Adoption and twin study (Ludeke et al 2013)

Question 1

What was the aim of ludeke et al?

Answer 1

To test the Traditional Moral Values Triad (TMVT)

To see if those who follow conventional authority have traditional attitudes towards the structure of the family, society and religion, as well as conventional attitudes on political issues

Question 2

Describe the sample of Ludeke et al

Answer 2

Ppts were found on the register of Minnesota twins who were reared apart

66 MZ twin pairs and 53 DZ twin pairs
All had been separated in infancy and reunited as adults

63% were female
Most were white, middle class

Question 3

Describe the procedure of Ludeke et al

Answer 3

They all took part in 5 tests:
-Right-wing authoritarianism test
To measure how conventional, how authoritarian submissive and how authoritarian aggressive they were.

-Conservatism
Wilson-Patterson conservatism scale including questions on abortion, capitalism and segregation

-Religious Fundamentalism
Wiggins religious Fundamentalist scale including questions on Christian beliefs

-Traditionalism
Items from the Multidimensional personality questionnaire were used

-Intelligence
Wechsler adult intelligence scale was used to assess verbal and performance aspects of intelligence

Question 4

Describe the results of Ludeke et al

Answer 4

High correlations between all the scales with MZ twins, so they had similar scores across the pair. Whereas they was only a significant correlation in conservatism for the DZ twins.
This suggests these traits are genetic.

Conservatism and right-wing authoritarianism had a correlation of 0.7

Question 5

Describe the conclusion of Ludeke et al

Answer 5

Right-wing authoritarianism, religiousness and conservatism were all part of a single trait, with genetic influences contributing 44% of the variance between ppts, and these genes also influenced TMVT (91% of the results)

Question 6

Evaluate the generalisability of Ludeke et al

Answer 6

Large sample size - 238 ppts (66 MZ pairs and 53 DZ pairs)

Ethnocentric - Mostly white, middle class and from Minnesota

Androcentric - Mostly female (63%) but this was controlled for in the reults

Question 7

Evaluate the reliability of Ludeke et al

Answer 7

Standardised procedure - same 5 tests were used

Controls - Correlations were made for age, sex and intelligence when analysing the results

Question 8

Evaluate the validity of Ludeke et al

Answer 8

Task validity - unnatural to answer these questions and do these tests

Social desirability - People may have not answered truthfully on the tests to seem more morally right as they were self report tests