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In a new study, bound to stir controversy, researchers have found that people with low IQ tend to have socially conservative ideals and prejudiced attitudes toward others, including people of different races and homosexuals. The new study published earlier this month in the journal Psychological Science found that British children with lower general intelligence factor (similar to IQ) are more likely to be racially prejudiced as adults. "We found that lower general intelligence in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology," lead researchers Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri of Brock University,...

There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy. 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. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice.......

Trying to locate the name of a relatively recent movie: The plot line as I remember it from the ad, was that an ordinary Joe, accidental takes a "pill" that causes him to be able to use a large percentage of his brain, in a conscious state, and makes him the smartest man on the planet. The person who made the pill, takes umbrage, and becomes the antagonist. I've been trying out all the permutations of key worhds on IMDB to no joy. Any help appreciated.

How smart do we want our presidents to be, and what does their academic performance tell us about their chances for success? This month Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s college transcript was leaked, and the Republican presidential contender’s academic performance at Texas A&M turned out to be less than stellar. Perry’s critics seized on the document to suggest that he didn’t have the aptitude to serve as leader of the free world. Is there a correlation between success in the White House and a president’s perceived intelligence, or at least between academic performance and Oval Office success?

Genetic differences between people account for up to half of the variation in intelligence, according to a study of more than 3,000 individuals. Intelligence is known to run in families, but no single genes have yet been identified that can be reliably linked to mental ability. Instead, researchers think, many hundreds or thousands of genes could be involved, each with a small influence on a person's overall intelligence. "It has been getting clearer and clearer that any genetic contribution to traits on which people differ – like height and weight – comes about from large numbers of gene differences, each...

Results from an online IQ test taken by over 100,000 people have been reported as indicating the users of Internet Explorer have low IQ and have provoked some IE users to threaten legal action. But the study's findings are valuable ammunition for web developers. A Canadian company that designs, validates and publishes psychometric tests for recruitment, career guidance and staff development, released its report Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Browser Usage and found itself at the centre of a storm. The survey findings were reported by Jared Newman on PC World with the headline "Internet Explorer Users Are Kinda Stupid" and...

Autum Ashante, a highly academically accomplished 13-year-old from the Bronx, N.Y., planned to start her freshman year at the University of Connecticut this fall. Now, her father says, the school has rescinded her acceptance, the Daily News reports. Batin Ashante said that his daughter was "devastated" after university officials called him yesterday to deliver the bad news. "They said they now feel she's not academically ready," he said. "That's BS!" When the story was first reported in mid-June, UConn spokesman Richard Veilleaux confirmed that Autum had been accepted to the school but said university officials were still waiting for the...

It's racially discriminatory to prohibit racial discrimination. That's the bottom line of a decision issued Friday, just before the Fourth of July weekend, by the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. The case was brought by an organization called By Any Means Necessary to overturn a state constitutional amendment passed by a 58 percent majority of Michigan voters in November 2006. This was not BAMN's first challenge to the proposition. It staged a mini-riot in the secretary of state's office to try to block submission of the signatures that put the proposition on the ballot. The ballot...

This is a terrific test. And it shows results in a number of ways. It sure indicates that the majority of Americans don't know what's going on. No wonder our politicians take such advantage. Interesting and simple test. It’s astonishing that so many people got less than half right. These results say that 80% of the (voting) public doesn’t have a clue – and that’s pretty scary.

Intelligence tests are as much a measure of motivation as they are of mental ability, says research from the US.Researchers from Pennsylvania found that a high IQ score required both high intelligence and high motivation but a low IQ score could be the result of a lack of either factor. Incentives were also found to increase IQ scores by a noticeable margin. The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Firstly, it analysed previous studies of how material incentives affected the performance of more than 2,000 people in intelligence tests. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania,...

Australian ethicist working at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics claims that humanity has a “moral obligation” to use in vitro fertilization (IVF) to select the most intelligent embryos for the good of society, with the obvious implication that the less intelligent “surplus” embryos should simply be destroyed. Professor Julian Savulescu of Melbourne made the statement while commenting on an economic modeling research paper by Oxford University ethicists Andres Sandberg and Nick Bostrom, who claim that a rise in humanity’s IQ would result in a reduction in poverty, welfare dependency, crowding of jails, school dropout rates, out-of-wedlock births, and...

It's not just how free the market is. Some economists are looking at another factor that determines how much a country's economy flourishes: how smart its people are. For a study published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, researchers analyzed test scores from 90 countries and found that the intelligence of the people, particularly the smartest 5 percent, made a big contribution to the strength of their economies. In the last 50 years or so, economists have started taking an interest in the value of human capital. That means all of the qualities of the people who make up...

