Conservatism Thrives on Low Intelligence and Poor Information

[LuckyTheDog]

Self-deprecating, too liberal for their own good, today's progressives stand back and watch, hands over their mouths, as the social vivisectionists of the right slice up a living society to see if its component parts can survive in isolation. Tied up in knots of reticence and self-doubt, they will not shout stop. Doing so requires an act of interruption, of presumption, for which they no longer possess a vocabulary.

Perhaps it is in the same spirit of liberal constipation that, with the exception of Charlie Brooker, we have been too polite to mention the Canadian study published last month in the journal Psychological Science, which revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence. Paradoxically it was the Daily Mail that brought it to the attention of British readers last week. It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalisation but empirical fact.

It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly "different" others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.

But, drawing on a sample size of several thousand, correcting for both education and socioeconomic status, the new study looks embarrassingly robust. Importantly, it shows that prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence are drawn. Conservative ideology is the "critical pathway" from low intelligence to racism. Those with low cognitive abilities are attracted to "rightwing ideologies that promote coherence and order" and "emphasise the maintenance of the status quo". Even for someone not yet renowned for liberal reticence, this feels hard to write.

More: http://www.alternet.org/story/154082/conservatism_thrives_on_low_intelligence_and_poor_information/

[kestrel91316]

1. The RW knows this and it's why they oppose publicly funded K-12.

[1ProudAtheist]

5. A GOPOCRITE

Think Tank

[IMG][/IMG]

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. Wow. I just sent this article link out on Twitter....(that should clear out a bunch

of those following me!). I suspect nothing in that article comes as a surprise to any of us here....

[brewens]

3. Not all of course are really low intelligence. There are those that were indoctrinated at an early

age and went on to become well educated. Does their clinging to right-wing beliefs really make them stupid? I just think they've been trained to reject everything else.

Then there are those that know fully well what they are doing. The push the right-wing lines to keep their base under control. They could care less about religion or abortion. They just use those gullible people to maintain their power out of pure greed.

[TygrBright]

4. In other news, sun observed to rise in East, set in West. n/t

[sakabatou]

6. This just in, water is wet

[FarLeftFist]

7. And the sky is blue!

[GoCubsGo]

8. There is more to it than ignorance and low intelligence.

There is a portion of the population that have an authoritarian personality. If one looks up the definition, they'll see that pretty much every conservative fits that definition, even the ones that have a reasonable level of intelligence. I know some fairly smart conservatives. They're all bed-wetters. Every last one of them.

[provis99]

9. authoritarians are pathological.

not only are a lot of conservatives stupid, the rest of them are insane.

[dodger501]

11. That, and just plain Willful Ignorance

People who get their viewpoints validated by listening to Fox, Newsmax, World Nut Daily, Rush, or from their idiot co-workers or relatives who do.

[2ndAmForComputers]

12. All you have to do is follow the topics on "Laptop Dad".

You can almost smell the authoritarians having punishgasms.

[wiggs]

10. Not low intelligence. Need for authority and authoritarian doctrine, incurious, and tolerance

for low/wrong information. Those RWrs we see as pundits, officials, and leaders of the party are certainly not low intelligence or racist or low information but are willing to use these weaknesses of incuriousity, racism, need for authority, and tolerance of misinformation to lead and deceive the RW voters toward other ends.

These are all factors used to deceive and when half the population is willing to be deceived there's not really democracy.

[TrogL]

13. Ignorance is Stength