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

[brandymac27]

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

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."

"General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions," says Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles."

An earlier study by Kanazawa found that more intelligent individuals were more nocturnal, waking up and staying up later than less intelligent individuals. Because our ancestors lacked artificial light, they tended to wake up shortly before dawn and go to sleep shortly after dusk. Being nocturnal is evolutionarily novel.

In the current study, Kanazawa argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel. So more intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be liberals.

Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) support Kanazawa's hypothesis. Young adults who subjectively identify themselves as "very liberal" have an average IQ of 106 during adolescence while those who identify themselves as "very conservative" have an average IQ of 95 during adolescence.

Similarly, religion is a byproduct of humans' tendency to perceive agency and intention as causes of events, to see "the hands of God" at work behind otherwise natural phenomena. "Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid," says Kanazawa. This innate bias toward paranoia served humans well when self-preservation and protection of their families and clans depended on extreme vigilance to all potential dangers. "So, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to go against their natural evolutionary tendency to believe in God, and they become atheists."

Young adults who identify themselves as "not at all religious" have an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, while those who identify themselves as "very religious" have an average IQ of 97 during adolescence.

In addition, humans have always been mildly polygynous in evolutionary history. Men in polygynous marriages were not expected to be sexually exclusive to one mate, whereas men in monogamous marriages were. In sharp contrast, whether they are in a monogamous or polygynous marriage, women were always expected to be sexually exclusive to one mate. So being sexually exclusive is evolutionarily novel for men, but not for women. And the theory predicts that more intelligent men are more likely to value sexual exclusivity than less intelligent men, but general intelligence makes no difference for women's value on sexual exclusivity. Kanazawa's analysis of Add Health data supports these sex-specific predictions as well.

One intriguing but theoretically predicted finding of the study is that more intelligent people are no more or no less likely to value such evolutionarily familiar entities as marriage, family, children, and friends.

[Predicto]

:munchout:

[brandymac27]

:munchout:

Don't kill the messenger!

[techboy]

My first thought was that those spreads are awfully small, especially for so nebulous a measure as IQ. Then I read this:

But before drawing any conclusions about Kanazawa's latest study, it's worth expanding on the data he bases his claims on. First of all, quantifying intelligence on a societal level -- and even from person to person -- is incredibly tricky, if not impossible. As an evolutionary psychologist, Kanazawa likely recognizes this and that may be why he decided to limit his intelligence measures to IQ points, a convenient and notoriously narrow way of assessing cognitive abilities.

The first problem in the study comes with Kanazawa's use of IQ as an accurate measure of intelligence. PZ Myers, a leader in the field of evolutionary developmental biology (and an avowed atheist and progressive), is not surprised. He calls Kanazawa the "great idiot of social science" and points to a 2006 paper in which Kanazawa took the mean IQ of various countries and used those to draw conclusions on their dedication to health care.

For example: Ethiopia has a mean IQ of 63. This low IQ explains why Ethiopia's health care system is awful, according to Kanazawa.

Talk about simplistic. Not only does this ignore the fact that IQ might better measure cognitive capabilities in the developed world, where it was designed, but it completely tunes out the fact that Ethiopia has been embroiled in wars for many years, which would appear to be a better explanation for why the health care system there hasn't developed to western levels yet.

"Intelligence is such a complex phenomenon -- there are multiple parameters," Myers says. "And IQ is extremely sensitive to social conditions. Kanazawa wants to reverse it and say that IQ is causing problematic social conditions."

I guess it's good to see that ole PZ isn't exclusively a jerk to theists.

[Thiebear]

how can i be smarter when i couldn't even finish reading the book?

The Pastor also says i'm a very 'smart' guy, but he's the one doing all the works.

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

To keep from offending anyone I'll just offer a "No comment".

[thebluefood]

Damn! Everyone in the Tailgate is trying to stir up ****.

[Predicto]

Don't kill the messenger!

This messenger is an idiot (not you, the author of this study).

And IQ testing is utterly useless, except perhaps for screening individuals with severe cognitive deficiencies. Claiming that there is any substantive difference between a tested IQ of 96 and a tested IQ of 104 is laughable.

(in before Jumbo shows up and tells me I'm wrong... )

[brandymac27]

Damn! Everyone in the Tailgate is trying to stir up ****.

These debates have been going on forever. And fwiw, I posted this mainly b/c of the political association. When I look at the tea party after reading stuff like this...it really makes me wonder.

[PokerPacker]

these threads always turn out well

[techboy]

This analysis is a bit more polite:

While Kanazawa is correct that numerically these scores are significantly different from each other, he does not mention that despite this, the means are well within one-half of the standard deviation for IQ. Given that the range from 85 to 115 is often considered “average” intelligence, it remains an open question how significant these scores can actually be when translated into meaningful interaction with the world. The extent to which such scores can represent actually meaningful differences in intelligence would seem to be therefore in some question.

