Cognitive ability is a powerful predictor of political tolerance(onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Cognitive ability is a powerful predictor of political tolerance
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jopy.12667
345 comments
Seeing a lot of self-congratulatory nodding here
I'll just say, this doesn't necessarily line up with my experience. The extremely intelligent people I know are every bit as likely to be politically intolerant as the less-intelligent people I know. They just have different reasons (overconfidence in their own logic/education, in their mental modeling, in the stupidity of the other side, etc)
Would be curious to see a study where one high-IQ group is shown a fictional study with this conclusion and one isn't
I'll just say, this doesn't necessarily line up with my experience. The extremely intelligent people I know are every bit as likely to be politically intolerant as the less-intelligent people I know. They just have different reasons (overconfidence in their own logic/education, in their mental modeling, in the stupidity of the other side, etc)
Would be curious to see a study where one high-IQ group is shown a fictional study with this conclusion and one isn't
For anyone else curious how they measured "cognitive ability", here's the relevant section from the paper[1]:
Børge Priens Prøve
The Danish Draftee Board administered the Børge Priens Prøve (BPP; Kousgaard, 2003) to the draftee sample. This 78-item test has a correlation of .82 with the full Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Mortensen et al., 1989). We have access only to the composite BPP score, but a study of its four subtests demonstrated that Cronbach's alpha for the four tests, composed of verbal analogies, number sequences, letter matrices, and geometric figures, ranged from 0.72 to 0.82 (Hartmann & Teasdale, 2005).
International cognitive ability resource
MTurk participants completed the 16-item International Cognitive Ability Resource measure (Condon & Revelle, 2014). Alpha reliability was high (0.80), and strong convergent validity has been reported for the test (such as a correlation of 0.81 with the Shipley-2 measure of cognitive abilities: Condon & Revelle, 2014).
[1] https://sci-hub.ru/downloads/2021-09-02/07/rasmussen2021.pdf
Børge Priens Prøve
The Danish Draftee Board administered the Børge Priens Prøve (BPP; Kousgaard, 2003) to the draftee sample. This 78-item test has a correlation of .82 with the full Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Mortensen et al., 1989). We have access only to the composite BPP score, but a study of its four subtests demonstrated that Cronbach's alpha for the four tests, composed of verbal analogies, number sequences, letter matrices, and geometric figures, ranged from 0.72 to 0.82 (Hartmann & Teasdale, 2005).
International cognitive ability resource
MTurk participants completed the 16-item International Cognitive Ability Resource measure (Condon & Revelle, 2014). Alpha reliability was high (0.80), and strong convergent validity has been reported for the test (such as a correlation of 0.81 with the Shipley-2 measure of cognitive abilities: Condon & Revelle, 2014).
[1] https://sci-hub.ru/downloads/2021-09-02/07/rasmussen2021.pdf
So that’s why I’m so tolerant of those idiots on the other side of the political spectrum…
In all seriousness, as I don’t have access to the full text, I’m wondering how they measured tolerance in particular.
In all seriousness, as I don’t have access to the full text, I’m wondering how they measured tolerance in particular.
Tied to this topic seems to be the ability to tolerate unpleasant emotions.
My impression is that avoiding negative emotions is something we all impulsively attempt, and it takes practice to increase one's ability to tolerate them. This, in turn, seems necessary to tolerate positions so different to our own that they cause us to feel threatened, which can, if the fear is intense enough, lead to outright hatred.
I assume quite some intolerance can be linked to this principle.
It seems our earlier evolutionary impulses (fight, flight in this case) can easily take over unless we not only learn to become aware of them but also to tolerate them.
My impression is that avoiding negative emotions is something we all impulsively attempt, and it takes practice to increase one's ability to tolerate them. This, in turn, seems necessary to tolerate positions so different to our own that they cause us to feel threatened, which can, if the fear is intense enough, lead to outright hatred.
I assume quite some intolerance can be linked to this principle.
It seems our earlier evolutionary impulses (fight, flight in this case) can easily take over unless we not only learn to become aware of them but also to tolerate them.
