Daily Mail: Right wingers are less intelligent and more racist than Left wingers

[Mise]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...conservative-politics-lead-people-racist.html

Right-wingers are less intelligent than left wingers, says study
Children with low intelligence grow up to be prejudiced
Right-wing views make the less intelligent feel 'safe'
Analysis of more than 15,000 people

Right-wingers tend to be less intelligent than left-wingers, and people with low childhood intelligence tend to grow up to have racist and anti-gay views, says a controversial new study.

Conservative politics work almost as a 'gateway' into prejudice against others, say the Canadian academics.

The paper analysed large UK studies which compared childhood intelligence with political views in adulthood across more than 15,000 people.

The authors claim that people with low intelligence gravitate towards right-wing views because they make them feel safe.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...olitics-lead-people-racist.html#ixzz1lYConEAQ

Before we start, this article is in the Daily Fail, so you can't exactly accuse it of left-wing bias. So let's get that out of the way right from the start.

So, are right wingers more stupid than left wingers? Are they more racist? Are they more homophobic? What are your opinions on this?


P.S.: The abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22222219 . Thanks Babs.

 

[Disgustipated]

I can believe it if you include every conservative. Don't forget most rednecks are conservatives, and they tend to be the least intelligent. But I am certain the brightest conservatives are smarter than the brightest liberals. It's just the big group on the bottom that drives the average down.

 

[Integral]

I think the causality here is reversed.

Racists, &c are more likely to be right-wing in that they oppose left-wing policies; this drags the right-wing's average down.

 

[Lillefix]

So who are these right wingers and who are these left wingers then? I just have a feeling they compare neo-nazis to socialists and communists.

edit: Not quite what they did, but it all seems dubious nonetheless.

edit2: I think they confuse terms like racist, conservative and populist.

 

[Disgustipated]

No idea how they did this, but I doubt they use a good sample that represents the population as a whole.

And then there's the people who may be an economic conservative (me), but on social issues they are liberal (again me). How does that factor into these results?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I can see a lot of coherence in viewing right-wing policy in terms of psychological security.
For starters, that is what conservatism is, endorsing traditional values and ways - never mind how traditional they really are, public perception matters of course, not reality - and traditional by definition means the source of psychological security.
Additionally, and perfectly in line with emphasizing traditions, the right likes to endorse simple philosophies. Be it in form of a simple tax system, or be it "let the market fix it!, be it a "Law and Order"-attitude. Simplicity is also a source of security, as it removes uncertainty and gives one the impression of predictability and hence control.
Naturally, that doesn't mean that one has to be stupid to support the political right wing or that one has to be smart if one doesn't. Those are just the broad psychological forces at work shaping the masses. That does mean also the individual is shaped, sure, but here things get way too complex to make any meaningful generalizations - so don't feel hurt OT-right wingers.

 

[Cutlass]

Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
John Stuart Mill

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

No idea how they did this, but I doubt they use a good sample that represents the population as a whole.

The samples are actually quite substantial.

We used two large-scale U.K. data sets to test our hypothesized mediation model: the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS) and the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS). In the NCDS, all participants (4,267 men and 4,537 women) were born in the same week in March 1958; in the BCS, all participants (3,412 men and 3,658 women) were born in the same week in April 1970. Cognitive abilities were assessed with standardized measures when NCDS participants were 11 years old and BCS participants were 10 years old, and socially conservative ideology and racism were assessed at ages 33 and 30, respectively. In both studies, thousands of men and women completed relevant measures; both data sets are regarded as excellent sources of representative data (see Deary et al., 2008).

That's just the UK sample. Although the US sample is undergraduates and thus not as predictive of adult prejudicial attitudes.

 

[Integral]

The samples are actually quite substantial.



That's just the UK sample. Although the US sample is undergraduates and thus not as predictive of adult prejudicial attitudes.

This might be slightly, marginally off-topic but I can't stand how many psychology studies (and, increasingly, experimental economics studies) use small, poorly-motivated groups of first-year undergraduates as their sample, then expect to be able to draw meaningful conclusions.

/rant

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Before we start, this article is in the Daily Fail, so you can't exactly accuse it of left-wing bias. So let's get that out of the way right from the start.

What I must say, from what I understand of them, is I am surprised they published it without ... substantial editing.

EDIT: Someone in the comments claims they have an IQ of over 200 and are "right-wing." I am amused.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I think the causality here is reversed.

That is what the authors say in the study. Lower intelligence means more prejudice which means they gravitate to right-wing ideologies. Not the other way around. It does not say that higher-intelligence people do not become right-wingers. They also say that conservative ideas do not lead to prejudice, but they do facilitate it for those who hold them.

