Liberals and Atheists Smarter?

[mr blur]

Liberals and Atheists Smarter? Intelligent People Have Values Novel in Human Evolutionary History, Study Finds

More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.

The study, published in the March 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Social Psychology Quarterly, advances a new theory to explain why people form particular preferences and values. The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years."

"Evolutionarily novel" preferences and values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have and our ancestors probably did not possess. In contrast, those that our ancestors had for millions of years are "evolutionarily familiar."

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100224132655.htm

[TZ]

1. AHHHHHGHHHHH!

I fucking hate these stupid "who is smarter" studies. 99.9% of the time they are bullshit used to push a political agenda. It wasn't right when The Bell Curve came out, and its not right when it people try to say liberals/atheists/democrats are smarter.

[realisticphish]

2. yup

in any group of people, it's possible to find a statistically significant trend for just about anything. It's only with repetition and testing that there's real validation

[varkam]

3. I am stealing your PIP Boy avatar.

Totally and completely random, but it has been done.

[realisticphish]

4. haha

apropos, since I stole it from god knows where

[LeftishBrit]

5. Kanazawa is actually a rather dodgy bloke.

He is one of those gung-ho evolutionary psychologists, who think that practically every item of behaviour must be (a) genetically controlled and (b) have a direct evolutionary explanation.

Here's a link to an earlier thread about him:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=247&topic_id=11263#11266

He has some strange views on race:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/nov/05/highereducation.research

and on war:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200803/why-we-are-losing-war


I would say that it probably is true that in many places liberals and atheists have higher IQs, but not for any evolutionary reason, but because liberalism and atheism tend to be associated with higher levels of education, both in the formal sense, and in the sense of greater exposure to and conversation with people with a wide variety of viewpoints and experiences. And IQ is associated, probably both as cause and effect, with level of education.

[salvorhardin]

6. Thanks for the background on Kanazawa

Two of my pet peeves with both the atheist and skeptic communities are 1) this tendency to believe that just because we don't believe and/or we don't fall for the pseudoscience and paranormal junk that we're smarter than everyone else and 2) a predilection for BS evolutionary psychological explanations.

[realisticphish]

7. evolutionary psychology annoys me

it's interesting as a thought experiment, but treating it as anything other than wild guesses is irresponsible

[LeftishBrit]

8. I think a lot of it shows fundamental confusions about both evolution and behavioural genetics...

It hardly needs to be said that evolution occurs at the genetic level, not at the level of the individual item of behaviour.

And almost all behavioural characteristics involve not single genes, but multiple genes interacting with each other and with the environment.

Moreover, a characteristic could evolve not because it has direct advantages to the individual, but because it is genetically associated with some other characteristic that is. Even at the single-gene level: sickle-cell anaemia is surprisingly common in some areas of the world, not because it conveys an evolutionary advantage (it clearly does not), but because having *one* gene for this recessive disorder confers relative resistance to malaria. It's likely that there are lots of similar genetic associations that we don't even know about at present.

I suspect, for example, that a lot of the evolutionary explanations for behavioural gender differences and how they might have been an advantage in early societies are missing the point. Gender differences in cognition and behaviour are much smaller than is often assumed anyway, but insofar as they exist: they appear to be mainly associated with differences in level of male and female sex hormones. Since sex hormones are *directly* associated with fertility and reproduction, particular levels of such hormones would most probably evolve for *that* reason; their effects on the brain might be a byproduct.

Of course, *some* genetic variations could well have increased in frequency because of their effects on a particular behaviour; but we need to be careful before making simplistic assumptions that 'people do X; therefore there must be a specific evolutionary advantage in X'.

[realisticphish]

9. right

people may do a lot of things just because. There doesn't have to be some base reason for it

[Odin2005]

11. IMO Evo-Psych is too full of unfalsifiable hypotheses based on unjustified assumptions.

And recent findings of the plasticity of the human brain (which overturned the old dogma about the adult brain not being able to change), especially, throws many of these ideas for a loop.

[Odin2005]

10. Any study by Kawazana is almost guaranteed to be BS.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

12. Read any science thread on DU and you'll be convinced otherwise fairly quickly.