I'm afraid the title could be misread as "I'm tolerant so I'm more clever than you" or "the population of democratic nations are more intelligent than nondemocratic". All of that is obviously bullshit if you give it 2s of thoughts.
That being said, democratic countries typically focus greatly on 1/ free speech (a driver of diversity) and 2/ education, which certainly is a good driver for cognitive ability, and might very well be a good driver for tolerance as well.
That being said, democratic countries typically focus greatly on 1/ free speech (a driver of diversity) and 2/ education, which certainly is a good driver for cognitive ability, and might very well be a good driver for tolerance as well.
"I'm tolerant to those who have opposing views, just want to shut them up, de-platform and bully their employers to make them non-hireable" /s
It's not that powerful of a predictor. I know many intelligent people who absolutely hate the opposite party.
Although I do see some truth to the overall idea. I have also seen many average or below average people parroting whatever inflammatory stuff they heard from the media or others, without even understanding the topic.
Although I do see some truth to the overall idea. I have also seen many average or below average people parroting whatever inflammatory stuff they heard from the media or others, without even understanding the topic.
This is interesting since cognitive ability can exacerbate confirmation bias, which would suggest the opposite conclusion regarding political tolerance.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stretching-theory/20...
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stretching-theory/20...
Yikes. Maybe this is why we tend to get less politically tolerant as we get older.
> The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. -- Bertrand Russell (1933) in “The Triumph of Stupidity”
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/04/self-doubt/
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/04/self-doubt/
I'd bet on this not replicating, but if it were to, it would remind me a lot of Idiocracy. The "smart" people will tolerate the fascists until they are eliminated by them (keeping in mind this nearly happened in recent history.)
Mostly vote for whoever I think causes the least amount of damage.
I don't believe in branding, or false dichotomies masquerading as a democratic process.
If Lord Buckethead ran internationally, the policies would poll well in my area.
=)
I don't believe in branding, or false dichotomies masquerading as a democratic process.
If Lord Buckethead ran internationally, the policies would poll well in my area.
=)
> with larger effects than education
This is absolutely no surprise to those of us centrists who live in East coast blue cities.
This is absolutely no surprise to those of us centrists who live in East coast blue cities.
That's quite interesting. I always found it difficult to relate to the left/right binary hatred.
N+1 theory on why this may be the case:
Cognitive ability is forged in reading and discussions. After you’ve seen the arguments rehearsed hundreds of times you’ve become inundated and exhausted by the arguments and counter arguments from both sides of many debates.
Cognitive ability is forged in reading and discussions. After you’ve seen the arguments rehearsed hundreds of times you’ve become inundated and exhausted by the arguments and counter arguments from both sides of many debates.
I find academic fads fascinating. "Intelligence" has become a taboo word, and so we find "cognitive ability" in its place, which is I guess a shibboleth for the in-group when you mean intelligence.
You probably don't want to mess with someone who is both dumb and with low political tolerance. Now you can reduce this to avoiding people who are dumb...
I wonder how consequential this paper is? It has been cited once but appears to have been widely retweeted. Is it a particularly good paper?
If tolerance is intolerant of intolerance and politics is intolerant, then tolerance is indistinguishable from intolerance.
Let’s assume tolerance means tolerance of viewpoints which disagree with our own position.
From an evolutionary lens, if someone disagrees with us, then aren’t we predisposed not to tolerate since tolerating would be at odds with our own survival? That’s the sort of lazy evaluation approach.
A more nuanced take could be that being tolerant also encourages us to revisit our own position and improve it if need be enabling a greater likelihood of survival.
From an evolutionary lens, if someone disagrees with us, then aren’t we predisposed not to tolerate since tolerating would be at odds with our own survival? That’s the sort of lazy evaluation approach.
A more nuanced take could be that being tolerant also encourages us to revisit our own position and improve it if need be enabling a greater likelihood of survival.
Is cognitive ability a euphemism for intelligence or something more specific?
This paper is available on sci-hub.
# What do they mean by "cognitive ability"?
> Our Danish sample was selected using a registry of military draftees, which has been in operation since 2006. We drew our sample from the subset of the registry which had taken a cognitive ability test.
