Face It Repubs: Studies Show Liberals Are Smarter Than Conservatives

[Billy000]

Those hippies believed in personal freedom and less government...just as the tea baggers do now. Their political ideology did not change in this regard.

Yeah, hippies were a big Republican voting bloc. In Bizarro Universe.

This "growing out of liberalism" is just something you pulled out of your ass. Your anecdotal story is not proof of anything.

When I debate, I don't lose and you know why I don't lose? Because I know what I'm talking about. I don't need to pull made up stories from my ass:

For the past 10 years, I’ve studied political divisions through the lenses of evolutionary anthropology, genetics, and neuroscience. Research reveals that during their 20s people around the world experience significant shifts in the traits biologists use to describe the human personality. Specifically, “openness” declines and “conscientiousness” increases. Higher openness is associated with intellectual curiosity, a preference for variety, and voting for the left; higher conscientiousness, characterized by self-discipline and dutifulness, predicts support for more conservative politics.

This rightward shift in political personality is fairly universal, and so is the timing. A 2004 study by psychologists Robert McCrae and Jüri Allik in the Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology of 36 cultures across Africa, Europe, and Asia discovered that openness and conscientiousness differ between 18- to 22-year-olds and older adults. If an individual’s political personality hasn’t changed by the time of his or her 30th birthday, however, it’s not likely to differ all that much at 40, 50, or 60. This isn’t to say that all teenagers are liberal and all older people are conservative. In any age group, people are distributed along the left-right spectrum on a bell curve. The entire curve, however, moves somewhat to the right during the mid-20s.

A common explanation for this personality change in young adulthood was voiced during the politically turbulent 1960s in the U.S. At the time, the young leftist counterculture claimed that its ideological enemies could be found on the far side of Guizot’s magic number, 30. This belief implied that people older than that became more conservative because they were more likely to own a house, to earn a higher salary, and to have too much at stake to back a revolutionary call to destroy the existing order.

Contrary to popular belief, paying taxes, accumulating wealth, and being in the 1 percent or the 99 percent are extremely poor predictors of left-right political orientation. According to American National Election Studies, an academically run survey project, the correlation between family income and party identification for U.S. voters in the 2012 presidential election was a mere 0.13. This weak statistical relationship is typical of past elections.​

So much for your hypothesis that SES drives political identity.

There is one life event, though, that greatly accelerates a person’s shift to the right, and it often occurs in the 30s: parenthood. Its political impact is easy to see among a cohort of Canadian college students studied by psychologist Robert Altemeyer. Their scores on an ideology test at age 22 grew more conservative by an average of 5.4 percent when they were retested at 30. But among those 30-year-olds who’d had children, conservatism increased by 9.4 percent.

Why did having kids push people to the right? Parents stay on the lookout for possible sources of danger that nonparents can ignore. This shift in perception is so strong it creates an illusory sense of risk; new parents tend to believe that crime rates have increased since they had children even when actual crime has dropped dramatically. Because “dangerous world” thinking is associated with political conservatism, parenthood pushes people to the right, and more so when they have daughters.

Experts on personality, such as McCrae, a psychologist at the National Institute of Aging, say people’s personalities may also be hard-wired to shift over time. As we age, changes in gene expression may subtly alter openness, conscientiousness, and other traits. These traits and the personality shifts that unfold between late adolescence and early adulthood are moderately heritable between generations.

To understand why both nature and the environment tug at our personalities at certain times, we must trace these subtle changes in our personality to activity in the brain. Neuroscientists once assumed that the brain, along with the rest of the body, finishes dramatic development after puberty. But we now know that it doesn’t reach full maturity until at least age 25. Consider the prefrontal cortex, which lies directly behind the forehead. It’s responsible for regulating emotions, controlling impulses, and making complex cost-benefit judgments that weigh immediate incentives against future consequences. Unlike most regions of the brain, the prefrontal cortex continues to grow, and its cautionary functions go on developing well into the mid-20s.​

What I said was that age itself does not dictate change in ideology. I posited that it is SES that dictates it.

How does it feel to understand the world is a way which is 100% backwards from the way the world really works?

