Everything is heritable - except attitudes towards drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, anyway! (Despite actually smoking being heritable...) "The Importance of Heritability in Psychological Research: The Case of Attitudes", Tesser 1993;

"It is argued that differences in response heritability may have important implications for the testing of general psychological theories, that is, responses that differ in heritability may function differently. For example, attitudes higher in heritability are shown to be responded to more quickly, to be more resistant to change, and to be more consequential in the attitude similarity attraction relationship. The substantive results are interpreted in terms of attitude strength and niche building. More generally, the implications of heritability for the generality and typicality of treatment effects are also discussed.

There is also evidence of genetic contributions to specific cognitive abilities, school achievement, creativity, reading disability, and mental retardation (see Plomin, 1989, for a review). In the area of psychopathology, schizophrenia, affective disorders, alcoholism, antisocial personality, anorexia nervosa, infantile autism, Tourette's syndrome, and Alzheimer's disease also appear to covary with genetic endowment (see Loehlin et al., 1988, for a review). Perhaps the area that is getting the most current attention is personality. Dramatic reports of genetic influence in this domain are coming from the Minnesota Twins Project (e.g., Bouchard & McGue, 1990; Tellegen et al., 1988), from developmental studies (e.g., Plomin & Nesselrode, 1990), and from large-scale American (Loehlin, 1989), Soviet (e.g., Ravich-Scherbo, 1988), and Anglo studies (Eaves, Eysenck, & Martin, 1989).

Altruism and aggression may be conceived of as broad social attitudes, and there is evidence of a genetic contribution (over 50%) to individual differences on these dimensions (Rushton, Fulker, Neale, Nias, & Eysenck, 1986). There is also evidence of a genetic component to job satisfaction (Arvey, Bouchard, Segal, & Abraham, 1989) as well as to vocational attitudes (Keller, Bouchard, Arvey, Segal, & Dawis, 1992; Scarr & Weinberg, 1978). Using the Strong Vocational Interest Blank, Roberts and Johansson (1974) estimated a heritability of about .5 for various vocational types. Although Loehlin and Nichols (1976) found little evidence of a genetic component in attitudes toward God or organized religious activity in their high school sample of twins, Waller, Kojetin, Bouchard, Lykken, and Tellegen (1990) used a more complete assessment battery of religious attitudes; an older, more age-variable sample; and estimates of heritability from twins reared apart as well as together to estimate that about 50% of the variance in their instruments is genetically influenced.
Even more narrowly conceived attitudes seem to show some heritability. Thus, for example, Perry (1973) examined the heritability of attitudes toward alcohol, cigarettes, and coffee and found that attitudes toward drinking alcohol did have a genetic component (51%), whereas attitudes toward drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes did not. More recently, Plomin, Corley, DeFries, and Fulker (1990) concluded from a parent offspring and sibling adoption design that television viewing time among 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds has a significant genetic component (estimates vary by method and age). Usually when one thinks of attitudes, the prototype that comes to mind is political attitudes of various sorts. Authoritarianism falls on the intersection of personality and ideology, and Scarr (1981) has provided evidence for the genetic transmission of authoritarianism. More recently, Martin et al. (1986) obtained responses from over 3,000 pairs of twins who filled out a 50-item conservatism scale (Feather, 1975; Wilson & Patterson, 1968). This scale included items such as the death penalty, divorce, and jazz to which subjects responded "\fes," "?" or "No." Item-based estimates of additive genetic variance (based on the difference between monozygotic and dyzotic intraclass correlations and corrected for age) revealed 23 significant items. The range of heritabilities over the 50 items was from 8% to 51%. (See Table 1 for a subset of items and their heritabilities.) These same investigators (Martin et al., 1986) also reported on a sample of over 800 pairs of British twins who responded to a "Public Opinion Inventory comprising 40 frequently encountered statements relating to such issues as religion, sex, treatment of criminals, and nationalism [Eysenck, 1954]" (p. 4364). The items were aggregated into two composites, radicalism and toughmindedness. Each of the composites had large heritabilities (more than 50%). In a more recent treatment (Eaves et al., 1989), heritability estimates for each of 60 items were presented. They ranged from 1 % to 63%. (See Table 2 for a subset of items and their heritabilities.)

