This article appeared on Yahoo today via livescience.com, which draws a link between low-intelligence and socially conservative ideologies. I guess in my mind I pretty much already knew this fact as well as most of you out there, but it is nice to have some science to back up that claim.
See this link to the full article at livescience
http://www.livescience.com/...
or at Yahoo
http://news.yahoo.com/...
Key quotes from the article include:
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.
In addition, the article added:
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.
As I stated above, none of this surprises me or should surprise anybody out there, but it should be interesting to hear the backlash from the conservative community, after this article gets out on the internet.
What is funny to me though is that the authors of the article have the need to provide the following disclaimer:
Hodson was quick to note that 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.
I guess such a disclaimer is needed for the less educated conservatives out there, but the rest of us understand what the word averages mean! In any other type of study, do you really believe that a reserarcher would have to provide such a disclaimer? Was it really necessary to add that not all conservatives are idiots and not all liberals are intelligent?
Ultimately, you all know how much belief conservatives put into actual scientific research and study (i.e. global warming, evolution, etc), this will just be another study that they will find some irrational, illogic manner to dispute or ignore.