The study about IQ is what ultimately matters. If you agree IQ doesn't change than it is safe to assume the "very liberals" are, on average, smarter than the "very conservative"

IQ is very stable, but political identity is not. Like I noted above, Kanazawa took an IQ snapshot as kids were entering early adulthood. Kids are very liberal. What happens, apparently, is that the more intelligent young liberals transition into being well-off high IQ conservatives. All the pieces fit together - conservatives have more children than liberals, further strengthening the divide, they earn more money which enables them to have larger families and to earn their higher incomes they use their higher IQs. They started out as young and foolish liberals and reality mugged them as they grew older and turned the smart ones into conservatives.

Is random googling the best way you supposedly win arguments? Lol. Someone is insecure.

I can see now why a person could become more conservative as they age. I'll give you that. However, these studies of yours have to do with personality, not intelligence. There is no evidence in these studies that these people move to the right because of intelligence. It has to with becoming more independent. Brain power has much less to do with it. The values these people gain is a sense of personal responsibility. That's it. That's the only rightwing trait in the study. Its more of an anecdotal feeling of self satisfaction.

Lol we do not know the political ideology of these adults as kids. I don't know why you brought it up. Also nothing in that rambling paragraph of yours explains why those adults with higher childhood IQs were liberal. Obviously their IQs are still higher than those who identified as conservative.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Is random googling the best way you supposedly win arguments? Lol. Someone is insecure.

I must be pretty lucky, huh, to take a position and then have to go and randomly google and luck out by finding confirming evidence. The more parsimonious explanation is that I have this evidence in mind when I write my comment and then when queried about it I know precisely what to look for.

Take you pick.

I can see now why a person could become more conservative as they age. I'll give you that. However, these studies of yours have to do with personality, not intelligence. There is no evidence in these studies that these people move to the right because of intelligence.

I never claimed that they did move because of intelligence. You made that claim. In my first post I claimed that intelligence is not driving political affiliation. I have been disputing your point throughout our exchange.

Lol we do not know the political ideology of these adults as kids. I don't know why you brought it up. Also nothing in that rambling paragraph of yours explains why those adults with higher childhood IQs were liberal. Obviously their IQs are still higher than those who identified as conservative.

These adults you refer to are just fresh off beings kids, they were between 18 and 26. You understand that by ObamaCare standards they all still qualified as kids who could be covered on their parents' health insurance plans. Most of these adults were still in brain development stages and were still in the midst of growing up and developing their adult personalities:

Wave III data collection was conducted nationwide (including Hawaii and Alaska) between August 2001 and April 2002. Respondents were now aged 18-26 and in the midst of the transition to adulthood. Add Health completed interviews on 15,170 respondents at Wave III, resulting in a 76% response rate.
​

The sample size likely captured a scarcity of 18 year old conservatives and so the high IQ of young liberals is a result of almost all young adults being liberal with the exception of those who are deeply religious. Within this young adult liberal cohort are many individuals who will outgrow their youthful flirtation with liberalism and transition to conservatism. For conservatives, starting from a lower IQ position when they are on the cusp of adulthood and ending up with higher IQs as adults requires a selection of the highest IQ people from the cusp of adulthood liberal cohort to migrate while leaving behind the mediocre IQ liberals. Recall from the study the young conservatives had a mean IQ of 94.8 compared to the mean IQ of liberals of 106.4, that represents a delta of 11.6 IQ points and then by adulthood the conservative IQ was 2-4 points higher than the liberal IQ. Here's the important point - and Carl even makes note of it - that original group of 94.8 IQ conservatives is still likely in place, so to arrive at a mean which places conservative IQ to be higher than liberal IQ by 2-4 IQ points will require a blending of very high IQ former liberals with the more modest conservative IQ folks who were conservatives from the beginning. In other words, the cream of the crop leaves the liberal camp and migrates over to the conservatives as they grow up and realize that they actually are conservatives.

So the smartest of liberals eventually become conservatives, leaving behind the dunderheads to plough through life as old liberals, pitied and mocked by everyone for being locked into a child's politcial identity constantly focused on how life isn't fair and being enviious of others.

