this should be interesting...
Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes - Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact
2. George Monbiot's article can be found here:
Liberal Constipation
3. sex-education study can be found here:
Sex Education Less Effective in Conservative States
in summation; the study says that stupid people are more likely to be conservative. Monbiot dismisses the point as being obvious and instead asserts that the real issue is how liberals are just as stupid for letting conservatism be as widespread as it is in the 21st century.
I now relinquish the podium so that others may comment.
1. actual study can be found here:Right-wing ideology, particularly in the US today, gives the less intelligent members of society props to support them in their very insecure lives. Not least of these, of course, is right-wing religiosity and its incumbent doctrines – anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-immigration, anti-homosexuality, and – tying all these doctrines neatly together – the fervor of nationalism. When right-wing propaganda cleverly entwines nationalism with religion i.e. ‘God’s own country’, it can bind the mind like superglue.
While all this is painfully obvious to the independent observer, without scientific evidence for support it’s barely more than a hypothesis. Luckily such evidence is now available via a paper written by Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri, two researchers at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. Their research shows that those of a lower than normal intelligence are more susceptible to right-wing political ideology.Studies have shown that individuals with lower levels of general intelligence are less trusting of other people, less sensitive to interpersonal cues, and less accurate in deciphering other people’s behaviors and intentions…research has revealed that individuals who more strongly endorse social conservatism have greater cognitive rigidity (Rokeach, 1948), less cognitive flexibility (Sidanius, 1985), and lower integrative complexity (Jost et al., 2003).The study concludes:
Socially conservative individuals also perform less well than liberals on standardized ability tests (Stankov, 2009). Rightwing authoritarianism (Altemeyer, 1996), a strong correlate of social conservatism (Jost et al., 2003; Van Hiel et al., 2010), is also negatively associated with g (‘g’ = lower levels of general intelligence). (McCourt, Bouchard)”
…conservative ideology represents a critical pathway through which childhood intelligence predicts racism in adulthood. In psychological terms, the relation between g (‘g’ = lower levels of general intelligence) and prejudice may stem from the propensity of individuals with lower cognitive ability to endorse more rightwing conservative ideologies because such ideologies offer a psychological sense of stability and order. By emphasizing resistance to change and inequality among groups, these ideologies legitimize and promote negative evaluations of out-groups…”[1]Or, to quote the Guardian columnist, George Monbiot, “Conservatism is linked to low intelligence.”[2]
Monbiot uses this research paper, published in the journal ‘Psychological Science’ last month, to lambaste the liberal community of the UK for a lackadaisical attitude that allows conservatism to win so readily. He may have been even more forthright had he been aware of another study just published, this time by researchers at Washington University in St Louis.
A team led by Patricia Cavazos-Rehg of WUSL studied birth rates of girls aged 15 – 17 on a state by state basis. They corroborated the findings of previous studies, that comprehensive sex education in schools is responsible for lowered birth rates among teenage girls.
Unsurprisingly, the states with the highest rate of teenage births were those ‘with higher religiosity rankings and greater political conservatism’.“State adolescent births vary widely, and these disparities across states should be acknowledged as a major public health concern,” Cavazos-Rehg told LiveScience. She noted the difference in birthrates among girls ages 15 to 17 in Arkansas and New Hampshire. Arkansas, with high conservatism, had the highest birthrate in this study, 34.8 per 1,000 girls in this age range. New Hampshire, with high liberalism, had the lowest birthrate, 9.7. [Teen Pregnancy: A 'Winnable' Public Health Battle?]“[3]Monbiot continues:
…what we now see among their [UK & US conservative] parties – however intelligent their guiding spirits may be – is the abandonment of any pretence of high-minded conservatism. On both sides of the Atlantic, conservative strategists have discovered that there is no pool so shallow that several million people won’t drown in it. Whether they are promoting the idea that Barack Obama was not born in the US, that manmade climate change is an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy or that the deficit results from the greed of the poor, they now appeal to the basest, stupidest impulses, and find that it does them no harm in the polls.
Don’t take my word for it. Listen to what two former Republican ideologues, David Frum and Mike Lofgren, have been saying. Frum warns that “conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics.” The result is a “shift to ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology” which has “ominous real-world consequences for American society.”
Lofgren complains that “the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today”. The Republican party, with its “prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science” is appealing to what he calls the “low-information voter” or the “misinformation voter.” While most office holders probably don’t believe the “reactionary and paranoid claptrap” they peddle, “they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base.
Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes - Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact
2. George Monbiot's article can be found here:
Liberal Constipation
3. sex-education study can be found here:
Sex Education Less Effective in Conservative States
in summation; the study says that stupid people are more likely to be conservative. Monbiot dismisses the point as being obvious and instead asserts that the real issue is how liberals are just as stupid for letting conservatism be as widespread as it is in the 21st century.
I now relinquish the podium so that others may comment.