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"Savvy readers may recognize a problem with using these questions to sort people into just two ideological categories. And sure enough, Kemmelmeier got some results that puzzled him. He found that students who held more traditional views on gender and sex roles averaged lower on their verbal SAT and Achievement Test scores. "Surprisingly," he continued, this was not true of students with anti-regulation attitudes. With them, "all else being equal, more conservative respondents scored higher than more liberal respondents. Kemmelmeier ruefully notes that "this result was not anticipated" and "diametrically contradicts" the hypothesis that conservatism is linked to lower cognitive ability" "
So, depending on what question you ask, you can either show that liberals are more intelligent or conservatives are more intelligent using the same data set....which begs the question of why did the liberals run with this? Yet another example of liberals not investigating their sources. Let's just run with what we like and hope no one actually researches where it came from.
While it's interesting to group people by IQ and attitude towards things like abortion, gender issues and hand anti-regulation, is just a few questions all it really takes to categorize someone as liberal or conservative?
While researching for this thread has been fun, it's time to stop avoiding grading chemistry tests and physics labs . This site is just too tempting when I want to procrastinate.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 10-11-2014 at 12:03 PM..
Why are people who are correct a lot always accused of being conceited?
Because if you can't attack the logic of the post, you attack the poster. This type of deflection is a common strategy around here. The logic is if you can make the poster look bad maybe people will discount what the poster says. It's usually evidence of a poor argument on the part of the person calling the other person names.
I'd rep you but I have to spread the love first...
-Liberalism is a 'novelty' in human evolution and intelligent people tend to be drawn to novelty (not socially defined novelty, evolutionary novelty).
-less intelligent people tend to conform to tradition, because they have been instructed not to trust their own intelligence.
-their higher intelligence explains why liberals tend to control practically ALL of the institutions with a few exceptions-- notably the world of business.
-extreme conservatism is shown to be positively correlated with the lowest IQs.
-Religiosity has a very high correlation with a low IQ.
I'm neither conservative nor liberal, but I am pretty sure there are all kinds of biases and faulty methodology built into this survey. And its findings are supported by people desperately needing to feel superior. In truth, it's kind of sad, because you need fealty to a political ideology to feel that way. More importantly, it's kind of sad that you need to feel that way in the first place.
Most liberals are actually pretty easy to destroy in an argument, just the same as most conservatives. That's because, in truth, neither liberals nor conservatives are thinkers per se. Instead, they're parrots, just repeating the talking points of whatever camp they espouse. In short, while there are plenty of conservative dumbasses, liberal dumbasses are pretty thick on the ground, too.
So let's take on your points, one-by-one:
Liberalism is a novelty. Well, so is reality television. And, in truth, utopian schemes have existed forever. After all, the disastrous experiment of Communism is almost a century old. Look how that worked out. Meanwhile, more laissez-faire principles of economics have had astounding success in places such as Eastern Europe, much more so than the tired statist principles of traditional liberalism.
Less intelligent people tend to conform to tradition. Based on what?
Higher intelligence explains why liberals tend to control practical of the institutions, the notable exception being business. Seriously? Has it occurred to you that business is the most dynamic and creative force in this country today? Meanwhile, governments and universities are huge, unwieldy and sclerotic. Tell you what. Spend an hour standing in line at the Post Office or a VA Clinic and then tell me that those institutions are being run by intelligent people. I'll wait here for your response.
Or, just as an aside, let's examine the entitlement programs ushered in by Lyndon Johnson a half-century ago. Despite tens of trillions of dollars spent on anti-poverty programs, the poverty rate in this country has not budged significantly during that time. In fact, there's considerable statistical data that shows that Johnson's War on Poverty actually arrested what was a steep decline in the poverty rate in the preceding decades. Now, as a self-described liberal, are you more intelligent for defending a program that has appropriated large amounts of the GDP and, statistically speaking, accomplished nothing?
And, of course, we have the complete fecklessness of the current administration to consider. Let's see. Islamic fanatics overrunning the Middle East? Russian up to its old tricks in the Ukraine? Porous borders? An utter failure to take the Ebola contagion seriously? The botched launch of Obama care, even with three years and billions of dollars to get a simple website running? Do you really need me to go on? Mind you, these were all issues that a serious, intelligent leadership could have avoided with some decent statecraft and organizational skills. So trying to apply the word "intelligent" to the current administration strikes me as just fatuous to the extreme.
