Originally Posted by
Salty_Aus
I'll just leave this here.
https://phys.org/news/2010-02-intell...lues-human.amp
"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"
And cherry pick this also.
"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."
And where is your proof that this was an unbiased study, not looking to establish that conservatives are dumber than liberals?
For example, note that this only talks about "very conservative" versus "very liberal". How about just "conservative" and "liberal"? Is it possible that the study found that moderate and mid-level conservatives are smarter than (or at least equivalent to) their liberal counterparts, but somehow the people on the extremes have a higher average IQ on the liberal end?
Whenever data is hand-picked like this for presentation, I get very suspicious.
Also, "young adults" were tested, but which ones? Where did they find these young adults, and how did they ensure that there wasn't some bias (accidental or otherwise) in the places they procured these subjects?
For example, if they chose to get the liberals from PhD programs at universities, and the conservatives from an assembly line at a local factory, then yes, the average IQ of the liberals would almost certainly be higher. But obviously that wouldn't be a fair comparison.
None of these studies are convincing at all unless I can see that the process was pure, and that the study was undertaken in good faith. If your study begins with the theory of, "I think conservatives are dumber than liberals, and I'm going to scientifically prove it", then you're already off to a very bad start, and you can't really be trusted.