The You In Me by Sam Kean. Psychology Today. March 11, 2103.
Some Women Actually Have Men On The Brain by Melissa Healy. Los Angeles Times. September 12, 2012.
Here is a doctoral dissertation idea for an ambitious student with interests in politics, genetics, voter behavior, and decision making. It probably wouldn't hurt to have access to big-time computing resources and big data voter information.
Male Microchimerism In The Human Female Brain for the first time examined the presence of male genes in the human female brain, genes that originated by fetal exposure.
Could the presence of male genes in female brains have behavioral effects?
In this small scale study, the male genes seem to be related in some way to Alzheimer's. Could there be other behavioral effects? Could the presence of male genes influence, along some presently-unknown dimension, female behavior to be more similar to male behavior?
If so this possibility could help explain an established pattern in voter behavior. It is well-known--with the last Presidential election as a prime example--that married women tend to vote Republican more often than single women. In addition, the key point of inflection for married couples to voting Republican is the birth of the first child.
Why is this so? A process of socialization can explain much, but probably not all, of this change. Could a methodology be developed to factor out socialization and individual decision making based upon changed perspective to move toward identifying the unknown factors? Could male microchimerism in the human female brain be one of these unknown factors that changed voting behavior?
Could demographic voting data (marital status, number and sex of children, order of birth of children, timing of birth of children) be analyzed to provide at least a partial explanation to the change in voting behavior by linking with the possible of male micochimerism in the female?
Could controls be established to eliminate or minimize the socialization/change in individual decision perspective that confounding a possible effects of that micochimerism?
We know that modern political campaigns develop vast data banks about voters. The Obama campaign for example believes it knows the name of every voter who voted for Barack Obama. I am intrigued by the possibility that, while presidential campaigns are utilizing more behavioral as opposed to demographic data, the vast demographic data that they possess could be useful to shed light on brain science? After all this is decision making on a big scale.
Perhaps identifying micochimerism as a component factor of married female voting behavior could provide some information of marginal value in targeting married women with children for effective political appeals. There also could be potential benefits in identifying women who might be interested in products and services that are traditionally associated with males. From the brain science perspective, such research could link a physical act, voting, with a bodily feature, the presence of an unusually placed gene.
Interesting, isn't it, that the Romney's raised five boys while the Obama's raised two girls and those family profiles were reflected in voting patterns? Maybe something significant is happening here.
