, younger siblings’ support of liberal theories is far greater when their older brothers oppose them.

After The Origin of Species, later borns were much more likely to back the theory of evolution than older brothers.

Japanese-American first-borns were 1.4 times more likely to vote for conservative candidates than younger brothers, and older siblings are generally more likely to be pro-life, anti-gay rights and opposed to casual sex, and more likely to attend church. Later-borns are up to 43 per cent more likely to ‘support a liberal political position, to back a liberal candidate, or to campaign for a liberal social cause’.

These are all fascinating nuggets from Our Political Nature by Avi Tuschman, which came out in 2013, and which looks at what makes us who we are, the link between personality, politics and genetics. It is a subject that has long interested me, and featured in my 2020 book, because I rather wish I was less conservative, more easy-going and cool, chilled out about social change.