Is there a correlation between political ideology and IQ? Do capitalist or socialists have a higher mean IQ?

Question

From certain angles a strong political ideology is much like a religion and studies have shown there is a negative correlation between IQ and belief in God.

abc3643 · Accepted Answer

I don't know if IQ is the right thing to discuss, but there ARE brain differences between people who have a tendency to be liberal and those who are conservative. This is akin to the genuine brain differences between males and females.

Here is an example of what I was saying. This 2011 peer-reviewed paper in the scientific journal Current Biology noted a significant difference between liberal and conservative brains.

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/

Current Biology 2011 Apr 26; 21(8): 677–680.

TITLE: Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults

Authors:
Ryota Kanai,1,∗ Tom Feilden,2 Colin Firth,2 and Geraint Rees1,3
1 University College London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK
2 BBC Radio 4, Television Centre, Wood Lane, London W12 7RJ, UK
3 Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK

Summary
Substantial differences exist in the cognitive styles of liberals and conservatives on psychological measures [1]. Variability in political attitudes reflects genetic influences and their interaction with environmental factors [2, 3]. Recent work has shown a correlation between liberalism and conflict-related activity measured by event-related potentials originating in the anterior cingulate cortex [4]. Here we show that this functional correlate of political attitudes has a counterpart in brain structure. In a large sample of young adults, we related self-reported political attitudes to gray matter volume using structural MRI. We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala. These results were replicated in an independent sample of additional participants. Our findings extend previous observations that political attitudes reflect differences in self-regulatory conflict monitoring [4] and recognition of emotional faces [5] by showing that such attitudes are reflected in human brain structure. Although our data do not determine whether these regions play a causal role in the formation of political attitudes, they converge with previous work [4, 6] to suggest a possible link between brain structure and psychological mechanisms that mediate political attitudes.

Highlights
► Political liberalism and conservatism were correlated with brain structure
► Liberalism was associated with the gray matter volume of anterior cingulate cortex
► Conservatism was associated with increased right amygdala size
► Results offer possible accounts for cognitive styles of liberals and conservatives

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Here is another, more recent peer-reviewed paper...

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https://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.16030051

The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences
Volume 29, Issue 2
Spring 2017, Pages 86-94

TITLE: A Neurology of the Conservative-Liberal Dimension of Political Ideology

Abstract
Differences in political ideology are a major source of human disagreement and conflict. There is increasing evidence that neurobiological mechanisms mediate individual differences in political ideology through effects on a conservative-liberal axis. This review summarizes personality, evolutionary and genetic, cognitive, neuroimaging, and neurological studies of conservatism-liberalism and discusses how they might affect political ideology. What emerges from this highly variable literature is evidence for a normal right-sided “conservative-complex” involving structures sensitive to negativity bias, threat, disgust, and avoidance. This conservative-complex may be damaged with brain disease, sometimes leading to a pathological “liberal shift” or a reduced tendency to conservatism in political ideology. Although not deterministic, these findings recommend further research on politics and the brain.

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Psychological studies document differences between highly politically conservative and highly politically liberal participants. Political conservatives compared with liberals favor in-group conformity and out-group exclusion consistent with evolutionary behaviors for pathogen avoidance.40 Beyond differences in personality traits9 (see Table 1), the literature emphasizes differences in sensitivity and reactivity to negative stimuli, threat, and disgust between those on the extremes of a political conservative-liberal axis. Political conservatives, compared with political liberals, are more likely to interpret, attend to, remember, and respond to negative aspects of environmental stimuli, especially if they are novel and different.22 This “negativity bias” is evident in studies showing that political conservatism compared with liberalism is associated with greater, faster, and longer attentional focusing on negative images and greater physiological measures of arousal to them.55,59 Political conservatives compared with political liberals have a greater sense of threat from the same stimuli and show larger physiological responses to ambiguous stimuli.1,10,16,59 Political conservatives compared with political liberals are also more prone to respond with disgust to various situations, particularly if they violate a sense of purity.35,37

Neuroimaging studies point to structures involved in a “conservative complex” primarily in the right frontotemporal region of the brain. In a structural MRI study, those with political conservative views versus those with political liberal views had greater gray matter in the right amygdala,72 a structure sensitive to fear and threat.