In Study 2, Kanazawa seeks to overcome the obvious generational limitations of his first study by comparing intelligence to religiosity in the General Social Survey data from 1972 to 2004. After controlling for age, sex, race, education, earnings, religion, and survey year, Kanazawa found that “more intelligent individuals have a significantly weaker belief in God . . . and significantly less intense religiosity” (47). On this basis, Kanazawa argues that the trend discovered in Study 1 is replicated in this far more demographically diverse sample.

However, only the data from Study 2 includes responses to the question of belief in God. The data used in Study 1 does not offer a measure of theistic belief. Rather, the first Study’s only religious variable is the extent to which subjects consider themselves religious people. For this reason, while it may be argued that “religiosity” has the predicted relationship to intelligence (as measured in the two studies) it remains to be demonstrated that atheism specifically – the intended “evolutionarily novel value” highlighted even in the paper’s title – has such a relationship.

In addition, the measure of intelligence in Study 2 is a relatively simple multiple choice synonym quiz, which is most properly a measure not of general intelligence per se but of verbal intelligence. While it may be true that verbal intelligence (especially when measured by sophisticated tools like the PPVT) is “highly correlated with general intelligence” it is by no means certain. Furthermore, it could be argued that a high level of verbal intelligence is itself an evolutionarily novel feature. In light of the intelligence measure selected for Study 2, especially one might ask how many synonyms our ancient savanna dwelling relatives would have had any use for in the ancestral environment.

The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis remains an intriguing theory despite the potential limitations of the paper under review here. Most notably, people that are more intelligent were found to be no more and no less likely to value evolutionarily familiar concepts and objects such as marriage, family, children, and friends. This finding is entirely in keeping with Kanazawa’s hypothesis.

While offering a wealth of interesting observations Kanazawa seems not to have supplied an answer to his own provocative question. Further research is required to determine first if, and then why, atheists are more intelligent.

Why not all of Kanazawa's papers spark equal amounts of controversy is an interesting one too...

The title of this blog post emulates the titles of several of Prof. Satoshi Kanazawa's paper. To take a random sample of this: 'Why liberals and atheists are more intelligent', 'Why Night Owls Are More Intelligent', 'Why More Intelligent Individuals Like Classical Music', 'Why Beautiful People Are More Intelligent.' or - his latest installment - the retracted blogpost in Psychology Today, which, after initial screening was rephrased as 'Why Are Black Women Rated Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women, But Black Men Are Rated Better Looking Than Other Men?'

Note that in each case, Prof. Kanazawa takes a controversial statement that needs to be proven as already established, and promises an evolutionary explanation of why the statement is true. Unfortunately, in many cases, the statistical data do not really support the controversial statement in the first place, as was shown in a re-analysis of the data of the retracted paper.

My question today is though: why do not all the other (dubious) papers spark the same amount controvery? Should we be OK with the assumption that less beautiful people being less intelligent, or with the conclusions in the paper "Why liberals and atheists are more intelligent"? This paper which appeared in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, Social Psychology Quarterly, basically says that people who are more religious are less intelligent, and offers a (to my mind ad hoc) evolutionary explanation for this. I skimmed the web for cries of outrage at this paper, but what I found mostly positive assessments, not just on atheist-friendly blogs but also on science blogs, such as here.

Yet, a re-evaluation of the experimental design indicates serious methodological problems with the study. For example, in study 1, Kanazawa did not use fine-grained measures of religiosity (merely the extent to which people consider themselves religious), and that he used two protocol that were designed to study verbal intelligence, however, he generalized these findings to make statements about the participants' general intelligence. The degree to which verbal intelligence is a good indicator of general intelligence remains unclear in cognitive psychology. Moreover, he makes the substantial assumption that religiosity is the default, standard mode of thinking, whereas atheism is evolutionarily novel. I have argued against this naturalness of religion elsewhere, but here it suffices to say that this is a controversial assumption even among cognitive scientists who study the evolutionary origins of religion.

He certainly likes stirring things up...

I guess, though, that if you're a atheist, liberal, night owlish, beautiful black man that enjoys classical music, you're feeling pretty smug right now.

[Fresh8686]

I was just about to say, wasn't this the guy who put his foot in his mouth earlier in the year with his assertion that black women are less physically attractive than other women. Not surprised at all where this came from.

[mistertim]

This messenger is an idiot (not you, the author of this study).

And IQ testing is utterly useless, except perhaps for screening individuals with severe cognitive deficiencies. Claiming that there is any substantive difference between a tested IQ of 96 and a tested IQ of 104 is laughable.

