Evidence for a Paternal Age Effect on Leftism
OpenPsych , Nov. 25, 2023, ISSN: 2597-324X
The US has seen a linear decrease in the proportion of conservatives in each generation for at least 90 years. Sarraf et al. [5] have suggested that this is related to increases in mutational load due to relaxed selection pressures on humans in industrialized environments. We provide additional evidence for this hypothesis: leftists have older fathers than non-leftists, and those with older fathers are more likely to be leftist. Since male gametes acquire about 2 mutations per year, while female gametes mutate much more slowly, traits that are changing due to mutational pressure are expected to be more common in offspring from older fathers. Additionally, we show that older fathers themselves are not more leftist than younger fathers, suggesting that the paternal age effect is not due to differences in breeding patterns between leftists and non-leftists.
