'People are born with their views, it's in the genes'

London, Jan 31 (UNI) You like potatoes, she likes tomatoes -- don't blame the taste buds, it's all in the genes.

Scientists from the US have claimed that people are born with their views, which means their stand on a particular thing is deep rooted in their DNA.

Be it politics, religion, nuclear war or gay rights, a person's likes and dislikes regarding a particular stand are governed by the genes, and can be stubbornly resistant to reason, the Daily Mail reported.

''Views are deep-seated and built into our brains, trying to persuade someone not to be liberal is like trying to persuade someone not to have brown eyes. We have to rethink persuasion, '' researcher Dr John Alford, of Rice University said.

He studied the political opinions of 30,000 twins and found identical twins were more likely than nonidentical ones to give the same answers.

On the issue of whether property should be taxed, four-fifths of identical twins gave the same answer compared to two-thirds of non-identical twins.

At the same time, Dr John Jost, a psychologist at New York University, surveyed 88 studies involving 20,000 people in 12 countries. He found that those who scored highly on a scale measuring fear of death were four times more likely to hold conservative views.

Dogmatic types were also more conservative while those who expressed interest in new experiences tended to be liberals. He also found that xenophobic (people having abnormal fear or hatred of the strange or foreign) , were connected with the far-Right wing of politics.

''We spend a lot of energy getting upset with the other side, we often think our opponents are misinformed or stubborn. Accepting that people are born with their views, changes that, '' Dr Alford said.

UNI XC ARB HT1624