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Category: Social Sciences

Published March 20, 2012

Think Genes Predict Social and Political Behavior? Not So Fast

My colleague Evan Charney has a very nice article in the most recent issue of the American Political Science Review:

Political scientists are making increasing use of the methodologies of behavior genetics in an attempt to uncover whether or not political behavior is heritable, as well as the specific genotypes that might act as predisposing factors for—or predictors of—political “phenotypes.” Noteworthy among the latter are a series of candidate gene association studies in which researchers claim to have discovered one or two common genetic variants that predict such behaviors as voting and political orientation. We critically examine the candidate gene association study methodology by considering, as a representative example, the recent study by Fowler and Dawes according to which “two genes predict voter turnout.” In addition to demonstrating, on the basis of the data set employed by Fowler and Dawes, that two genes do not predict voter turnout, we consider a number of difficulties, both methodological and genetic, that beset the use of gene association studies, both candidate and genome-wide, in the social and behavioral sciences.

The emphasis is mine. Having seen Evan give a fascinating presentation on this topic a few years ago, I was very happy to see (some of) his work on the topic published in such a widely read journal.

Evan also tells me that he has another paper on the topic titled “Behavior Genetics and Postgenomics” that’s forthcoming in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Here is the abstract of that forthcoming piece:

Continue readingThink Genes Predict Social and Political Behavior? Not So Fast
Published March 15, 2012

Experiments in Political Science

Two interesting articles were published within a few days of one another last week on the topic of experimental methods in political science.

The first article is by Jasjeet S. Sekhon and Rocio Titiunik in the American Political Science Review, and it discusses the uses and misuses of natural experiments:

Natural experiments help to overcome some of the obstacles researchers face when making causal inferences in the social sciences. However, even when natural interventions are randomly assigned, some of the treatment–control comparisons made available by natural experiments may not be valid. We offer a framework for clarifying the issues involved, which are subtle and often overlooked. We illustrate our framework by examining four different natural experiments used in the literature. In each case, random assignment of the intervention is not sufficient to provide an unbiased estimate of the causal effect. Additional assumptions are required that are problematic. For some examples, we propose alternative research designs that avoid these conceptual difficulties.

In other words, many of the natural experiments found in the literature do not allow identifying causal effects, and the authors do a good job of providing examples of four published natural experiments whose findings they question. The findings in Sekhon and Titiunik’s article apply to some regression discontinuity designs as well.

Continue readingExperiments in Political Science
Published March 14, 2012

Eugen Weber and the Western Tradition in 26 Hours

In college, I declared economics as my major before doing a Masters in economics and a PhD in applied economics. Having been trained as an economist through-and-through, I am thus woefully ignorant of what the humanities and other social sciences have had to say about development policy.

While I did read outside of economics during my minor in philosophy, my philosophical readings were largely confined to political philosophy and epistemology — two topics that are of direct relevance to economics.

In recent years, however, I have decided to remedy my ignorance by reading classic social sciences books surrounding development policy. I was thus very happy when Chris Blattman posted his list of books development economists should read but usually don’t.

I have so far read six of the titles on Chris’ list. All were very enlightening. Perhaps more importantly, all contributed in some way to my research and teaching.

One of my favorite books on the list was Eugen Weber’s Peasants into Frenchmen, which is an account of how France modernized between 1870 and the end of World War I. It has also become my favorite nonfiction book. When I realized that Weber had been teaching at UCLA, I imagined how interesting it must have been to take a class with him.

I no longer need to imagine it. A student in my principles of micro class, who noticed the book on my desk when she visited during my office hours, brought to my attention this series of video lectures on the Western tradition, taught by Weber himself. There are 52 lectures, each lasting 30 minutes. Watching these lectures should be a very nice way to spend my next 26 hours of spare time.

(HT: Haoxiaohan Cai.)