 

[Billy000]

Is random googling the best way you supposedly win arguments? Lol. Someone is insecure.

I must be pretty lucky, huh, to take a position and then have to go and randomly google and luck out by finding confirming evidence. The more parsimonious explanation is that I have this evidence in mind when I write my comment and then when queried about it I know precisely what to look for.

Take you pick.

I can see now why a person could become more conservative as they age. I'll give you that. However, these studies of yours have to do with personality, not intelligence. There is no evidence in these studies that these people move to the right because of intelligence.

I never claimed that they did move because of intelligence. You made that claim. In my first post I claimed that intelligence is not driving political affiliation. I have been disputing your point throughout our exchange.

Lol we do not know the political ideology of these adults as kids. I don't know why you brought it up. Also nothing in that rambling paragraph of yours explains why those adults with higher childhood IQs were liberal. Obviously their IQs are still higher than those who identified as conservative.

These adults you refer to are just fresh off beings kids, they were between 18 and 26. You understand that by ObamaCare standards they all still qualified as kids who could be covered on their parents' health insurance plans. Most of these adults were still in brain development stages and were still in the midst of growing up and developing their adult personalities:

Wave III data collection was conducted nationwide (including Hawaii and Alaska) between August 2001 and April 2002. Respondents were now aged 18-26 and in the midst of the transition to adulthood. Add Health completed interviews on 15,170 respondents at Wave III, resulting in a 76% response rate.
​

The sample size likely captured a scarcity of 18 year old conservatives and so the high IQ of young liberals is a result of almost all young adults being liberal with the exception of those who are deeply religious. Within this young adult liberal cohort are many individuals who will outgrow their youthful flirtation with liberalism and transition to conservatism. For conservatives, starting from a lower IQ position when they are on the cusp of adulthood and ending up with higher IQs as adults requires a selection of the highest IQ people from the cusp of adulthood liberal cohort to migrate while leaving behind the mediocre IQ liberals. Recall from the study the young conservatives had a mean IQ of 94.8 compared to the mean IQ of liberals of 106.4, that represents a delta of 11.6 IQ points and then by adulthood the conservative IQ was 2-4 points higher than the liberal IQ. Here's the important point - and Carl even makes note of it - that original group of 94.8 IQ conservatives is still likely in place, so to arrive at a mean which places conservative IQ to be higher than liberal IQ by 2-4 IQ points will require a blending of very high IQ former liberals with the more modest conservative IQ folks who were conservatives from the beginning. In other words, the cream of the crop leaves the liberal camp and migrates over to the conservatives as they grow up and realize that they actually are conservatives.

So the smartest of liberals eventually become conservatives, leaving behind the dunderheads to plough through life as old liberals, pitied and mocked by everyone for being locked into a child's politcial identity constantly focused on how life isn't fair and being enviious of others.

lol dude you are all over the place. I have no concept of what you are trying to argue. If you believe intelligence does not drive political ideology as we age then why you even talking about the aging IQ study?

You are just making shit up. There is no evidence those "very conservatives" have higher IQs than the "very liberals". You are just coming up with fluffy bullshit.

 

[Rikurzhen]

I have no concept of what you are trying to argue.

Truer words have never been written.

If you believe intelligence does not drive political ideology as we age then why you even talking about the aging IQ study?

You understand the difference between correlation and causation, no? You're arguing causation by pointing to correlation. I'm simply pointing to the correlation alone. There is an association between high IQ and conservatism in adults, in addition to an association between high IQ and high SES. I'm not arguing a causal link.

There is no evidence those "very conservatives" have higher IQs than the "very liberals". You are just coming up with fluffy bullshit.