-and see if you're any better than the average idiot! This is a terrific test, albeit a couple months dated... very enlightening. But not in a good way... the pitiful results betray the fact that a solid majority of Americans have absolutely no idea what's going on in this country. 80% of the voting public doesn't have a clue- and got less than half right! This goes some ways towards explaining how a shady post-turtle like Barack Obama found his way into the Oval Office- and how the public can continue to be so easily manipulated by the thoroughly-discredited MSM hacks that...

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Beautiful people don't just get all the breaks, scientists say they're likely smarter than most people, too. A study in England conducted by researchers at the London School of Economics found that attractive men and women generally have higher IQs. "Physical attractiveness is significantly positively associated with general intelligence," said LSE lead researcher Satoshi Kanazawa, in the latest issue of the journal, Intelligence. The study indicated attractive men have IQs that are 13.6 points above the average, while beautiful women are 11.4 points higher than average.

America's children rate embarrassingly low again on the latest round of scholastic tests from the OECD. The Program for International Student Assessment, which is released every three years, tests 15-year-old students in reading, math and science. Basically, America earned a "C." We tied the OECD average rating of 496. Teenagers in East Asia and Europe scored significantly higher. There's one caveat to these scores. Some countries test a irregularly narrow sample of kids. Like China -- which we're not counting in our ranking because its sample of 5,100 Shanghai teenagers scored ridiculously high.

Don't know what day it is? Look at a calender. Don't call 911It appears residents in Broward County have their definitions for "nonsense" and "emergency" mixed up. According to the Broward Sheriff's Office call center, nearly half the 911 calls they receive are for things not quite a life or death situation - unless you consider a fast food order an emergency. To paraphrase the immortal words of Flavor Flav, 911 callers are a joke in this town. "My toilet's overflowing, what do I do? That's my personal favorite," BSO Sheriff Al Lamberti said. While it's a stretch, a busted...

Here's How The Various Racial Groups Stack Up In Terms Of Income Joe Weisenthal Sep. 16, 2010, 1:05 PM From the Census bureau:Image: Census

Obama says he ignored Beck rally He seemed intent on casting himself as above the political fray, saying he had more important work to do than to engage in the back and forth of the political “silly season.” For example, Obama said he did not watch any of Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally Saturday on the National Mall. “It’s not surprising that somebody like a Mr. Beck is able to stir up a certain portion of the country. That's been true throughout our history,” he said. But “I’m making decisions that are not necessarily good for...

In psychology’s latest assault on American conservatives, evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa has determined that “very liberal” people possess nearly a 12 point IQ advantage over those who identify as “very conservative.” Not only is the hard left more intelligent than the hard right, but they are smarter than everyone else, as well – mainstream conservative, middle-of-the-road, and even mainstream liberal. In a blog posting at the Psychology Today website, Kanazawa baldly asserted that, “...apart from a few areas in life (such as business) where countervailing circumstances may prevail, liberals control all institutions. They control the institutions because liberals are on...

Global differences in intelligence is a sensitive topic, long fraught with controversy and still tinged by the disgraceful taint of pseudosciences such as craniometry that strove to prove the white “race” as the most clever of them all. But recent data, perplexingly, has indeed shown cognitive ability to be higher in some countries than in others. What’s more, IQ scores have risen as nations develop—a phenomenon known as the “Flynn effect.” Many causes have been proposed for both the intelligence gap and the Flynn effect, including education, income, and even nonagricultural labor. Now, a new study from researchers at the...

Many of the wonderful-sounding ideas that have been tried as government policies have failed disastrously. Because so few people bother to study history, often the same ideas and policies have been tried again, either in another country or in the same country at a later time — and with the same disastrous results. One of the ideas that has proved to be almost impervious to evidence is the idea that wise and far-sighted people need to take control, and plan economic and social policies so that there will be a rational and just order, rather than chaos resulting from things...

People in developing countries have lower IQs because their bodies divert energy from brainpower to fighting disease, researchers claimed today. In hot nations blighted by deadly infections, the priority is survival and populations have evolved to develop stronger immune systems rather than intelligence, according to the controversial theory. Some critics warned the study could become an excuse for racism if it was used to suggest that people in the Third World are not as intelligent as those in cooler, richer climes. Others pointed out that the ancient Persians, Greeks and Romans lived in hot climates and still boasted extraordinary civilisations....

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The city will search for a new admissions test for its gifted and talented public school programs, a Department of Education official said on Monday, in part to address concerns that some families were “gaming” the test through extensive preparation. The official, Marc Sternberg, the new deputy chancellor for portfolio planning, said the change could occur for the 2012-13 year. The city has one more year in its current testing contract. Mr. Sternberg announced the move at a City Council hearing on education, after extensive questioning from council members about why the city’s gifted programs were not as racially and...