Extreme conservatism is associated with lower IQs. Actually, extreme anything is associated with low IQs, for buying into any belief system is to give up the privilege of thinking. Sorry to break it to you.
Religiosity has a very high correlation with a low IQ. Tell that to Episcopalians, Jews, Presbyterians and other religious sects that typically have a higher IQ and higher educational attainment than atheists.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that you're suffering from confirmation bias. You found a survey that agreed with your preconceived notions of yourself and the world around you. Not very smart if you ask me. For even liberals need to be open-minded about matters when their own ideology fails to deliver the goods. Mind you, I have enough darts to sling at conservatives as well. But your self-satisfied nonsense just was too good to pass up.
So what you can take away from this? When someone tells me they're liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, I immediately begin looking for their lobotomy scars. Why? Because both ideologies are the refuge for very rigid people, the equivalent of writing the same answer on a math test over and over again, regardless of what the question might be. You're a dupe for one political camp, one that has had very notable and expensive failures. In that sense, you might as well be throwing your lot in with the Crips or the Bloods
Meanwhile, smart people really avoid labeling themselves and tend to look at both arguments in less than Manichean terms.
Both liberals and conservatives are equally dumb.... I don't see a difference between a flag waving, racist, republican, fat assed Texas moron, and a yapping, flag burning, california liberal who cannot shut up about what they have to say as if the rest of the world cared about their opinion!
The Smartest kind of folk is the one who stays in the center, in the center you actually can see the pros and cons of both the left and the right and you can take the best of each side and avoid the bad!!!!
Critical thinkers often stay in the center and avoid left and right while staying observant, while the extremist morons often just go to the left or the right and then yap about it non-stop!
I wouldn't say more intelligent, just far superior in their approach to life and other people.
I always think of the chain example. A chain is as strong as its weakest link. If you want to make that chain as strong as the strongest links, you have to strengthen and reinforce the weakest link to make it as strong as the strongest. Conservatives believe that you have to make the strongest links stronger to make the chain stronger. To hell with doing anything with the weak link. Result? Weak chain. Bush demonstrated this and look what it did to the country. Reagan did this by "trickle-down" and it was a disaster.
Conservatives have this bass ackwards more than you think though. They believe THEY are the strongest link, and that minorites, particularly blacks, are the weakest link. This is pretty pathetic and shame on the "genuises" in that group for completely dropping the ball. Liberals and progressives know the truth. We are a nation of immigrants, a multicultural society, and it is these historically-disadvantaged minority groups and non-bigoted whites who are the strongest link. Conservatives are the weak link. Liberals know this and try to inform, educate, reason with, and teach the Conservative so the chain gets stronger. Unfortunately, Conservatives continue to resist and get weaker and weaker, decimating the strength of the entire damn chain.
So, sure, there are some intelligent Conservatives, but their pathetic view makes that intelligence moot.
Wow. This is total bilge, the product of someone who only reads writers who already agree with his preconceived viewpoint of the world and disregards the rest. That's not intelligence. It's myopia.
Look, for every single failure of conservative ideology in practice, I can offer up an equally stupid and atrocious failure of liberal ideology. Seriously. I could do it all. day. long. There's plenty of ammunition on both sides of the political debate, because both are really bankrupt ideologies that sound good and high-minded in theory but fail miserably in practice. The problem is that ideologues such as you revel in pointing fingers at the other camp, but lack the intellectual rigor to examine your own.
In fact, I'll give you a pluperfect test of your ability to think for yourself. The next time you have a verbal spar with an ideological opposite think about your response. If that person points out the failure of something generated by your ideological camp, let's see what you say next. If your kneejerk answer is, "Well, the conservatives" or "Well, the Republicans," and then point out the other side's failures then I'll offer that you aren't a deep political thinker. You are instead just a mindless robot who has been wired to repeat whatever you've read in The Atlantic. You might as well be a tape recorder.
Good grief. Do yourself a favor and actually start reading viewpoints that don't necessarily march in lockstep with your own. You'd be amazed at what you actually learn.
