Study: Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives?

TIME ^ | John Cloud

[SeekAndFind]

The notion that liberals are smarter than conservatives is familiar to anyone who has spent time on a college campus. The College Democrats are said to be ugly, smug and intellectual; the College Republicans, pretty, belligerent and dumb. There's enough truth in both stereotypes that the vast majority of college students opt not to join either club.

But are liberals actually smarter? A libertarian (and, as such, nonpartisan) researcher, Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Political Science, has just written a paper that is set to be published in March by the journal Social Psychology Quarterly. The paper investigates not only whether conservatives are dumber than liberals but also why that might be so.

The short answer: Kanazawa's paper shows that more-intelligent people are more likely to say they are liberal. They are also less likely to say they go to religious services. These aren't entirely new findings; last year, for example, a British team found that kids with higher intelligence scores were more likely to grow into adults who vote for Liberal Democrats, even after the researchers controlled for socioeconomics. What's new in Kanazawa's paper is a provocative theory about why intelligence might correlate with liberalism. He argues that smarter people are more willing to espouse "evolutionarily novel" values — that is, values that did not exist in our ancestral environment, including weird ideas about, say, helping genetically unrelated strangers (liberalism, as Kanazawa defines it), which never would have occurred to us back when we had to hunt to feed our own clan and our only real technology was fire.

[SeekAndFind]

Two year old article, but still useful to show how desperate the MSM is to prove how smart they are.

[MNJohnnie]

No because Liberals base their world view on emotions. That is by definition stupid.

[A_Former_Democrat]

The fact that anyone would actually believe in liberalism is proof enough

[Huskrrrr]

Just spoke to a friend of mine, from church, who has a daughter at Stanford. She describes her fellow students as “The most intelligent people I know who haven’t got a clue.”

[GraceG]

How come no one has done a study comparing common sense vs. book smarts in the two parties. I would surmise there is a lot more common sense in the Conservative side where a lot of the head inthe clouds thinkers are liberals who have what sound like great ideas, but are sorely lacking in their execution.

[MeganC]

A Russian fellow once said that, “Conservatives use facts to form their opinions while liberals use their opinions to form their facts.”

[Proudcongal]

If liberals are so smart why are they so useless to society, why do they tend to be less successful than Republicans and require welfare? Just the fact that they embrace socialism is evidence of how utterly stupid they are.

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

Just ask them who is going to pay off the last 4 years $6 Trillion Dollars they made disappear?

Ask them to Show you what we actually Bought with all that money.

[MNJohnnie]

That is awesome, I will have to remember that

[Sgt_Schultze]

And yet it is liberals who complain that their voters are too stupid to know how to obtain legitimate photo identification. They also went to court in Florida claiming their voters were too stupid to be able to use a "butterfly ballot" designed by a democrat election official.

With that many admittedly stupid members, the intelligence of the few "smart" liberals must really be high to be able to offset the idiocy of the rank-and-file.

[Hodar]

Easy to disprove this study.

A person continually uses a philosophy that leads to promoting the socially inept, while punishing the workers and those who invest their wealth to create jobs. The result historically, and universally has been war, death, destruction, drops in production, health, employment, economic growth and increases in human misery - across every time period, and every region on earth.

Yet, this same person persists in pursuing this same failed philosophy.

Is this person smart, or stupid?

[I still care]

Liberals buy into the world’s values. One of the first things they are taught is, get a college education, and go into a field and get hired, maybe by the government.

So they do.

But conservative kids tend to say, “No, I want to make my own way,” develop their own way of thinking, and often go into their own business. They MAY go into college, but they don’t think they are doomed if they don’t. They often go later, when they see the practical uses for it, or because they want to challenge themselves in some way. Not reflexively because that’s what sheep do.

Once they are gotten there at a young age, the liberal intelligentsia sets to the brainwashing in earnest. Conservative kids laugh their tails off at the nonsense they hear from their elitist friends, and get down to work building a life of their OWN.

Liberal interpretation. College = smart. Non-college= not smart.

[B.O. Plenty]

Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives?

...they are joshing us, right?

...they are kidding, right....right??

[chesley]

I believe the part about liberals being ugly. Their souls seep out through their skin.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Oh how I remember the 1960s arrogant psycho punks. Loved by the MSM and praised as the most intelligent generation ever.

Their Demobrat Party kidnapped the traditional, patriotic Democratic Party beginning in the 1970s. Liberal leaders fled the Party to be independent or Republicans.

I like to quote something from Lincoln.. updated to address these aged 1960s Marxist-Alinsky campus psycho spoiled brats and their bratty ideological issue who feeeeeeel that they are the anointed ones (as defined by Thomas Sowell).

We initiated a policy to tolerate the Marxist-Alinsky radicals and let them rant; not only has it not ceased but was constantly augmented by decades of infiltration and indoctrination. We now have two Americas. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half statist and half free; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.

[MrB]

That quote was actually from Schaefer, but he referenced Gibbons.

[MrB]

oops, wrong thread...

for this thread, my comment was going to be -

sure, they’re smarter, just ask ‘em!

[PuzzledInTX]

including weird ideas about, say, helping genetically unrelated strangers (liberalism, as Kanazawa defines it)

I am so sick of the idea that conservatives do not want to help genetically unrelated strangers (stupid definition, but let's go with that for this discussion). This is the biggest lie of all! Conservatives have proven ideas on what helping is (teach a man to fish vs give a man a fish) versus failed experiments with socialism/ communism. People who learn from their mistakes are intelligent in my book. Those who continue trying to do the same failed thing to get a different result are insane (by definition).

[JaguarXKE]

He argues that smarter people are more willing to espouse "evolutionarily novel" values — that is, values that did not exist in our ancestral environment, including weird ideas about, say, helping genetically unrelated strangers"

Then one must wonder why studies have shown time and again that conservatives are more giving and generous than liberals.

[ctdonath2]

“Some ideas are so preposterous only an intellectual could believe them.”
- Orwell