Immigrants are making Germany 'dumber', according to a board member of the country's central bank. Thilo Sarrazin claimed the 'limited education' of immigrants - coupled with their high birth rate - meant Germans 'are becoming dumber in a simple way'. He said: 'There's a difference in the reproduction of population groups with varying intelligence.' It is not the first time the 65-year-old member of the Bundesbank has caused controversy since he joined last year. In October he described Muslim children as 'underclass' citizens. 'I don't have to accept someone who lives off a state they reject, doesn't properly take care...

In 1970, nine percent of California's population was comprised of immigrants; by 2008 it was 27 percent. A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that as a result of immigration, California now has the least-educated labor force of any state. Historically, California was not a state with a disproportionately large unskilled population, like Appalachia or parts of the South. However, immigration has transformed the state. Absent a change in immigration policy, other parts of the country may be transformed in a similar fashion. The report, "A State Transformed: Immigration and the New California," can be found...

Front-page headline in my New York Post this morning: 2 + 2 = 5 NY passes students who get wrong answers on tests The accompanying story describes a further dumbing-down of state math tests for kids in grades 3 to 8. Half marks are given for fragments of work; also for wrong answers arrived at via correct methods: “A kid who answers that a 2-foot-long skateboard is 48 inches long gets half-credit for adding 24 and 24 instead of the correct 12 plus 12 . . . ” For us New York parents the only surprise here is that any...

The Question No. That is to say, Yes. But not really. Actually, what we have here is an badly phrased question: just what do we mean when we ask “Are men smarter than women”? We’re asking this again, because (via HotAir) The Daily Mail has asked. And, even though that paper is, as many readers have insisted, England’s equivalent of the New York Post, an article by retired professor Richard Lynn has, as they say in journalism, stirred up controversy. Judging by the comments garnered at the paper and at HotAir, most do not understand the question, or purposely—or willfully—misunderstand...

Dr. Kanazawa, In your recent PT blog post, Why Liberals Are More Intelligent Than Conservatives, you explained why liberals tend to control institutions such as academia and the media: "[Liberals] control the institutions because liberals are on average more intelligent than conservatives and thus they are more likely to attain the highest status in any area of (evolutionarily novel) modern life." You asserted that liberals have higher IQs, are more generous, and are essentially more evolved than conservatives. In response, I'd like to defend the unfortunate, knuckle-dragging schlubs by deconstructing your logic. Unlike most of your previous work (your book...

"Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds." So began an article published at CNN.com Friday guaranteed to anger conservatives from coast to coast. The piece continued, "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." Folks are warned about proceeding further, for the content might be really offensive to some (h/tips to NB readers Stan and Chesley):

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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...

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...

Cigarette smokers have lower IQs than non-smokers, and the more a person smokes, the lower their IQ, a study in over 20,000 Israeli military recruits suggests. Young men who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day or more had IQ scores 7.5 points lower than non-smokers, Dr. Mark Weiser of Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer and his colleagues found. "Adolescents with poorer IQ scores might be targeted for programs designed to prevent smoking," they conclude in the journal Addiction. Slideshow: Celebrities Who Quit Smoking While there is evidence for a link between smoking and lower IQ, many studies have...

Most three-year-olds are fascinated by cars and trucks. But few can read and remember their number plates like William Potter does. He can also name most towns and cities in the British Isles - and has just become one of the youngest people ever accepted as a member of Mensa. With an IQ of 140, his intelligence is said to be on a par with that of Bill Clinton and, apparently, Napoleon Bonaparte.

LONDON (Reuters) - Intelligence comes second only to smoking as a predictor of heart disease, scientists said on Wednesday, suggesting public health campaigns may need to be designed for people with lower IQs if they are to work. Research by Britain's Medical Research Council (MRC) found that lower intelligence quotient (IQ) scores were associated with higher rates of heart disease and death, and were more important indicators than any other risk factors except smoking.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- The death sentence of a Florida man convicted of the 1981 killing of a convenience store clerk has been vacated because his IQ is too low. A judge in Daytona Beach last month signed an order setting aside the death sentence for Ted Herring. Circuit Judge Joseph Will wrote in his decision that Herring has significant limitations in his functioning. The state Attorney General's Office has appealed the decision to the Florida Supreme Court. If the order is affirmed, Herring will be sentenced to life in prison. A 2002 Florida law prohibits the execution of anybody...

Guy goes into a bar, there's a robot bartender. The robot says, "What will you have?" The guy says, "Martini." The robot brings back the best martini ever and says to the man, "What's your IQ?" The guy says, "168". The robot then proceeds to talk about physics, space exploration and medical technology. The guy leaves, but he is curious, so he goes back into the bar. The robot bartender says," What will you have?" The guy says, "Martini". Again, the robot makes a great martini, gives it to the man and says, "What's your IQ?" The guy says, "100."...