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Sixgunsound · Accepted Answer

Australian TV personality and political commentator weighs in on the subject.

globetrotter22 · Answer

We got three competing variables here: ideologies, faith and IQ. And how is IQ being measured?

There are 8 different kinds of intelligence by the way. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/03/10/harvard-psychologist-types-of-intelligence-where-do-you-score-highest-in.html

Let’s start with ideologies vs. IQ. So if someone believes in communism they might hace a well-meaning with the idea of “equality” there wealth redistribution. I’m giving them the benefit of a very strong doubt that they have high “interpersonal” intelligence. They care about those who are impoverished.

But when it comes to how economies operate communist also have extremely low logical/mathematical intelligence. Communism has almost without fail…failed humanity when put into practice. The central planned economy always screws up the invisible hand of market demand. It results in famines, corruption and wars.

As for the non-religious people having “higher IQ” vs religious people that’s a third dynamic. It’s also a slippery slope debate. Atheists like to say “oh there is no man in the sky” because they have never observed anything extraordinary beyond earths physical laws.

But I also question how energy and matter came into being. Has matter (basic chart of periodic elements) always existed i. e. timeless? Where did basic gases such as nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen originate from? Did they just come into existence out of nothing? I also got some deeper cosmological debates on how time operates. If time is infinite then we would never make it to where we are now.

Point I am trying to make is not everybody who has faith is a bunch of naive fools who believe in fairytales. In fact you can be naive fool in reverse if you don’t consider these deeper questions.

RavVid · Answer

Interesting Q. Political belief is akin to religiosity I agree and Green is a sort of nature worship.

The first thing I would say is most people are about the same functional level. On the shoulders of the IQ curve it is startlingly different. MENSA level (150+ IQ) are very different to most people as are people on the opposite shoulder. However that does not mean Mensa folk are going to be inherently correct. So I question an implication in the question.

Logically we have to have premises (values) in common to have logical discussion. If you and I can't agree 1+1=2 then we can't have reasoned discussion. A Mensa might just make poor assumptions, reason brilliantly from them but still be wrong because the assumptions are WRONG.

The thing about politics is the premises/values/assumptions are usually widely held at some level but can be contradictory and individuals weight them differently. Probably you and I would broadly agree that refugees should be given asylum and helped. We might not agree on what qualifies a person as a refugee. And we might not agree on the level of effort our respective countries should make. We'll agree on some levels of each of those but 'call it quits' at other levels. It's messy and a bit more than binary logic.

I would rate capitalists/right wing as having more practical value systems and socialists having more dogmatic theoretic value systems. So on the refugee question the capitalist might say we can afford to help to this level and no more. The socialist might say we are violating their human rights if we don't let in everybody who wants to come. The rest of us will being doing some mix and match compromise of relevant values.

The essential difference between those two camps is not in their ability to reason but in their selection of values. So I would suggest there is not any inherent reason for a different IQ.

Socialists might enjoy arcane reasoning for the intellectual joy of it. On the other hand the poorer less educated and lower IQ people could be expected to be drawn to socialism. So socialists as a whole might mostly have lower IQ's and a number with very high IQ's. That is just a for instance hypothetical.

At the end of the day though pretty much everybody is very good at working out what is in our best selfish interests. So I tend to think IQ is not important in politics. Policy development being different.

by the way the way the graph you posted has a non-zero intercept on the vertical axis. That emphasizes differences and is distorting. There seems to be very large differences that would disappear if plotted with a zero vertical axis intercept. You would say almost no difference in the later case. Be careful of that cause people try to manipulate you by manipulating intercepts.

Thanks for the Q again.

letuswaltzforthedead · Answer

This is something I've been looking into lately, so hopefully I can give you a decent answer.