> For our American sample, 2,766 respondents completed our survey using MTurk in September and October 2014.
> The Danish Draftee Board administered the Børge Priens Prøve (BPP; Kousgaard, 2003) to the draftee sample. This 78- item test has a correlation of .82 with the full Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Mortensen et al., 1989). We have access only to the composite BPP score
> MTurk participants completed the 16-item International Cognitive Ability Resource measure (Condon & Revelle, 2014).
# What do they mean by "tolerance"?
> First, questions of tolerance concern whether one thinks a group's fundamental rights (particularly pertaining to expression) should or should not be protected. This is, conceptually, not the same as asking whether one likes or has a positive affect for the group in question, although some psychological studies appear to treat it as such.
> To say that questions of affect and tolerance are different is not to say they are entirely separable. The relationship between these domains in fact represents the second key element to operationalizing tolerance. Specifically, tolerance only meaningfully applies to groups that one might be motivated to restrict—that is, those one dislikes or otherwise opposes (Gibson, 2013; Sullivan et al., 1982).
> A third element related to assessing tolerance is that the frequently observed discrepancy between an individual's generalized commitments to tolerance and the tolerance they endorse for specific groups makes the assessment of tolerance a distinctively complicated task (Gibson, 2013)
# What groups did they ask about people's tolerance of?
> Right/Christian Fundamentalists
> Neo-Nazis
# What do they mean by "cognitive ability"?
> Our Danish sample was selected using a registry of military draftees, which has been in operation since 2006. We drew our sample from the subset of the registry which had taken a cognitive ability test.
> For our American sample, 2,766 respondents completed our survey using MTurk in September and October 2014.
> The Danish Draftee Board administered the Børge Priens Prøve (BPP; Kousgaard, 2003) to the draftee sample. This 78- item test has a correlation of .82 with the full Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Mortensen et al., 1989). We have access only to the composite BPP score
> MTurk participants completed the 16-item International Cognitive Ability Resource measure (Condon & Revelle, 2014).
# What do they mean by "tolerance"?
> First, questions of tolerance concern whether one thinks a group's fundamental rights (particularly pertaining to expression) should or should not be protected. This is, conceptually, not the same as asking whether one likes or has a positive affect for the group in question, although some psychological studies appear to treat it as such.
> To say that questions of affect and tolerance are different is not to say they are entirely separable. The relationship between these domains in fact represents the second key element to operationalizing tolerance. Specifically, tolerance only meaningfully applies to groups that one might be motivated to restrict—that is, those one dislikes or otherwise opposes (Gibson, 2013; Sullivan et al., 1982).
> A third element related to assessing tolerance is that the frequently observed discrepancy between an individual's generalized commitments to tolerance and the tolerance they endorse for specific groups makes the assessment of tolerance a distinctively complicated task (Gibson, 2013)
# What groups did they ask about people's tolerance of?
> Right/Christian Fundamentalists
> Neo-Nazis
Full text is paywalled, and I’m not interested in paying to see it, but if I did, what I’d be looking at is the operationalization of “political tolerance” and “cognitive ability”, particularly the former. I’ve found that studies with the kind of conclusion this has often use very dubious methods of operationalizing complex variables, particularly the dependent variable, such that while the conclusion may be true with the given operational definitions, it is far from clear that it corresponds in any close way to what most people hearing the conclusion would understand it to mean without seeing the particular operationalization in use.
Smart people have a high tolerance for bullsh*t? Seems legit..
Now there is a very clever bit of mind control.
Some commentary...
- Without access to the article and the author's definitions, I have some concern about the use of the word "ideals" in relation to tolerance as tolerance is less a matter of ideals and more a matter of being able to endure what we regard as disagreeable. It's something like patience. We can't show tolerance or patience for what we regard as good.
- Today, we often construe tolerance as an obligation to accept and agree with ideas you disagree with (or else risk being called a bigot). Those who seem to be more vocal about the need for tolerance are often some of the nastiest people you'll meet. To quote Marcuse, "What is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression."