It was with great interest that I read Christopher Donovan’s TOO article on politically incorrect comments at a blog for the lawyerly elite. The field of law prides itself on being a meritocracy. Being made up of educated Westerners, it is also very liberal on racial issues. It’s hard to be both. The two main academic factors considered in law school admissions are GPA and more importantly, the prospect’s score on the LSAT. Grades aren’t a very good indicator of skill since students choose their own majors, which of course vary in difficulty. That leaves the LSAT as the main...

The Washington Post yesterday afternoon reported "President Obama delivers remarks on Ft. Hood shooting at end of tribal leaders conference." The transcript begins: SPEAKER: PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA [*] OBAMA: Please, everybody, have a seat. Let me first of all just thank Ken and the entire Department of the Interior staff for organizing just an extraordinary conference. I want to thank my Cabinet members and senior administration officials who participated today. I hear that Dr. Joe Medicine Crow (ph) was around, and so I want to give a shout out to that Congressional Medal of Honor winner. It's good to see...

Curvy Women May Be A Clever Bet. Nigella Lawson: Curvy figure and an Oxford degree [Pic in URL]. Women with curvy figures are likely to be brighter than waif-like counterparts and may well produce more intelligent offspring, a US study suggests. Researchers studied 16,000 women and girls and found the more voluptuous performed better on cognitive tests - as did their children. The bigger the difference between a woman's waist and hips the better. Researchers writing in Evolution and Human Behaviour speculated this was to do with fatty acids found on the hips. In this area, the fat is likely...

WEST PALM BEACH — Incited by poor graduation rates in Palm Beach County, a national civil rights group sued the state Thursday, alleging it failed to ensure that all students receive the high-quality education guaranteed under the Florida Constitution. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the school district directly last year, but the case was dismissed on the grounds that the district was not the right party to sue. Now the national and state arms of the ACLU are bringing a class-action suit against the state on behalf of Palm Beach County students and parents. The lawsuit, filed in Palm...

What if we could know, scientifically, that one side has the edge in brainpower? Should that change how we think about political issues? Who are smarter, liberals or conservatives? This is the kind of question that could spark fierce and endless debates between political opponents, but what if we could know, scientifically, that one side has the edge in brainpower? Should that change how we think about political issues? Though few partisans on either side are likely to admit it, most people at one time or another have suspected that their political opponents are dim bulbs. Sometimes these sentiments get...

A forthcoming study on Hispanic children’s cognitive skills underlines the challenges the country faces in aspiring to close the achievement gap between these children and their white and Asian counterparts. Hispanic “children fall behind their peers in mental development by the time they reach grade school, and the gap tends to widen as they get older,” reports the New York Times. “The drop-off in the cognitive scores of Hispanic toddlers, especially those from Mexican backgrounds, was steeper than for other [low-income] groups and could not be explained by economic status alone. . . . From 24 to 36 months, the...

The children of Hispanic immigrants tend to be born healthy and start life on an intellectual par with other American children, but by the age of 2 they begin to lag in linguistic and cognitive skills, a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, shows. The study highlights a paradox that has bedeviled educators and Hispanic families for some time. By and large, mothers from Latin American countries take care of their health during their pregnancies and give birth to robust children, but those children fall behind their peers in mental development by the time they reach...

Spanking can get kids to behave in a hurry, but new research suggests it can do more harm than good to their noggins. The study, involving hundreds of U.S. children, showed the more a child was spanked the lower his or her IQ compared with others. "All parents want smart children," said study researcher Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire. "This research shows that avoiding spanking and correcting misbehavior in other ways can help that happen." One might ask, however, whether children who are spanked tend to come from backgrounds in which education opportunities are less or inherited...

The word median is statistical: it is the point at which 50% of the observations of a thing are smaller and 50% larger. For example, according to the CIA Factbook, the median age of U.S. citizens is 37 years; thus, half the population is younger than 37, half older. Sometimes, as in Murray’s case, and in this review, the median is synonymous with average (sometimes the later implies numerical mean; the median and numerical mean are often nearly or practically equal). We accept that some people naturally excel at sports and that others, no matter the purity of their souls,...

<p>High-school students' performance last year on the SAT college-entrance exam fell slightly, and the score gap generally widened between lower-performing minority groups and white and Asian-American students, raising questions about the effectiveness of national education reform efforts.</p> <p>Average scores for the class of 2009 in critical reading dropped to 501 from 502, in writing to 493 from 494 and held steady in math, at 515. The combined scores are the lowest this decade and reflect stalled performance over the past three years. The reading scores are the worst since 1994.</p>

Every time they send a text message, watch a YouTube video, log on to Facebook and plug in their iPods, today's kids are getting stupider.At least, that's what Mark Bauerlein argues in his provocative book "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future."Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University in Atlanta, has spent the last few years touring the country evangelizing about the dangers of exposing the young to technology.His love-it-or-despise it book, newly released in paperback, has spawned heated arguments among parents, teachers and students who are spending more and more time plugged...