Nature, nurture, and conservatism in the Australian twin study

Abstract

Church attendance, educational level, and six conservatism scales were the subject of a multivariate behavior-genetic analysis by Truettet al. (Behav. Genet. 22, 43–62, 1992), based on responses from a large sample of adult Australian twins. These data are here analyzed in a different way to elicit general conservatism factors in the genetic, shared environmental, and unshared environmental covariation. The general genetic factor appears mainly to reflect intellectual sophistication; the general environmental factors, religious affiliation. These factors are similar, although not identical, for men and women.