I linked you to the Carl study which concluded the following:

Carl (2014) analysed data from the U.S. General Social Survey (GSS), and found that individuals who identify as Republican have slightly higher verbal intelligence than those who identify as Democrat. An important qualification was that the measure of verbal intelligence used was relatively crude, namely a 10-word vocabulary test. This study examines three other measures of cognitive ability from the GSS: a test of probability knowledge, a test of verbal reasoning, and an assessment by the interviewer of how well the respondent understood the survey questions. In all three cases, individuals who identify as Republican score slightly higher than those who identify as Democrat; the unadjusted differences are 1–3 IQ points, 2–4 IQ points and 2–3 IQ points, respectively. Path analyses indicate that the associations between cognitive ability and party identity are largely but not totally accounted for by socio-economic position: individuals with higher cognitive ability tend to have better socio-economic positions, and individuals with better socio-economic positions are more likely to identify as Republican. These results are consistent with Carl's (2014) hypothesis that higher intelligence among classically liberal Republicans compensates for lower intelligence among socially conservative Republicans.
​

Note the text in red - there are two conservative factions - the modest IQ Social Conservatives and the high IQ Classical Liberal Conservatives. The combined group have a higher IQ than Liberals. Don't you see how it follows that for the mean IQ of Conservatives to be higher than that of Liberals that the higher performing component of the two-party Conservative faction has to actually have a far higher IQ than that of Liberals?

Let's put it this way - when the liberals on this board argue with some conservatives, they can win the argument but then when they encounter conservatives from the Classical Liberal camp, the smarty pants liberals get their butts kicked from here to Timbuktu.

 

[Billy000]

I have no concept of what you are trying to argue.

Truer words have never been written.

If you believe intelligence does not drive political ideology as we age then why you even talking about the aging IQ study?

You understand the difference between correlation and causation, no? You're arguing causation by pointing to correlation. I'm simply pointing to the correlation alone. There is an association between high IQ and conservatism in adults, in addition to an association between high IQ and high SES. I'm not arguing a causal link.

There is no evidence those "very conservatives" have higher IQs than the "very liberals". You are just coming up with fluffy bullshit.

I linked you to the Carl study which concluded the following:

Carl (2014) analysed data from the U.S. General Social Survey (GSS), and found that individuals who identify as Republican have slightly higher verbal intelligence than those who identify as Democrat. An important qualification was that the measure of verbal intelligence used was relatively crude, namely a 10-word vocabulary test. This study examines three other measures of cognitive ability from the GSS: a test of probability knowledge, a test of verbal reasoning, and an assessment by the interviewer of how well the respondent understood the survey questions. In all three cases, individuals who identify as Republican score slightly higher than those who identify as Democrat; the unadjusted differences are 1–3 IQ points, 2–4 IQ points and 2–3 IQ points, respectively. Path analyses indicate that the associations between cognitive ability and party identity are largely but not totally accounted for by socio-economic position: individuals with higher cognitive ability tend to have better socio-economic positions, and individuals with better socio-economic positions are more likely to identify as Republican. These results are consistent with Carl's (2014) hypothesis that higher intelligence among classically liberal Republicans compensates for lower intelligence among socially conservative Republicans.
​

Note the text in red - there are two conservative factions - the modest IQ Social Conservatives and the high IQ Classical Liberal Conservatives. The combined group have a higher IQ than Liberals. Don't you see how it follows that for the mean IQ of Conservatives to be higher than that of Liberals that the higher performing component of the two-party Conservative faction has to actually have a far higher IQ than that of Liberals?

Let's put it this way - when the liberals on this board argue with some conservatives, they can win the argument but then when they encounter conservatives from the Classical Liberal camp, the smarty pants liberals get their butts kicked from here to Timbuktu.

How is it that I am pointing to causation and you are not? We have both been pointing to correlation this entire time.

Lol dude that study of yours (that you so obviously randomly googled) is a small measure of verbal intelligence, not general IQ. The edge those Rightwingers have is "slight" anyway. I would hardly call that a victory. The study i gave you was of general IQ.

And perhaps I missed it, but I don't recall ever seeing a link to this Carl study.

 

[NoNukes]

Progressives are like spoiled little children, always needing mommy and daddy telling them how smart they are, and that they are special.

That proves the OP.

That disproves the OP.

With all of the name calling I see coming from liberals, I doubt they are any smarter then conservatives. To borrow a quote from William F. Buckley:

“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”

What do you think happens when you offend a liberal?

