Family Ties

The Politics of Mate Choice

John Alford et al.
Journal of Politics, April 2011, Pages 1–19

Abstract: Recent research has found a surprising degree of homogeneity in the personal political communication network of individuals but this work has focused largely on the tendency to sort into likeminded social, workplace, and residential political contexts. We extend this line of research into one of the most fundamental and consequential of political interactions — that between sexual mates. Using data on thousands of spouse pairs in the United States, we investigate the degree of concordance among mates on a variety of traits. Our findings show that physical and personality traits display only weakly positive and frequently insignificant correlations across spouses. Conversely, political attitudes display interspousal correlations that are among the strongest of all social and biometric traits. Further, it appears the political similarity of spouses derives in part from initial mate choice rather than persuasion and accommodation over the life of the relationship.

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Sibling Ideological Influence: A Natural Experiment

R. Urbatsch
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming

Abstract: Siblings are a potentially important source of political socialization.
Influence is common, especially among younger siblings and those close in age, who tend to interact most frequently. This suggests that the positions of an individual's next-older sibling will hold particular sway. In policyquestions with a gender gap, then, those whose immediately older sibling is a sister will be more likely to absorb the typically female preference; those born after a brother, the male preference. Evidence from the United States shows that this pattern holds for general left–right orientation as well as for the preferred balance between public and private sectors. Just as American women are more likely to lean left and to see government intervention positively, so are Americans whose next-older sibling is female.

(Nod to Kevin Lewis)