Political views have abolutely NOTHING to do with intelligence. Most of the liberals and conservatives I know are equally stupid while some of them on both side are extremely intelligent. I am a (convinced) liberal but I am often impressed by some conservatives' intelligence. And of course I sometimes see very intelligent liberal voices too. But stop (both sides) bringing studies to prove that "this group of people" is stupid or that "that kind of person" don't have any brain. If IQ is your only argument against one political side I don't think you are very good at basic thinking and debating
"Savvy readers may recognize a problem with using these questions to sort people into just two ideological categories. And sure enough, Kemmelmeier got some results that puzzled him. He found that students who held more traditional views on gender and sex roles averaged lower on their verbal SAT and Achievement Test scores. "Surprisingly," he continued, this was not true of students with anti-regulation attitudes. With them, "all else being equal, more conservative respondents scored higher than more liberal respondents. Kemmelmeier ruefully notes that "this result was not anticipated" and "diametrically contradicts" the hypothesis that conservatism is linked to lower cognitive ability" "
So, depending on what question you ask, you can either show that liberals are more intelligent or conservatives are more intelligent using the same data set....which begs the question of why did the liberals run with this? Yet another example of liberals not investigating their sources. Let's just run with what we like and hope no one actually researches where it came from.
While it's interesting to group people by IQ and attitude towards things like abortion, gender issues and hand anti-regulation, is just a few questions all it really takes to categorize someone as liberal or conservative?
While researching for this thread has been fun, it's time to stop avoiding grading chemistry tests and physics labs . This site is just too tempting when I want to procrastinate.
Fair point-- but libertarians aren't conservatives, and the respondents still identified more with liberalism than conservatism.
At the very least, it still proves social liberalism is correlated with higher IQs. And leftists supporting decentralization weren't accounted for either.
Anyways, you don't seem to be one of the dumb ones so rep given.
Fair point-- but libertarians aren't conservatives, and the respondents still identified more with liberalism than conservatism.
At the very least, it still proves social liberalism is correlated with higher IQs. And leftists supporting decentralization weren't accounted for either.
Anyways, you don't seem to be one of the dumb ones so rep given.
Actually it doesn't prove that. Depending on which questions you looked at, you could come up with either liberals or conservatives having the higher IQ's (I'm not concerned with libertarians here. Just which beliefs were considered conservative and which liberal). And the survey was only of college students who are young which is problematic in that the pre frontal cortex is under developed in college students which makes them lean left...AND they used COLLEGE students leaving out a large portion of this age group. All they proved here is that among a relatively small sample of college students the more intelligent are pro-abortion, pro equal rights and anti regulation. It's sad that people think this proves more than it does. I'm embarrassed for the author reading the original article now that I've done a little research on the methodology and results. Seriously? The liberals control the media because they are more intelligent? That's not what this "research" (I use the term loosely because this is really a survey of a few thousand college students not research) says. It says that among the more intelligent college students in this survey they held both liberal and conservative beliefs and one of the questions is seriously flawed. The question on gender roles. In this day and age you have to be pretty backwards to subscribe to traditional gender roles if you are a college student at a regular college (it would be interesting to see what the results would have been if they had done the same survey on students at a Christian college)....AND FTR, many conservatives don't subscribe to traditional gender roles anymore. That kind of died in the 70's. In my very conservative (mostly Baptist) family, we have a female engineer, two female doctors and a stay at home dad. Why the author of the survey chose to consider traditional gender roles a conservative trait is beyond me. It's a very old fashioned conservative trait. In fact, in it's heyday, it was a liberal trait too. At one time, traditional gender roles were simply the norm for everyone. While I agree that conservatives held on to this one longer than liberals, it's not a common conservative belief anymore.
The question on abortion could be flawed too as it depends on how you ask it. If you ask me if I'm pro or anti abortion I will tell you I'm anti abortion. If you ask me if abortion should be completely illegal I will tell you no. What I'm anti is the casual taking of human lives for pure convenience sake. The use of abortion as a means of birth control as it is so often. However, I do not think it should be completely illegal so depending on how you ask this I may show up as pro abortion in a survey.
You can't read much into this because there really isn't much there and we don't even know how the questions were worded. It would make more sense to try to correlate how people vote with IQ if you want to see if there is a link between intelligence and liberal or conservative bent. It makes no sense to ask a handful of questions and think you can use them to put people into neat pockets. Even the author of the survey said his results were mixed and surprising. He expected a clear dividing line and didn't get it.
Thanks for the compliment and the rep.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 10-11-2014 at 02:53 PM..
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. This site is just too tempting when I want to procrastinate.
