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thecallus:

“There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy. The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.”

— Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice - Yahoo! News (via brooklynmutt)

Well, no. Let’s not use the same logic that tried to say black people were dumb because of their population IQ scores. This is bad analysis for the same reason The Bell Curve was. Just a roundup:

1. IQ does not measure intelligence. It measures “intelligence”, a loaded word

2. IQ correlates strongly to socioeconomic status, as critics of TBC pointed out at length.

3. Previous studies have shown socioeconomic status and last-place aversion drive prejudiced views - this study likely just confirmed by misinterpreting the equality of IQ test results

One further problem of this study is that it makes the improper leap of attempting to account for the findings. Were it to simply stop at “Conservatives tend to have lower IQ scores”, it would remain at that: an acknowledgement of tendency.

But the fact that they try to infer a causal relationship between the two—faultily, as you’ve pointed out—is overstepping their ability and resources (as it appears, anyway) to actually deduce with any authority its veracity. Since I’m really not that interested, I can’t be bothered to check.

However, it also appears that we’re not being presented the full story. As the media will discover, the simplification of this story into its current format is sure to attract traffic, reinforce prejudices, arouse public discussion, and further, discredit the field of psychology when the inevitable conclusion is reached that this story is bunk. The implications are great on all sides.

An additional problem with this is the left/right political binary stereotype that is reinforced: the smart vs the dumb; left vs the right; strong vs weak; rich vs poor etc, which, instead of actually providing insight, only reinforces that perception of separation. A comprehensive review of the study, at this point, would be moot, since its findings and the conclusions wouldn’t be relevant to the discourse produced immediately hand as a result of its original publication.

Source: Yahoo!