Prof Edward Dutton (you can look him up on YouTube) has a couple of interesting videos on the subject of IQ and beliefs. As said, Conservatives tend to be dumber and liberals smarter since those with higher IQ tend to adopt the dominant belief set. This is changing though, because conservatives (who tend to be more religious) are reproducing at higher rates, even the more intelligent ones despite IQ being negatively correlated with fertility. Democrats, especially the more intelligent, do not. Psychology Today also made a interesting article regarding IQ and ideology in young adults a while back stating that " among the American sample, those who identify themselves as “very liberal” in early adulthood have a mean childhood IQ of 106.4, whereas those who identify themselves as “very conservative” in early adulthood have a mean childhood IQ of 94.8". On the other hand, having extremely high IQ doesn't mean you'll be left leaning the same way you would likely be having a higher tend average IQ. All of this could also have to do with a person's personality too, since leftist brains tend to be wired and score differently than rightist's brains on the big 5 traits. Currently, regarding religiosity, the current leftist movement seems to be anti-natalist and irreligious, which could have more to do with personality. Dutton explains this with the r/k selection strategy theory but I haven't look much into whether that actually applies to people. Liberals tend to be higher in openness, neuroticism, and lower in Conscientiousness. Here's a number of studies on that as well.

HighValue · Answer

From what I have seen IRL is most democrats are dumb and illogical, even if they have a degree (not all, but most are) and the majority of conservatives are above average intelligence. Notice I said conservative and not republican. Some people that vote republican without knowing the policies are just as dumb as democrats are.

I know multiple teachers that are not as intelligent as a couple of the maintenance people I have worked with and are actually quite inept at most things the maintenance people can do.

Guy__ · Answer

A religion is a system of control based on dogmatic beliefs.
By definition dogmatic beliefs don't do well with high IQ.
Doesn't need god, morality, spirituality to call something a religion.
Belief in government, and even bank notes, is a religion.

The more you trust your government, the lower your IQ, simply because the government pushes tons of fluoride into you, and hundreds of studies showed how dangerously unhealthy fluoride is, including a direct drop in IQ.

DWornock · Answer

I read a couple of the studies posted by @abc3643 and they are probably right. It is more about brain differences than IQ differences as there are very intelligent people on both the left and right. I also agree with the video posted by @Sixgunsound showing that, on average, women on the right are prettier and have few mental illnesses. However, I don't know that they have more children.

Since people with below average are more likely to have left wing beliefs, political ideology is correlated with having below average intelligence. However, there is probably little or no correlation with greater intelligence by people political ideology among people with above average intelligence.

jshm2 · Answer

Its a bullshit study, as "IQ" is largely an opinion and not really a scientific measure of anything. EQ is slightly better but there is little consensus on how "intelligence" can be accurately measured.

You get people called "idiot savants" who often beat "high IQ" scorers in games of chance and knowledge. It's unknown why they are able to do so, but IQ is something only Americans are anal about, the rest of the world isn't really interested.

Adaeva · Answer

I don't know about the highly intelligent that support socialism since they probably have some agenda that may benefit them. However, there are a huge number people with below average IQs that support socialism. Therefore, on average, socialist leaning people have lower IQs.

Hispanic-Cool-Guy · Answer

Generally speaking conservatives by nature tend to be stupider because they are incapable of thinking of diverse ways to think and move forward, so they fear change.

Modern day liberals especially American ones are fighting conservatives very hard to see who is more stupid.

So far liberals are winning which is shocking and tells you how fall liberals in America have fallen that they make conservatives appear a bit smarter.

Plinko · Answer

No. There's not a correlation. You'll find conflicting reports here, but the answer is no. It's more closely related to temperament (measurable by the big 5 personality traits).

Dimension453 · Answer

I don't know, but anyone that thinks socialism is a great idea should go and ask the Venezuelans how that worked out for them. What a shithole that is now.

Exterminatore · Answer

I don’t believe any of that. Don’t care what the scientific studies show. There are brilliant people of every political persuasion and religious belief.

EnglishEuropean · Answer

Well capitalism and socialism are economic systems, not political ideologies per se. And regardless of IQ I think most people start out as socialists and become capitalists on their journey through life.

Anonymous · Answer

No, I've seen low IQ and high IQ people on both sides of the isle. Anyone who thinks only the other side has low IQ voters have a low IQ them selves.

TacosRAwesome · Answer

The more one views the leader as a god, the dumber you are in my opinion.

Anonymous · Answer

Studies have also shown that the average iq of a liberal is 62 and 112 for conservatives and 37 for socialists but they're too generous to liberals

Cubus · Answer

There's no correlation

Is there a correlation between political ideology and IQ? Do capitalist or socialists have a higher mean IQ?

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Is there a correlation between political ideology and IQ? Do capitalist or socialists have a higher mean IQ?

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