- What, then, does this article say about our universities? Our culture? Where is the tolerance of people with political views other than those now practically sanctioned by the state?
- That cognitive ability should correlate highly with whatever is held to be an ideal in a culture is not especially surprising given that children who do well in school often do so because of how well they've conformed their thinking to what they've been taught. What is the difference between a child who receives high marks in a school following a curriculum laced with Nazi or Soviet propaganda versus one celebrating liberal or progressive values or something else? I am reminded of a story by Czeslaw Milosz in which he was addressing the problem of why so many intellectuals went along with the tyranny of the communist regime, and why he did not. His poetic answer was that it had less to do with reason and more to do with a "revolt of the stomach". What I take that to mean is that the "stomach" stands here for conscience (which is ultimately a matter of intellect, virtue, and rightly ordered will), and that intellectuals are great at rationalizing the hand that feeds them or threatens them if they do not possess properly formed consciences and virtue. If a certain understanding of tolerance is promoted in schools, then that's the version of tolerance I will expect most graduates to hold. You might even put on a show of considerate listening of the most absurd and obviously bad claims because you don't want to appear boorish and not because you're actually examining the claim seriously.
- While it's true that greater cognitive ability means a greater potential ability to examine claims, raw cognitive ability alone is worthless without virtue. You have to be honest, you have to have practice reasoning, you have to want to examine a belief fairly, you have to possess humility so you can know where your knowledge ends and therefore where your capacity to judge the truth of a claim ends, and you must not be swayed by ulterior motives like the desire for social approval or fear of disapproval. You should also have nothing to do with stupid, nonstarter ideas like skepticism or relativism or whatever else is used to justify false varieties of tolerance.
- Without access to the article and the author's definitions, I have some concern about the use of the word "ideals" in relation to tolerance as tolerance is less a matter of ideals and more a matter of being able to endure what we regard as disagreeable. It's something like patience. We can't show tolerance or patience for what we regard as good.
- Today, we often construe tolerance as an obligation to accept and agree with ideas you disagree with (or else risk being called a bigot). Those who seem to be more vocal about the need for tolerance are often some of the nastiest people you'll meet. To quote Marcuse, "What is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression."
- What, then, does this article say about our universities? Our culture? Where is the tolerance of people with political views other than those now practically sanctioned by the state?
- That cognitive ability should correlate highly with whatever is held to be an ideal in a culture is not especially surprising given that children who do well in school often do so because of how well they've conformed their thinking to what they've been taught. What is the difference between a child who receives high marks in a school following a curriculum laced with Nazi or Soviet propaganda versus one celebrating liberal or progressive values or something else? I am reminded of a story by Czeslaw Milosz in which he was addressing the problem of why so many intellectuals went along with the tyranny of the communist regime, and why he did not. His poetic answer was that it had less to do with reason and more to do with a "revolt of the stomach". What I take that to mean is that the "stomach" stands here for conscience (which is ultimately a matter of intellect, virtue, and rightly ordered will), and that intellectuals are great at rationalizing the hand that feeds them or threatens them if they do not possess properly formed consciences and virtue. If a certain understanding of tolerance is promoted in schools, then that's the version of tolerance I will expect most graduates to hold. You might even put on a show of considerate listening of the most absurd and obviously bad claims because you don't want to appear boorish and not because you're actually examining the claim seriously.
- While it's true that greater cognitive ability means a greater potential ability to examine claims, raw cognitive ability alone is worthless without virtue. You have to be honest, you have to have practice reasoning, you have to want to examine a belief fairly, you have to possess humility so you can know where your knowledge ends and therefore where your capacity to judge the truth of a claim ends, and you must not be swayed by ulterior motives like the desire for social approval or fear of disapproval. You should also have nothing to do with stupid, nonstarter ideas like skepticism or relativism or whatever else is used to justify false varieties of tolerance.
Politically and physically, it doesn't matter how intelligent you or your group are if you are outnumbered by a herd that responds to the appeals and actuation of its lower instincts. Enjoy the ride. The whole thing is quite a spectacle.