(in before Jumbo shows up and tells me I'm wrong... )

That was the first thing I thought about as well, when I read this. That the deviation between an IQ of 97 and 103 is borderline nonexistent. That isn't even bringing up the issue of standard IQ tests being pretty unreliable (as others in this thread, and the critiques that techboy have posted pointed out).

Also...Jumbo will come in and figure out a way to explain how you're wrong just for the hell of it.

[brandymac27]

So let me ask, leaving religion out of this b/c that really wasn't the reason I posted this, do you think the people that would have/will vote for people like Palin, Bachman, etc are all necessarily smart? If so, what do you base this on? If not, why?

ETA: This isn't a hit on you're normal conservatives/liberals. I'm talking specifically about the fringe/lunatic groups on both sides of the aisle including the tea party.

[Stadium-Armory]

I refuse to believe that laying all sorta chicks is stupid.

[Guest Spearfeather]

This guy appears to have some questionable methods.

Response to one of his earlier study's.

http://nazret.com/blog/index.php/2007/05/01/scholars_refute_kanazawa_s_theory

Among the papers that appeared in the May 2007 issue of the journal is an article by Professors Demissie Alemayehu of Columbia University and Tilahun Sineshaw of Ramapo College of New Jersey, who argued, using extensive citations from evolutionary psychology and inferential statistics, that Kanazawa's research was "bereft of the rigour" required to address the problem under consideration.

Maintaining that ".... critical elements of his [Kanazawa's] study violate fundamental principles of research methodology...," Alemayehu and Sineshaw wrote:

"... the validity and robustness of the conclusions of the paper are compromised by fundamental problems, including failure to present competing views with fair balance, use of samples of convenience to draw conclusions about populations, performing tests of significance when there is no theoretical basis to do so and confusing association with causation." [british Journal of Health Psychology, Volume 12, Number 2, May 2007, pp. 185-190(6)]

[mistertim]

I refuse to believe that laying all sorta chicks is stupid.

Haha! This thread has a winner, ladies and gentlemen.

[tdigle]

So let me ask, leaving religion out of this b/c that really wasn't the reason I posted this, do you think the people that would have/will vote for people like Palin, Bachman, etc are all necessarily smart? If so, what do you base this on? If not, why?

ETA: This isn't a hit on you're normal conservatives/liberals. I'm talking specifically about the fring/lunatic groups on both sides of the aisle including the tea party.

I don't even think "liberal" is being defined in the way that us Americans use it at as a political term. It seems to me that liberalism here is meant to be synonymous with universal empathy/compassion.

[twa]

Evolutionary psychologists like to pull things out of their ass and attempt to divine from it.

Usually it stinks.

[techboy]

I don't even think "liberal" is being defined in the way that us Americans use it at as a political term. It seems to me that liberalism here is meant to be synonymous with universal empathy/compassion.

From the first link I posted:

Then there's the issue of Kanazawa's definition of liberalism, which he writes is the "contemporary American" denotation: "the genuine concern for the welfare of genetically unrelated others and the willingness to contribute larger proportions of private resources for the welfare of such others." Practically speaking, this means Kanazawa's "liberalism" is defined as a willingness to pay a higher tax rate and donate money to charity.

So by that standard, conservatives in the U.S. (who donate much to charity) could be considered liberal.

[China]

Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.

Wait, does this mean that smart men have a tendency towards monogamy whereas smart women have a tendency towards sluttiness? I knew there was a reason I liked smart women.

[SWFLSkins]

I know he is a fictional character, but was Forrest Gump dumb or smart?

[The Sisko]

...So by that standard, conservatives in the U.S. (who donate much to charity) could be considered liberal.

Not that I agree with the author but in fairness, this is a pretty difficult distinction to draw and gets into territory that in part finally drove me out of the GOP. That is, what does a genuine conservative/liberal look like and who gets to make the judgement about that? Does one still qualify as a real liberal or conservative if I he believes in smaller government but also supports abortion for example? Or what about those folks that believe in big government but also support much of the fundamentalist right's social agenda?

In any event, I think trying to classify intelligence like this is a fools errand since it's a lot like trying to classify race, i.e. more a social construct than something that can be quantified in an objective, meaningful way.

[TimmySmith]

I know he is a fictional character, but was Forrest Gump dumb or smart?

Monogamous = Smart

Overly Concerned with welfare of family and friends = Dumb

Woke up early = Dumb

Ping Pong = Smart

Running = Dumb

Hunter Gatherer for a living = Dumb

Agnostic = Push

Fought for his country = Dumb

Stay at home parent = Dumb

Appears to be dumb.

[AsburySkinsFan]

I guess I'm an idiot....oh well.