Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ

[kpete]

Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ
By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
February 26, 2010 5:03 p.m. EST

(CNN) -- Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds.

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning -- on the order of 6 to 11 points -- and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say. But they show how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people's behaviors come to be.

The reasoning is that sexual exclusivity in men, liberalism and atheism all go against what would be expected given humans' evolutionary past. In other words, none of these traits would have benefited our early human ancestors, but higher intelligence may be associated with them.

more:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/26/liberals.atheists.sex.intelligence/

[whistler162]

1. Okay... someone just wasted a grant!!!!

But, heck it kept them off the unemployment line for awhile!

[salvorhardin]

2. Kanazawa seems rather ideologically driven

And not a whole lot better than Charles Murray

Low IQs are Africa's curse, says lecturer
Researcher accused of promoting racist stereotype wins backing from LSE

The London School of Economics is embroiled in a row over academic freedom after one of its lecturers published a paper alleging that African states were poor and suffered chronic ill-health because their populations were less intelligent than people in richer countries.

Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist, is now accused of reviving the politics of eugenics by publishing the research which concludes that low IQ levels, rather than poverty and disease, are the reason why
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/nov/05/highereducation.research

Why we are losing this war
All you need is hate.

A popular slogan, often found on buttons and bumper stickers sported by hippies and other liberals, proclaims “Hate is not a family value.” Well, hate may not be a family value, but it is an innate emotion and integral part of universal human nature.

As we explain in Chapter 8 of Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters (“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”), ethnocentrism (or “racism”) is an innate human tendency. We are designed by evolution to love members of our group and hate members of other groups, in order to motivate and facilitate intergroup conflict. Yes, hate is natural. But remember the danger of the naturalistic fallacy -- deriving moral implications from scientific facts. “Natural” means neither “good” nor “desirable.” Nor does it mean “inevitable.” Most of us learn to overcome our innate evolutionary tendencies. <snip>

It seems to me that there is one resource that our enemies have in abundance but we don’t: hate. We don’t hate our enemies nearly as much as they hate us. They are consumed in pure and intense hatred of us, while we appear to have PC’ed hatred out of our lexicon and emotional repertoire. We are not even allowed to call our enemies for who they are, and must instead use euphemisms like “terrorists.” (As I explain elsewhere, we are not really fighting terrorists.) We may be losing this war because our enemies have a full range of human emotions while we don’t.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200803/why-we-are-losing-war

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

3. The study seems to compare IQs of 97 vs 103

is that a significant difference? Is it even outside an IQ test's margin of error?

I feel like I lost six IQ points just reading the article.

:hi:

[Cetacea]

8. delete.

[Uncle Joe]

4. I disagree with this assumption.

"Liberals are more likely to be concerned about total strangers; conservatives are likely to be concerned with people they associate with," he said.

Given that human ancestors had a keen interest in the survival of their offspring and nearest kin, the conservative approach -- looking out for the people around you first -- fits with the evolutionary picture more than liberalism, Kanazawa said. "It's unnatural for humans to be concerned about total strangers." he said.

If the more intelligent human ancestor saw a connection or experienced empathy with a "total stranger" then survival of a "total stranger" would give more assurance to survival of the species. Thus living in a hostile world and not having all your eggs in one basket would be perfectly natural.

I also believe, Bailey's admitted conservatism comes shining through in the bolded sentence below, I imagine that if the more intelligent male was more likely tied to sexual exclusivity, any need to show superiority or elitism would have been reduced.

On the other hand a less intelligent male wanting to spread his seed with multiple partners would've felt a strong need to project superiority or elitism, whether it was warranted or not.

It's too bad CNN didn't see fit to interview any professed liberals regarding this study.

"The adoption of some evolutionarily novel ideas makes some sense in terms of moving the species forward," said George Washington University leadership professor James Bailey, who was not involved in the study. "It also makes perfect sense that more intelligent people -- people with, sort of, more intellectual firepower -- are likely to be the ones to do that."

Bailey also said that these preferences may stem from a desire to show superiority or elitism, which also has to do with IQ. In fact, aligning oneself with "unconventional" philosophies such as liberalism or atheism may be "ways to communicate to everyone that you're pretty smart," he said."

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[anonymous171]

7. And the liberal, atheist blogosphere's response pretty much confirms that hypothesis.

Ironic isn't it?

[pretzel4gore]

5. iow, God's a moron

unless yall think God's a heartless thuggee in big honking beard; or there isn't a papa beer at all....the universe just happened, or maybe you never read even this!
(what is it about big thinkers like this goof {or chucky murray etc!} that don't understand that demoralization is a result of poverty, and poverty is result of ...(?) ...well it wasn't the Africans who called the continent of Africa the 'dark continent' long ago, or hid the evidence of developed civilizations there, in order to rob it systemically, or fabricated nonsense about human sacrifices in America before them goddamed thieves came here, or before the thieves depicted wolves as monsters, and whales as deadly fishes, gorillas as freaky jungle psycho killers, or even the poor old shark (which can be swimmed(?) with, as recent documentary shows, as 'eating machines with cold dead eyes...!)
but they win the argument, cuz they got the cash to advertise that they win the argument (see global warming, or the lone gunman theory)

[DavidDvorkin]

6. Another duplicate posting

People keep posting this news item. I first posted it days ago:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7787156

Since then, there's been at least one other new thread about it.

Of course we liberal atheists are vastly more intelligent than other people. But I guess we're not very good at checking for duplicate posts. :)

[Egalitariat]

9. What is "sexual exclusivity"?

[Uncle Joe]

10. Committed to one partner. n/t

[Egalitariat]

11. Interesting. I'm used to seeing that called monogamy.

[Uncle Joe]

12. That word works as well, although in humans it's generally tied to marriage

and I believe a long period of time elapsed before early humans developed marital ceremony.