The same could be said about conservatives.

I do not think that one can make a generalisation about one group of people being smarter than others. We sometimes confuse being educated with being smart, which is a mistake. Education does give one a leg up on knowledge, but the two most knowledgable people I ever knew did not have a huge education.

 

[Rikurzhen]

I have no concept of what you are trying to argue.

Truer words have never been written.

If you believe intelligence does not drive political ideology as we age then why you even talking about the aging IQ study?

You understand the difference between correlation and causation, no? You're arguing causation by pointing to correlation. I'm simply pointing to the correlation alone. There is an association between high IQ and conservatism in adults, in addition to an association between high IQ and high SES. I'm not arguing a causal link.

There is no evidence those "very conservatives" have higher IQs than the "very liberals". You are just coming up with fluffy bullshit.

I linked you to the Carl study which concluded the following:

Carl (2014) analysed data from the U.S. General Social Survey (GSS), and found that individuals who identify as Republican have slightly higher verbal intelligence than those who identify as Democrat. An important qualification was that the measure of verbal intelligence used was relatively crude, namely a 10-word vocabulary test. This study examines three other measures of cognitive ability from the GSS: a test of probability knowledge, a test of verbal reasoning, and an assessment by the interviewer of how well the respondent understood the survey questions. In all three cases, individuals who identify as Republican score slightly higher than those who identify as Democrat; the unadjusted differences are 1–3 IQ points, 2–4 IQ points and 2–3 IQ points, respectively. Path analyses indicate that the associations between cognitive ability and party identity are largely but not totally accounted for by socio-economic position: individuals with higher cognitive ability tend to have better socio-economic positions, and individuals with better socio-economic positions are more likely to identify as Republican. These results are consistent with Carl's (2014) hypothesis that higher intelligence among classically liberal Republicans compensates for lower intelligence among socially conservative Republicans.
​

Note the text in red - there are two conservative factions - the modest IQ Social Conservatives and the high IQ Classical Liberal Conservatives. The combined group have a higher IQ than Liberals. Don't you see how it follows that for the mean IQ of Conservatives to be higher than that of Liberals that the higher performing component of the two-party Conservative faction has to actually have a far higher IQ than that of Liberals?

Let's put it this way - when the liberals on this board argue with some conservatives, they can win the argument but then when they encounter conservatives from the Classical Liberal camp, the smarty pants liberals get their butts kicked from here to Timbuktu.

How is it that I am pointing to causation and you are not? We have both been pointing to correlation this entire time.

Do you forget what you write? Here is what you just wrote:

If you believe intelligence does not drive political ideology as we age then why you even talking about the aging IQ study?
​

X driving Y is synonymous with X causing Y.

Lol dude that study of yours (that you so obviously randomly googled) is a small measure of verbal intelligence, not general IQ.

Moron, that's exactly what Kanazawa measured! From his study:

Add Health measures respondents’ intelligence with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). The raw scores (0–87) are age-standardized and converted to the IQ metric, with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. The PPVT is properly a measure of verbal intelligence, not general intelligence. However, verbal intelligence is known to be highly correlated with (and thus heavily load on) general intelligence.​

The edge those Rightwingers have is "slight" anyway.

So what? There are two factions within the group - Social Conservatives and what are called Classical Liberal Conservatives. That the mean score of the combined group is higher than Liberals is news by itself, but the gap would be larger if we excluded the Social Conservatives and just compared the Classical Liberals (most of the people who've been kicking your ass in this thread have been Classical Liberals.)

You know what, liberals have a parallel phenomenon. Jews have a mean IQ of 115 and they're heavily liberal, so liberals can also point to a high IQ and low IQ combination. Even with the help of Jews the mean group IQ of liberal adults is lower than that of adult conservatives, but if you exclude the liberal Jews then lookout, those non-Jewish Liberals plummet downwards, probably on par with the IQ of religious social conservatives. You're not Jewish are you? If not then that would place you in the dunderhead faction of liberals, the low IQ group and that would go a long way to explaining why conservatives on this board regularly mop the floor with you.