https://i.imgur.com/0PcO2Bf.png

https://i.imgur.com/RSNUWS2.png

For some areas, the connection does not have to be made. In many individual difference areas, particularly in the area of intellectual abilities, the theoretical concerns deal directly with the heritability issue. A behavioral genetics analysis maps right onto the theoretical questions. For example, the estimate that so much of the variance in intellectual ability is due to shared environment and so much is due to genetics is as far as it needs to go. In this case, no other connection needs to be made.
When working with a specific response class, for example, altruism, the effects of heritability, with certain caveats, can safely be ignored. Suppose, for example, that subjects are randomly assigned to a similar or dissimilar "needy other" condition to test the hypothesis that similarity to a needy other increases altruism. If the heritability and the situational manipulation are additive in their effects on altruism, then heritability adds only individual differences "noise" to the experiment. The presence of heritability will make the experiment less powerful but not misleading, 1 and the proportion of variance accounted for by the manipulations will be limited by the magnitude of the heritability coefficient. 2
A third class of research concerns the testing of relatively general theories such as social learning theory (Bandura, 1985), dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957), or self-perception theory

Up to this point I have talked about heritability as if it were a fixed quantity indexing a kind of biological "fixedness." It is not. Heritability is the ratio of the phenotypic variance controlled by genetic variance to the total phenotypic variance which is controlled by genetic variance and environmental variance, for a particular population. Thus, it is not fixed, and it is determined as much by nurture as it is by nature. It can vary with the homogeneity or heterogeneity of the genetic makeup of the population—in a population of clones (0 genetic variance), any phenotypic variance at all would be environmental and heritability would be 0%. It also covaries with the heterogeneity of environments—if everyone was confronted with exactly the same environment, then all the phenotypic variance would be due to genetic differences. If heritability was estimated on a random sample of the population and this sample had been subjected to a random sample of environments, then the estimate would give the typical percent variance due to genetic differences. To the extent that either persons or environments are not randomly sampled, estimates will change. In short, if one observes behavior in selected environments, all bets are off about the relative importance of differences in genes as typically estimated.

As already noted, I selected items for which heritability estimates based on large samples had already been reported in the literature. Two different sets were used for the purposes of replication. Both sets of items deal with conservatism, both sets are based on non-American, Anglo samples, and both sets have heritabilities estimates presented by Eaves et al. (1989) and Martin etal. (1986).
The first set of items comes from a 50-item version of the Wilson-Patterson conservatism scale (Feather, 1975; Wilson & Patterson, 1968). Heritabilities were estimated on the basis of the responses of 3,810 (a 64% response rate) pairs of twins to a mailed questionnaire (Martin et al., 1986). The sample included 565 pairs of monozygotic (MZ) men, 1,232 pairs of MZ women, 351 pairs of dizygotic (DZ) men, 750 pairs of DZ women, and 905 pairs of DZ mixed-gender siblings. (See the original sources for more details regarding the sample.) "Zygosity was determined by querying similarity in childhood and confusion of one twin for another by parents, friends and teachers, and [this technique] has been validated by blood typing [Martin & Martin, 1975; Kasriel & Eaves, 1976]" (Martin et As already noted, I selected items for which heritability estimates based on large samples had already been reported in the literature. Two different sets were used for the purposes of replication. Both sets of items deal with conservatism, both sets are based on non-American, Anglo samples, and both sets have heritabilities estimates presented by Eaves et al. (1989) and Martin etal. (1986).
The first set of items comes from a 50-item version of the Wilson-Patterson conservatism scale (Feather, 1975; Wilson & Patterson, 1968). Heritabilities were estimated on the basis of the responses of 3,810 (a 64% response rate) pairs of twins to a mailed questionnaire (Martin et al., 1986). The sample included 565 pairs of monozygotic (MZ) men, 1,232 pairs of MZ women, 351 pairs of dizygotic (DZ) men, 750 pairs of DZ women, and 905 pairs of DZ mixed-gender siblings. (See the original sources for more details regarding the sample.) "Zygosity was determined by querying similarity in childhood and confusion of one twin for another by parents, friends and teachers, and [this technique] has been validated by blood typing [Martin & Martin, 1975; Kasriel & Eaves, 1976]" (Martin et al., 1986, p. 4364).

