Are you an active participant in community life or more a ‘charity begins at home’ type? And where did those attitudes come from? To find out, give each of the following statements a score between 1 (not at all true) and 4 (very true).

(a) I volunteer my time for community activities

(b) I regularly donate to charitable causes

(c) I vote in elections

If you scored (a) 2, (b) 2 and (c) 3 then you are about as civically engaged as the average person (at least according to a large American twin study); higher or lower scores indicate that you are more or less civically engaged than average.

Where does civic engagement come from? You will probably not be surprised to learn that the answer is “your parents” (who, in most cases, would give similar scores to your own). However, you probably will be surprised to learn that they passed these attitudes on to you genetically, rather than by being a good role model. The American study found that identical twins – who share almost all of their genes – were much more similar in their civic engagement than non-identical twins – who share almost all of their environment and upbringing. In fact, these findings suggest the environment in which you are raised has almost no effect at all on whether you are involved in volunteering, donating or voting, whereas genetic factors affect all three. The best way to encourage kids to vote is to encourage voters to have kids.

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