 

[westwall]

Is random googling the best way you supposedly win arguments? Lol. Someone is insecure.

I must be pretty lucky, huh, to take a position and then have to go and randomly google and luck out by finding confirming evidence. The more parsimonious explanation is that I have this evidence in mind when I write my comment and then when queried about it I know precisely what to look for.

Take you pick.

I can see now why a person could become more conservative as they age. I'll give you that. However, these studies of yours have to do with personality, not intelligence. There is no evidence in these studies that these people move to the right because of intelligence.

I never claimed that they did move because of intelligence. You made that claim. In my first post I claimed that intelligence is not driving political affiliation. I have been disputing your point throughout our exchange.

Lol we do not know the political ideology of these adults as kids. I don't know why you brought it up. Also nothing in that rambling paragraph of yours explains why those adults with higher childhood IQs were liberal. Obviously their IQs are still higher than those who identified as conservative.

These adults you refer to are just fresh off beings kids, they were between 18 and 26. You understand that by ObamaCare standards they all still qualified as kids who could be covered on their parents' health insurance plans. Most of these adults were still in brain development stages and were still in the midst of growing up and developing their adult personalities:

Wave III data collection was conducted nationwide (including Hawaii and Alaska) between August 2001 and April 2002. Respondents were now aged 18-26 and in the midst of the transition to adulthood. Add Health completed interviews on 15,170 respondents at Wave III, resulting in a 76% response rate.
​

The sample size likely captured a scarcity of 18 year old conservatives and so the high IQ of young liberals is a result of almost all young adults being liberal with the exception of those who are deeply religious. Within this young adult liberal cohort are many individuals who will outgrow their youthful flirtation with liberalism and transition to conservatism. For conservatives, starting from a lower IQ position when they are on the cusp of adulthood and ending up with higher IQs as adults requires a selection of the highest IQ people from the cusp of adulthood liberal cohort to migrate while leaving behind the mediocre IQ liberals. Recall from the study the young conservatives had a mean IQ of 94.8 compared to the mean IQ of liberals of 106.4, that represents a delta of 11.6 IQ points and then by adulthood the conservative IQ was 2-4 points higher than the liberal IQ. Here's the important point - and Carl even makes note of it - that original group of 94.8 IQ conservatives is still likely in place, so to arrive at a mean which places conservative IQ to be higher than liberal IQ by 2-4 IQ points will require a blending of very high IQ former liberals with the more modest conservative IQ folks who were conservatives from the beginning. In other words, the cream of the crop leaves the liberal camp and migrates over to the conservatives as they grow up and realize that they actually are conservatives.

So the smartest of liberals eventually become conservatives, leaving behind the dunderheads to plough through life as old liberals, pitied and mocked by everyone for being locked into a child's politcial identity constantly focused on how life isn't fair and being enviious of others.

lol dude you are all over the place. I have no concept of what you are trying to argue. If you believe intelligence does not drive political ideology as we age then why you even talking about the aging IQ study?

You are just making shit up. There is no evidence those "very conservatives" have higher IQs than the "very liberals". You are just coming up with fluffy bullshit.

Actually you have comprehensively lost the argument. You are the one flailing about. You post up a ridiculous "study" and Rikurzhen has shown chapter and verse what is wrong with it. You're just not smart enough to understand what is being said.

 

[The Rabbi]

Billy Triple Zip's own thread is refutation of his own thread.
That's some kind of record.

 

[Rikurzhen]

What's funny, is these "studies" have as much credibility as those that supposedly say that blacks are not as smart as whites.

The Black-White IQ disparity is one of the most studied phenomenon in social science and the finding are all consistent across the studies. The findings are now universally accepted as being an accurate depiction of reality. The debate now doesn't focus on the whether or not the disparity exists, it does, but on why the disparity exits, either genetics or environment. The favored explanation has been environment but that explanation has taken so many body blows that it is now on its last legs - genetic research has put a floor on the heritability of IQ -50% and it's looking likely that the floor is going to creep upwards with further research. When geneticists didn't have the tools they couldn't provide explanations and so the environmentalists held sway with their unproven hypotheses but now times are changing.