It's Election Day and maybe you just can't help yourself when you go into the booth.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego and Harvard say that your surroundings and upbringing certainly do shape your ideology. But a person can also be predisposed to a certain way of thinking.
The researchers matched the genetic makeup of 2,000 people with maps of their social networks and found that those with a varient in a dopamine receptor gene were more likely to be liberals as adults -- but only if they had a lot of friends as kids.
The research builds on past research done on dopamine, a neurotransmitter repsonsible for feeling pleasure and pain. It was published in the Journal of Politics.
The theory is that those with this "novelty seeking" gene variant who had a lot of friends would seek out a lot of their opinions. Being exposed to so many points of view would make them more liberal if they were already predisposed that way. But more study is needed, researchers say.
What do you make of this?