Clearly, however, all socially conservative people are not prejudiced, and all prejudiced persons are not conservative. We therefore differentiated our approach from that of earlier researchers who treated prejudicial attitudes and ideology as manifestations of conservatism (Deary et al., 2008; Schoon et al., 2010). By contrast, in keeping with contemporary intergroup theories, such as social-dominance theory, we deliberately disentangled conservative ideology from prejudice. We recognize that although conservative ideologies often contribute to negative attitudes or behavior toward out-groups (Altemeyer, 1996; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), conservative ideologies or value systems are not necessarily characterized by prejudice, and social conservatives do not “value” negative evaluations of out-groups. Instead, conservative ideologies contribute to negative out-group evaluations.

This might be slightly, marginally off-topic but I can't stand how many psychology studies (and, increasingly, experimental economics studies) use small, poorly-motivated groups of first-year undergraduates as their sample, then expect to be able to draw meaningful conclusions.

/rant

Agreed.

 

[Zelig]

This might be slightly, marginally off-topic but I can't stand how many psychology studies (and, increasingly, experimental economics studies) use small, poorly-motivated groups of first-year undergraduates as their sample, then expect to be able to draw meaningful conclusions.

/rant

I love pointing this out to everyone doing studies outside of the sciences, and then gleefully using undegrads for medical studies I'm involved in.

 

[Tahuti]

Additionally, and perfectly in line with emphasizing traditions, the right likes to endorse simple philosophies. Be it in form of a simple tax system, or be it "let the market fix it!, be it a "Law and Order"-attitude. Simplicity is also a source of security, as it removes uncertainty and gives one the impression of predictability and hence control.

That depends on what you view as simplicity. The Right does often come with ridiculously complicated theories about multiculturalism and the difference between ethnicities, religions and cultures, while the left has fairly simple and straightforward answers to these namely, that these do not really matter that much.

 

[aelf]

This might be slightly, marginally off-topic but I can't stand how many psychology studies (and, increasingly, experimental economics studies) use small, poorly-motivated groups of first-year undergraduates as their sample, then expect to be able to draw meaningful conclusions.

/rant

Lack of funding might be an issue here.

PS: Judging from the comments on the article, the Daily Mail website has been #occupied by left-wingers.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

And then there's the people who may be an economic conservative (me), but on social issues they are liberal (again me). How does that factor into these results?

Forgot to answer this: yes, they only looked at social conservatives. That phrase was repeated quite a few times and I could find no references to economic right-wingers.

 

[Abegweit]

Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
John Stuart Mill

The definition of conservative and liberal have changed more than a little since JSM's day. Back then a liberal was a believer in liberty, which of course is where the word came from. And a conservative (in Britain at least) was someone who supported the entrenched power structure and class divisions. In that world, anyone who was a conservative and wasn't a member of the elite had to be pretty stupid.

In today's America the liberals are the elite and the conservatives, incoherently it's true, are attempting to fight back. As just one example, liberals support massive theft to bail out Wall Street while conservatives strongly oppose it. In a real sense the positions of liberals and conservative are completely opposite to what they were 150 years ago and the lines between the two will hopefully become even stronger in the years to come.

Back to the point of the article, I don't find it surprising that unintelligent people blame other groups of people for their failures and tend to join anti-establishment movements.

Liberals are quite different. They believe that, because they have obtained a degree in some useless area of study, they have an innate right to live off the hard work of other people and to sneer at them while doing so. Just like the upper crust of JSM's era. Some things never change. The elite look down on the uncouth masses and believe that the reason they rule over the rest of us is because they deserve to.

And just like then, it's the ordinary people who back the system who are the truly stupid. JSM was right. You just have to understand how his observation fits the modern world.

 

[Godwynn]

Obvious statement is obvious.

 

[Crezth]

Liberals are quite different. They believe that, because they have obtained a degree in some useless area of study, they have an innate right to live off the hard work of other people and to sneer at them while doing so. Just like the upper crust of JSM's era. Some things never change. The elite look down on the uncouth masses and believe that the reason they rule over the rest of us is because they deserve to.

Really.

So what does that make bankers and CEOs, many of whom are conservatives and liberal arts majors?

 

[Abegweit]

Forgot to answer this: yes, they only looked at social conservatives. That phrase was repeated quite a few times and I could find no references to economic right-wingers.

Correct me if I am wrong but as far as I can see, they didn't look at social conservatives either. They looked at people who scored poorly on IQ tests as children and what their political opinions where as adults, using some group of brainwashed over-educated lefty idiots as a control.

The claim they are making is that unintelligent people tend to be racists. Unintelligent people are also far more likely to be failures in their lives than the intelligent. It is human nature to blame others for your own failings - especially people who lack the ability to properly reason things.

As such it is not at all surprising that the underachievers are racists. Of course, the lefty idiots are the same. When they come out of their useless university program and fail to get a decent job, they will blame white males for their blight. That kind of collectivist thinking, of course, is perfectly acceptable. Even approved. Interestingly, even if they get a good job, they will still blame white males. That's because the only job you can get with a degree in one of these specialties is in the Parasite Professions. And parasites always despise the people they live off.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I quite like gamers They pay my wages.