Interesting article.

Please do note that I don't think all conservatives are this way.

http://news.yahoo.com/low-iq-conservative-beliefs-linked-prejudice-180403506.html

Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice
By Stephanie Pappas | LiveScience.com – Thu, Jan 26, 2012


There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.

Controversy ahead

The findings combine three hot-button topics.

"They've pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics," said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. "When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it's bound to upset somebody."

Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You]

"The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this," Nosek said, referring to the new study. "It's not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists."

Brains and bias

Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism and racism were measured. [Life's Extremes: Democrat vs. Republican]

In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks, defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words. Average IQ is set at 100.

Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority." Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as "I wouldn't mind working with people from other races." (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson's work can't speak to this "underground" racism.)

As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.

People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races.

"This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice," said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.

A study of averages

Hodson was quick to note that the despite the link found between low intelligence and social conservatism, the researchers aren't implying that all liberals are brilliant and all conservatives stupid. The research is a study of averages over large groups, he said.

"There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled conservatives and very intolerant liberals," Hodson said.

Nosek gave another example to illustrate the dangers of taking the findings too literally.

"We can say definitively men are taller than women on average," he said. "But you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller. There's plenty of overlap."

Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.

"Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice."

In another study, this one in the United States, Hodson and Busseri compared 254 people with the same amount of education but different levels of ability in abstract reasoning. They found that what applies to racism may also apply to homophobia. People who were poorer at abstract reasoning were more likely to exhibit prejudice against gays. As in the U.K. citizens, a lack of contact with gays and more acceptance of right-wing authoritarianism explained the link. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]

Simple viewpoints

Hodson and Busseri's explanation of their findings is reasonable, Nosek said, but it is correlational. That means the researchers didn't conclusively prove that the low intelligence caused the later prejudice. To do that, you'd have to somehow randomly assign otherwise identical people to be smart or dumb, liberal or conservative. Those sorts of studies obviously aren't possible.

The researchers controlled for factors such as education and socioeconomic status, making their case stronger, Nosek said. But there are other possible explanations that fit the data. For example, Nosek said, a study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naïve views like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way," might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright. In other words, it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general.

"My speculation is that it's not as simple as their model presents it," Nosek said. "I think that lower cognitive capacity can lead to multiple simple ways to represent the world, and one of those can be embodied in a right-wing ideology where 'People I don't know are threats' and 'The world is a dangerous place'. ... Another simple way would be to just assume everybody is wonderful."

Prejudice is of particular interest because understanding the roots of racism and bias could help eliminate them, Hodson said. For example, he said, many anti-prejudice programs encourage participants to see things from another group's point of view. That mental exercise may be too taxing for people of low IQ.

"There may be cognitive limits in the ability to take the perspective of others, particularly foreigners," Hodson said. "Much of the present research literature suggests that our prejudices are primarily emotional in origin rather than cognitive. These two pieces of information suggest that it might be particularly fruitful for researchers to consider strategies to change feelings toward outgroups," rather than thoughts.

Bad grades in college linked to alcohol consumption!!



Think about it...

bad behavior LINKED to spankings

drug use linked to addiction...


,,,yeah, I get it,,,more clever stuff

IQ doesn't mean anything. This is a BS article written by one who clearly has issues.

its a hot button issue, as it admits

the very issue of 'prejudice' is loaded with a presumption that it is automatically of the hateful bigotted kind

we have a memory to learn so that we can 'prejudge' situations when we come across them in life,,,


all 'prejudice' is not equal or bad,,,

unless they are ABSOlUTES that is


I may have a prejudice that being alone with a man could lead to unwanted advances and therefore be a little more HYPER AWARE of that situation with MEN,, but as long as Im not convinced that Men will ABSOLUTELY behave that way

my behavior is a reasonable precaution based upon experience, and not a hateful bigoted prejudice that defines each individual automatically by a preconceived standard


,,but prejudice would be another thread...lol

Prejudice tends to come from ignorance. So, it does have some merit.

I agree.

there are many ignorant people who are prejudice

there are also many high iq people who are prejudice and many who are ignorant when it comes to anything not in a book (or REAL TIME HUMAN issues)....

I think the same could be said about extremism on both sides of politics. The left can be just as prejudiced as the right.

true

IQ has little to do with it..

This is the same nonsense that Galton pushed with his heritability study that led to the eugenics movement and mass murder..

Galton and his disciples were the "intellectuals" of their day. They were mostly socialist progressive elitists that felt the poor had a place, either in the fields or the grave..

Any of you ever read the book "The bell curve"?

A modern piece of progressive elitist attitude towards genetic makeup and why they believe certain races are the dregs of society..

If you haven't read it and believe the nonsense in the OP I suggest you buy the book and educate yourself..

point made

there is no argument that one can find 'correlations' between just about any two demographics one chooses to study


discerning how SIGNIFICANT those correlations are is a different matter without taking into account the complexity of the issue,,

I agree! I try to stay away from radicals and extremists on both sides!

I agree! I try to stay away from radicals and extremists on both sides!

Congress is generally in session between 130 to 180 or so days per year.

What a joke. We have real problems and issues and these dimwits get half a year off. No more two term politicians. Vote the bums out until Americans get a fair shot.

That's probably true. In my experience, I've seen much more of it coming from the extreme right, many of which are quite ignorant. I'm sure there are those who have seen it from the other side.

I live in a "melting pot" type of area where people don't usually discuss their political or religious beliefs out in public..It's not the norm or custom. People have moved here from all over the place through the years so we're a "mixed bag" when it comes to beliefs..Anyway I turn to forums to discuss issues. But most of the time I try to stay out of the "line of fire." I'm not a fan of nasty (and mean) and heated debates...I left another forum because some people wanted to "fight" about every little thing. There were a lot of "macho" and argumentative liberals and conservatives. Everyone was sarcastic and nasty and "dead-set" on winning at any cost...Our country is definitely "split" and divided right now. (Kind of like the Hatfields and the Mc Coys at times.)...Thank goodness everyone isn't this way. But I've run into radicals and extremists and "tricksters" on both sides.

Speaking of prejudice;

What group/party wrote the Jim Crow Laws?

What Dem. Pres. said, "Now, we'll have those n****rs voting democrat for the next 200 years?"

What MSM station refused to air speeches made by negro Repubs at the current convention?

What was then the democratic party has now turned into the republican party.

Al Gore was/is associated with high ranking members of the Klan and his Daddy tried to knock down the Civil rights act.
Johnson died a democrat.