Procedure. Subjects were individually seated before a microcomputer and told that they would see a series of concepts to which they were to indicate their personal favorability on a 7-point scale (1 = very unfavorable and 7 = very favorable). When they understood how to do this, the computer displayed each of the selected Wilson-Patterson (W-P; 1968) items (Table 1) one at a time (the order was independently randomized for each subject), and the subject recorded his or her level of favorability. The computer recorded the time it took for each attitudinal response. After another task, a similar procedure was undertaken with the POI items (see Table 2). On these items, subjects indicated their level of agreement or disagreement on a 7-point scale. The order in which subjects responded to the W-P and POI items was counterbalanced.
...The resulting correlation (r = -.36, p < .02) is significant. Previous research has found that speed of response is a reliable and valid indicator of attitude strength. Although the within-subject correlations are small, there appears to be an association between speed of attitude response and the estimated heritability of the item. There are, however, some differences between Study 1 and other studies intended to measure reaction time. In Study 1, subjects were not instructed to respond as fast as they could. It was assumed that they responded as soon as their attitude was accessed and that deviations from this strategy were uniformly distributed across items. It is also worth noting that item length was not experimentally controlled in this study. I addressed this problem through statistical control. Even with this control, there were detectable effects of heritability. (Indeed, the uncorrected correlations were similar in magnitude to the partial correlations, and partialing made little difference one way or the other.) In summary, I conclude that speed of response is associated with attitude heritability.

conformity is a pervasive force in social life. It affects judgments of the ambiguous and of the clear; it plays an important role in the harming and helping of others. Is its impact moderated by the heritability of the attitude in question? Conformity directly addresses the question of malleability of behavior across situations. It is an index of the extent to which behavior changes with changing situational norms. Attitudes with higher heritabilities are (relatively) less situationally malleable. Therefore, I expect that attitudes with higher heritabilities will be stronger, that is, will show less change, as a result of shifting norms.
...Subjects. Subjects were recruited from an introductory psychology course at the University of Georgia and received course credit as an incentive. Thirty-one men and 32 women served in Phase 1, whereas 56 men and 81 women served in Phase 2.
Phase 1. Subjects were run in small groups. They received a questionnaire containing 18 of the selected W-P items and were asked to record their attitude by indicating the extent of their agreement on a 5-point graphic scale with the points labeled strongly oppose, oppose, neutral, favor, or strongly favor for each item.
Phase 2. The percentage of Phase 1 subjects who favored or strongly favored and the percentage of subjects who opposed or strongly opposed each item was computed. These norms were used to construct two versions of a second questionnaire. In Version 1, some of the items were paired with false norms that were 15% more favorable than the Phase 1 norm, and the remaining items were paired with norms that were 15% less favorable. 6 Version 2 was the mirror image of Version 1: The items that had false favorable norms on Version 1 had false unfavorable norms on Version 2; the items that had false unfavorable norms on Version 1 had false favorable norms on Version 2.
Phase 2 subjects were given either Version 1 or Version 2 of the questionnaire. They read that they were to indicate their attitudes and that "Since many people are interested in how their peers feel on a given issue we have provided you with information on the responses of other UGA [University of Georgia] students for these items." Each item had associated with it the false norm and a 5-point graphic scale.
...These within-subject means were subjected to a 2 (gender) X 2 (influence: favorable vs. unfavorable) X 2 (heritability) analysis of variance (ANOVA), with the last two variables treated as repeated measures. Overall, men tended to be less favorable to the issues (M = -.01) than were women, M = .04, F(l, 132) = 5.00, p < .03, and the influence of the norms was effective, F(\ ,132)= 5.97, p < .02; moreover, as predicted by the hypothesis, the difference between favorable norms and unfavorable norms is smaller for the high heritability items (M= .02 vs. M = -.03) than for the low heritability items (M = .06 vs. M = -.10). The crucial interaction, however, did not approach significance (F= 1.14).
To get greater separation between the high and low heritability items, the data were reanalyzed with the four highest heritability items (death penalty, apartheid, royalty, and jazz) and the four lowest heritability items (divine law, coeducation, flogging, and straitjackets). This analysis yielded clear results. Again, women were more favorable to the items than men, F(l, 132) = 8.72, p< .01. The influence main effect was still present, F(\, 135) = 4.40, p < .04. Again, the crucial Heritability X Influence interaction was present, but this time it was significant, F(l, 135) = 5.23, p < .01. As can be seen in Figure 1, norms make a clear difference with the low heritability items, whereas the effect of norms is trivial for the high heritability items. When looking at the extremes, it appears that conformity pressures operate more strongly for low heritability than for high heritability attitudes.
...This bivariate distribution is shown in Figure 2. The correlation between heritability and influenceability is — .51 (p< .03). At the item level, there is a clear association between heritability and influenceability. Low heritability items are more influenced by the norms than high heritability items. Indeed, there appears to be a boomerang effect on attitudes with the greatest heritabilities."