Are smart people more likely to be progressive?
You've probably heard the line from John Stuart Mill that "while it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is indeed true that most stupid people are conservatives". Well, now there's a study that seems to support this:
Not to put too fine a point on it: The smartest kids turned into the most broad-minded and progressive adults. For example, the most intelligent kids turned out 20 years later to be much more tolerant of other races. They were also much more supportive of working mothers, rejecting the notion that pre-school children will suffer without a stay-at-home mother. In general, the sharpest kids came to embrace much less traditional moral values and were much more apt to challenge authority. They were also much less cynical as adults, more trusting that the political system can do good.
From here, via atomicat. Of course, I'd like to know more details about the methodology before accepting this as gospel, but maybe we have something to be smug about. ;)
Sorry to lurch off topic so soon in the thread but this:
" ... had all taken IQ tests at the age of ten, so he was able to sort out the bright kids from their duller classmates ...."
offends. There are all kinds of intelligence that aren't captured by IQ testing and equating high IQ scores with intelligence is about as accurate as using education level.
I.Q. is reification. You can't put a number on an abstract concept.
Anyway, I don't know that conservatives are "stupider". Maybe due to lazyness, or self dellusion, it's my experience that they just don't like thinking something through very far.
And, I'm not sure thinking things through until the final quark is dissected makes us on the left inherantly smarter.
The I.Q. has been demonstrated to be mostly a measure of cultural input: how many books you have read, how much time and space you have had to read and do homework. The poor generally have lower IQs because they get less of both. The fact that they have a lot more street smarts than the rich doesn't get measured by academia.
As for the last sentence in the quote from "Psychological Science" - "...They were also much less cynical as adults, more trusting that the political system can do good" - I can't help thinking that the smartest/richest folks were the most confident that the political system would do them good.
I was at a conference given by a Catholic writer in Montreal a month ago and when pressed by U-NO-OO to justify Joseph Ratzinger's latest rants, this alleged paragon of openness argued that "Benedict XVI could not be a fundamentalist because he was so intelligent" (he'd read all his writings and knew).
I think we "liberals" have a huge submerged "intelligence" fetish - "Show me your Mensa score, I'll show you mine..." - that allows people to get away with such shoddy thinking. Maybe because their secret wish is ruling the world as part of an "intellocracy".
Since "tolerance" is a learned liberal value, this phrase is only used to describe the actions and behaviours of white folks. Shall we assume that only white folks are deemed to be "intelligent" or that only white folks were surveyed? Yes that question is a trap.
Here are some historically recognized conservative minded intelligent people: Otto Von Bismark, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger.
It has been my own experience that the more I learned, the more left leaning I have become.
It seems that conservative minded or right leaning thinking/philosophy/ideology takes a much harsher and more paranoid view of humanity than left leaning views.
Look, for instance, at Harper's support for the Afghan and (earlier) Iraq wars. His refusal to ask for Omar Khadr's repatriation to Canada. Iggy's support of torture. Conservative and Liberal Party of Canada's laws and actions on "security". Iggy's and Jason Kenney's reaction to barring George Galloway from entering Canada. The failure to fix EI. Harper's lack of movement on the economy.
Since "tolerance" is a learned liberal value, this phrase is only used to describe the actions and behaviours of white folks. Shall we assume that only white folks are deemed to be "intelligent" or that only white folks were surveyed? Yes that question is a trap.
Fair question. Not having seen the actual study, I can't say, but I wouldn't be surprised if the study was conducted primarily among white folks.
One might argue that people of other ethnicities can be asked about their attitudes towards folks different from them, and that this is what is being measured when they talk about "tolerance"; however it is true that their answers are likely to be influenced by discrimination that they have experienced, and thus it might not be appropriate to interpret their answers in the same way as one does those of the dominant group.
And of course I know that cross-cultural application of IQ tests, or even cross-economic, is dubious at best. Still, I think among a relatively homogeneous group, it gives a rough estimate of how smart they are.
But what does "smart" mean?
I dunno. What does "mean" mean?
mean= a form of central tendecy.
Mean, median and mode. Anyone else having undergrad stats classes flashbacks? Ick.
My flashbacks were to Ed psych courses, although our 12 year old was learning these three in grade 6 this year. Now that is mean...
oh oh! I know what that is mean = 100, well for people brought up with English as a first language, in the middle or upper class American culture and can understand social interaction and have normal communication skills when looking only at the skill of aquiring knowledge, applying knowledge and engaging in abstract reasoning. In otherwords outside of a very few applications the mean means nothing (mean = 0).