Liberalism, Atheism, Male Sexual Exclusivity Linked to IQ

CNN ^ | 2/26/10 | Elizabeth Landua

[nickcarraway]

Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds. Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning -- on the order of 6 to 11 points -- and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say. But they show how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people's behaviors come to be. The reasoning is that sexual exclusivity in men, liberalism and atheism all go against what would be expected given humans' evolutionary past. In other words, none of these traits would have benefited our early human ancestors, but higher intelligence may be associated with them.

"The adoption of some evolutionarily novel ideas makes some sense in terms of moving the species forward," said George Washington University leadership professor James Bailey, who was not involved in the study. "It also makes perfect sense that more intelligent people -- people with, sort of, more intellectual firepower -- are likely to be the ones to do that."

Bailey also said that these preferences may stem from a desire to show superiority or elitism, which also has to do with IQ. In fact, aligning oneself with "unconventional" philosophies such as liberalism or atheism may be "ways to communicate to everyone that you're pretty smart," he said.

[RipSawyer]

“Unfrotunately there is no way to measure common sense.”
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I would respectfully disagree, when you meet two brothers who are past seventy and find that they are the sons of a sharecropper, one is a very successful farmer and the other is a retired army colonel who is very well off financially and both are very down to earth and pleasant company to be with I consider that evidence that both they and their sharecropper father were blessed with some common sense. I don’t know their IQ scores but I would bet that the colonel would score higher than his brother but neither would hit the genius level.

[B Knotts]

How is “intelligence” defined, anyhow? To believe what is absolutely, provably false (liberalism) seems contrary to a meaningful concept of intelligence.

Furthermore, our Western idea of intelligence is at odds with our apparent urge to commit self-genocide by not reproducing. From a genetic perspective, it simply cannot be considered intelligent on a societal basis.

Perhaps a reevaluation of intelligence is in order.

[Adventure gal]

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom
Psalm 111:10

[wardaddy]

that is true...as a former left libertarian from the 70s I can attest that conservatives are much more informed than lefties who run on self congratulatory emotion

not to say they don't regurgitate good but they are one dimensional