This could be an interesting thread for a sat. morning. I was watching Bill Mayer late last night on HBO and he mentioned this study while talking to author Mike Hastings. I though I'd check it out this morning and this is what I found. The title of the post pretty much says it all. There is a ton of interesting comments as well. This study was done by Brock University if you need a link.....Enjoy it I did.
Researchers have found a possible explanation for why certain people are prejudiced: they’re less intelligent.
Children with lower general intelligence are more likely to become prejudiced as adults, according to a Brock University study.
The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, examined data from two large-scale British studies, and found lower intelligence scores in childhood were predictors of greater racism in adulthood, which the researchers controversially explain is brought about by adopting right-wing ideologies.
A secondary analysis of data from a U.S. study also showed those with poor abstract-reasoning skills were more likely to have anti-homosexual prejudice, partially linked to authoritarian attitudes.
Lead researcher Gordon Hodson told LiveScience that the results of the study indicate a vicious cycle, in which people with low intelligence are drawn to socially conservative ideologies. In turn, those ideologies can contribute to prejudices.
“Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order,” he said, explaining why those with lower intelligence may gravitate toward the right. “Unfortunately, many of these features can contribute to prejudice.”
The researchers found that people with lower intelligence also tended to have less contact with other races and groups, which, Dr. Hodson said, supports previous research that determined interacting with other groups is mentally challenging and cognitively draining.
Dr. Hodson explained the findings do not mean all liberals are smart and all conservatives are stupid, LiveScience.com reports. “There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled conservatives and very intolerant liberals,” he said.
Previous research has suggested that the brains of conservatives and liberals are wired differently.
What do you think? Does intelligence really determine your political stripe? And do your politics determine how prejudiced you are?
Comments
Politics affects our national intelligence average, because conditions of poverty and ignorance prevent the optimal development of brain tissue in fetuses and limit the immediate brain-enhancing factors which begin at birth.
It is true that the children of the more fortunate are bright and cheery because their mothers received pre-natal care, plenty of food, and avoided cigarettes, drugs and alcohol due to peer pressure, plus had the ability to while away their gestation period buying darling nursery furniture and baby boutique outfits.
The books of the less fortunate get eaten by rats, so it is unlikely their brains are filled with lovely impressions and fuzzy wuzzy stimulation in the critical years of sensory development.
And the less fortunate will never go to Prep Schools with landscaping and fountains.
This is the way the rich want it: a large servant class which is more physically capable of labor and service, as the rich are in these areas inept, but with weaker brains, so as to be domitable and unable to plan a revolt.
Ah, it looks like another new 33 percenter has joined our message board to hyperventilate and scream his right wing hatred and ideological twaddle.
Welcome. You can spew all you want here. This kind of junk doesn't seem to get any traction, but we'll all watch and giggle. Tell us all about your creed!
#2- "Lower intelligence" and "Uneducated" are not the same.
An Intelligence Quotient is determined as Mental Age divided by Chronological Age X 100.
The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) determines a subject's Mental Age with an assortment of questions, proposed problems, and exercises such as repeating strings of numbers backwards after hearing them read.
The amount and type of reading an adolescent or young adult has done by the age at which the test is administered probably has the greatest influence on the Mental Age factor of their IQ.
Thus, except in cases where the brain is compromised by disability, those who are read to early and who are continually stimulated to read literature and publications of value are apt to know more of the answers on the WAIS Test. This is not likely to occur if you are born to parents who cannot read and the rats of poverty eat any books brought into the home.
"Lower Intelligence" should be used to describe invertebrate organisms such as flukes and tapewoms.
"Uneducated" means not having received sufficient correct information and details of a subject to have any measurable knowledge of it.
Here's another story about the same subject....pigoptical................Be sure to notice the number of people studied to arrive at the results...
Study says racists and conservatives are dumb
Next time you call group of right-wing racists a bunch of idiots, you can back yourself up with one simple word: Science!
Researchers from Ontario, Canada’s Brock University have been slaving over test results to come to the conclusion that many not-so-scientifically-inclined have said for ages — both right-wing thinkers and racists alike are kind of dumb.
The conclusion comes after spotting a correlation between children with low IQs and their ideologies later in life. It turns out that those with limited intelligence at a younger age are more likely to exhibit racist tendencies and favor more conservative political thinking as adults.
Dr. Gordon Hodson, a professor of psychology and primary author of the findings, explains to Live Science that the, well, science of the issue is rather simple.
"Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," explains Dr. Hodson. Structure and order, of course, are much easier to make sense of than, say, disarray and chaos. Given that, the less intelligent will gravitate towards more manageable ideals and, as he says, "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice."
The study in its entirely was published this week in the journal Psychological Science, and there Dr. Hodson and Michael A Busseri write that after studying a data set of 15,874 persons from the UK, “we found that lower general intelligence in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology.”
“A secondary analysis of a US data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice, a relation partially mediated by both authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact,” add the researchers.
In summation, they write, "right-wing ideologies, which are socially conservative and authoritarian, represent a mechanism through which cognitive ability is linked with prejudice.
"For example,” add the doctors, “research has revealed that individuals who more strongly endorse social conservatism have greater cognitive rigidity, less cognitive flexibility and lower integrative complexity. Socially conservative individuals also perform less well than liberals on standardized ability tests.”
In smaller words (for all your racists out there), here’s how Dr. Brian Nosek from the University of Virginia explains it to the Huffington Post:
"Reality is complicated and messy . . . Ideologies get rid of the messiness and impose a simpler solution. So, it may not be surprising that people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies."
