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Liberalism and Atheism Linked To IQ
Pharmboy writes "CNN is reporting that Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national US sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly."
Except when stereotyping can be used to ridicule someone they dislike.
This Satoshi Kanazawa has previously made statements attacking conservatives and is an evolutionary psychologist. So he is a liberal atheist, who is claiming that same group is smarter... what a suprise. He has in many cases been accused of confusing causality and correlation. This really just sounds like contrived statistics at it's worst.
They don't associate themselves with or identify themselves as a member of some class. They make their own decisions.
Sorry, but stereotyping and other forms of generalization don't work very well when you are dealing with the long tail, on either side of the peak.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Participants who said they were atheists had an average IQ of 103 in adolescence, while adults who said they were religious averaged 97, the study found.
Not sure how significant this finding is, but you most certainly are not dealing with the far end of either side of the tail.
There'll be more of a connection between social standing and life experiences to liberalism and atheism than IQ. I have a pretty high IQ to be honest, so here are my experiences.
I grew up in a home where religion was never ever talked about even though my grandmother was treasurer of the church. I was atheist from a young age, 4 or 5 is when I recall a conversation coming up with my uncle's new wife. Cancers and other experiences kept me on that path, but I'm not anti-religous, I understand its role in society.
Politically I'm a moderate, which for most people on /. means I'm either a right-wing nutjob or a RINO lefty. Whatever. Politics are framed from my life's history.
Sorry, but stereotyping and other forms of generalization don't work very well when you are dealing with the long tail, on either side of the peak.
The article is about a whopping single digit difference. Not exactly the long tail in the 160s range or the 40s range.
"Participants who said they were atheists had an average IQ of 103 in adolescence, while adults who said they were religious averaged 97, the study found."
Now if they tested for gullibility instead of intelligence, I'm sure the correlation would be far stronger.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.,; the director of the Human Genome Project, and author of "The Language of God," would disagree...
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Yes, that was my point. Note "really smart people". Minor variations to either side of the norm might produce measurable statistics. Once you get to the extremes, you can no longer make such generalizations.
So, if he wants to establish some equivalence between higher IQ scores and higher "liberalness" he fails because people that score higher than the stated 103 will not classify themselves in such a simple minded manner. This is probably why he did not include any stats about people that score 120, 130, or even more. Unfortunately for him, they don't fit his vision.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
.
Lemaître proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, which he called his 'hypothesis of the primeval atom'.
No reasons why faith & science can't co exist
So, if he wants to establish some equivalence between higher IQ scores and higher "liberalness" he fails because people that score higher than the stated 103 will not classify themselves in such a simple minded manner. This is probably why he did not include any stats about people that score 120, 130, or even more. Unfortunately for him, they don't fit his vision.
Citation needed.
You might be brilliant and have personally decided upon many values. But it doesn't mean that those values don't tend to follow the patterns generally accepted as being called "liberal" or "conservative". This report says the participants self-identified as liberal. That does not translate to 'They checked the box marked liberal". I would hope that anyone with a published paper would have a better study design than that.
You claim that he does not report trends with people with higher IQs: have you see an advanced copy of the publication? I can't find anything other than news reports about an upcoming paper, but not the paper itself. I doubt he excluded these people. I think he just grouped all of the participants by different factors and averaged. I might be possible to collect data on ONLY people who have certain IQs and see what patterns of values are common to them, but I will guarantee that that study would be a lot more problematic.
I see what you're getting at, overall, but it doesn't negate the trends they found. Which is that the average IQ of people classified as liberals is higher than non liberals, the average IQ of sexually exclusive men is higher than non sexually exclusive men (but not true for women), and the average IQ of atheists is higher than non-atheists. The end.
They hypothesize by extrapolating that all of those traits are only more recently salient in terms of reproductive fitness and survival. This you can take as much issue with as you want. I personally can't see how being intelligent makes you more likely to reproduce in a first world country, so I have trouble with the idea that intelligence is a positive selection factor at all right now.
vegetarianism:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061215090916.htm
And people's prejudices affect how food tastes:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080716205208.htm
But IQ is a load of crap.
Same item, but on ScienceDaily:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100224132655.htm
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I know it is a small sample, but I've just been fortunate enough to know well and frequently fraternize with several(4 in particular I'm thinking of) really bright people. They are hard for me to classify. As simply as I can state it, they are all very interesting. There are certainly variations among them as they are from the 4 corners of the continent. Yet there are some common features. All came from relatively poor to mid class families. All are well read, but with different interests. All consume drugs for entertainment, alcohol and/or other. A couple are serious devoted sports fans, while two have no interests there. All work in the semiconductor industry. All have a strange, twisted, and sharp sense of humor. You do not want to get into an insult joust with any of them. If I might attempt some generalizations in the current context, they would be socially liberal as in "free". That is, they don't give a damn what your skin color is, unless it makes you sexy exotic somehow. Nor do they care what kind of sex you like; rather they are more likely to want to join in if you show them something different. Finally, they don't care much what you think of their tastes either.
On other matters they are universally quite conservative, intolerant of sheer stupidity and ignorance in themselves and others. The most anger I have ever seen in any of them was in one when he, or the government did something stupid. They are all fiscally sound, think the government should be also, and freedom loving nearly anarchistic. All seem to have a certain recklessness, what one described as "a healthy disrespect for the law". One was the first to reveal to me the concept that "just because it's the law doesn't make it right". If my dad ever heard that, he'd go up in flames.
If you asked any of them "Are you a liberal?" They'd all say no. I'm sure of it. Same for the conservative question. They certainly don't fit any modern representation of "moderate" either as some of their ideas are, at least in these modern contexts, pretty harsh.
Skipping to the end of your post, if intelligence has any effect at all on the reproductive success rate in the modern world, it seems to be counter productive. So I certainly agree with you there.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
So wait, are you saying that if I decide to become liberal and atheist, I will spontaneously acquire a higher IQ?
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
As a liberal and an atheist with a high IQ, I'd like to call bullshit on this study. It is VERY suspicious. It's like all that Bell Curve bullshit from a few years back that tried to say that black people averaged a lower IQ because of their genetics. Bullshit.
So you got it from me first. This thing is bullshit. I haven't looked him up, but if the author doesn't turn out to be a pure bullshit artist, I'll have sex with Cowboy Neal.
It's bullshit.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
'nuff said.
No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness. --Aristotle
This study was obviously intended to include as many people as possible to get a difference between 'average' liberals/conservatives and atheists/religious. That the bell curves are only slightly divergent in the middle is still significant. If you want to talk about the highest range, it's already well known (isn't it?) that most PhDs are 'non-religious' if not outright atheists. Look it up.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
They don't associate themselves with or identify themselves as a member of some class. They make their own decisions.
Right, and that's a good point. I would imagine that there would be a just as significant, but higher-strength correlation between high IQ and having different religious views than what you were brought up with.
High IQ enables you to examine what you grew up with critically. Sometimes that results in atheism, sometimes it results in moving from fundamentalism to the mainstream, and sometimes it leads to non-traditional religious positions such as Bahai, John Shelby Spong-style ultra-liberal Christianity, and "spiritual but not religious".
Most religions were started by exceptionally smart people, and most religious reformers were, too.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
"RINO" being an acronym for "Republican In Name Only"?
Which, if I understand American politics correctly means "someone pretending to be a lunatic right-winger", as opposed to someone who actually is a lunatic right winger.
Which raises the question of why would someone pretend to be a lunatic? Well, that's America for you.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"