Of course, the study’s authors note that “all socially conservative people are not prejudiced, and all prejudiced persons are not conservative." We’d like to see their research in full before we go ahead and agree on that one though.
It's saturday afternoon for me, but that doesn't matter. Anytime is a good time to call out conservatives as stupid people. Almost anytime is a good time to counter politally correct bullshit that enables the sheeple to drag the world down.
It is conservatives after all, who are the drill baby drill idiots who are in denial about climate change and the proper role of regulations. They are a dead weight, an anchor that prevents humanity from making good rational decisions and instituting the necessary policies that help to mitigate the adverse effects of human industry.
It doesn't take much brain power to accept things as articles of faith. Yeah, the planet is just a few thousand years old and women should be subserviant to men and the pagans are gunna burn in hell forever and......well....
thanks for starting the thread, piper, this sparky appreciates it.
Yes, liberals with their vacuous sense of logic. It is certainly interesting and challenging to engage these self-appointed arbiters of all things good and right. Although I don't really consider my self a conservative.
Yeah everyone knows it's the conservo-libertarians and liberal-libertarians that makeup the majority political IQ in America.
Tyranny thrives in ignorance this is why there's so much with conservo-authoritarians {fascist} and liberal-authoritarians {socialists}.
www.politicalcompass.org ;-)
That's the 2 camps rthe Globalists are in. The fascist want immediate martial law whereas the socialists want incremental statism.
Both systems are unaccaptable to Constitutional Libertarians, both righty and lefty.
Thet's why they are called conned-servatives and gulliberals.
It's the same old tired worn out liberal crap. If someone disagrees with the progressive point of view, It must be because they have a character flaw, are racist, or just plain stupid. Give it a rest. Quit being such snobs.
It sounds like the study found that racists are stupid. I believe that. That is why most of them are hard core, beer guzzling, nascar watching, trailer living, pick up truck driving rednecks. Fortunately, these folks don't have the finances or where- with-all to oppress anyone. So they are generally harmless.
But what's that got to do with right wing beliefs?
By the way. Bill Mahr is in bad shape.He cannot be trusted. He is blinded by his hatred for God and conservatives (especially conservative women).
how can a man hate something that he doesn't even believe in? Who's looking stupid now? and btw, it's Maher, who loves conservative women....if they're hot and will have sex with him
I have a one question if conservatives are stupid and liberal are smart, than why are so many liberal's completely dependant on the government to feed, cloth, house, and educate them.?
liberalism ideas so good they have to be forced on you.
702- "I have a one question if conservatives are stupid and liberal are smart, than why are so many liberal's completely dependant on the government to feed, cloth, house, and educate them.?"
That way they have plenty of time to rationalize and contemplate the meaning of life.
Jones702 wrote: I have a one question if conservatives are stupid and liberal are smart, than why are so many liberal's completely dependant on the government to feed, cloth, house, and educate them.?
poly replies: Probably for the same reasons many conservatives depend on government to cloth, house and educate them. When government policy sucks the nation's wealth into fewer and fewer pockets, people can't support themselves
.You'll find many conservatives among the poor. It takes their stupidity to elect conservative politicians. The beneficiaries of conservative policies are really a pretty small minority.
I wouldn't call all conservatives dumb, though. The beneficiaries of conservativism have to be pretty sharp to get the majority go along and continually vote for their own impoverishment.
Banksters have monetary claims on the entire productive output of the globe. Governments are scrambling to impoverish their populations to pay them. I'd call that conservative brilliance!
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"
I find conservatives creating straw people all the time in order to blame somebody else for their sense of loss. Continuing to call for a Constitutional solution is part of a narrative that supposes we have lost our Constitutional frame instead of good historical scholarship that would reveal the myth. But there is some nostalgia on the Left as well, and when we pine for the New Deal or the 50's as the age of Middle Class prosperity, let us admit that both are only allusions to what could be possible in present and future public policy, not as the time when all was good.
This is where the cons have not posed a future that works. Few will attack the royalist wealth or the idea that democracy and a republic really is about broadly shared participation in power. They just want to blame people who believe that taxes and investments in social institutions can work for wanting to take "their money" to take care of "lazy bums." When we respond that the lazy bums are on Wall St. and in the country club, they act as if these criminals really earned their money because they wrote the laws for theft, and it was 'legal.'
I think there is a distinction between those who blame the poor and those who analyze power. I think the nostalgia factor of the Tea Party is a great example of non-thinking reactive prejudice where social change is hated and some narcissistic past is yearned for. Backed by the wealth elite, but not taking any account of that, they pose as 'populists.'
What OWS represents, in contrast, is the yearning of the average person to have a democracy and to be able to participate in power. I am leery of intelligence or education arguments because I have met a number of bigots with MBA's and wise men and women who did not finish high school. I think there is a psychology and spirituality that needs a binary identity of being the good v. the evil, and the difference between "me" and "we" is critical. Those who feed prejudice do feed on the ignorance and sickness of the mob, but the greatest ignorance and evil is in combination with power where the bad ideas get implemented instead of just being vented in some redneck bar.
I do think our cons have a problem with compassion and an ability to appreciate the humanity of others who do not agree with them. Blaming the poor is easy compared to facing the power of the wealthy and established. Diverting the issues and blaming the powerless is a pathology.
Stereotypical comments about liberals that are simplistic and largely false goes to what the study says: that prejudiced people just aren't that intelligent. There are ways to express disagreement or put forth argumetns that don't involve bigoted, misleading, overgeneralizations about others.
But in my opnion, conservatives don't just dislike liberals but tend not to like other people. Newt Gingrich has made it clear that he doesn't like Mitt Romney who is a rich Republican conservative.