The Huffington Post Rebecca Searles First Posted: 02/ 1/2012
Are racists dumb? Do conservatives tend to be less intelligent than liberals? A provocative new study from Brock University in Ontario suggests the answer to both questions may be a qualified yes.
The study, published in Psychological Science, showed that people who score low on I.Q. tests in childhood are more likely to develop prejudiced beliefs and socially conservative politics in adulthood.
I.Q., or intelligence quotient, is a score determined by standardized tests, but whether the tests truly reveal intelligence remains a topic of hot debate among psychologists.
Dr. Gordon Hodson, a professor of psychology at the university and the study’s lead author, said the finding represented evidence of a vicious cycle: People of low intelligence gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, which stress resistance to change and, in turn, prejudice, he told LiveScience.
Why might less intelligent people be drawn to conservative ideologies? Because such ideologies feature “structure and order” that make it easier to comprehend a complicated world, Dodson said. “Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice,” he added.
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Categories: Americas, Human Rights, Psychology, United States
“I know it is hard to get rid of prejudice. It is coded into our psyche as we evolved from apes. We tend to dislike people or things that we are not used to. But letting it rule our minds is bad for us as a society.”
These are the ending lines from a piece that I wrote recently. The title may not be very appealing to some but in the write up I try to point out the stupidity of folks who stop understanding as soon as they see a Muslim name.
http://open.salon.com/blog/mzafrullah/2012/01/14/assholes
I do not believe in those IQ tests, they are (a) statistical and often not quite accurate and (b) they test your familiarity with the language and culture of the society they originate from. Let me put it this way; we develop a certain IQ to meet the needs of the environment. We know for instance, from experience, about how to cross a road. An African bushman may probably be lost in our streets, but we would probably be worse off in the bush country.
On the other hand I do trust the various forms of emotions linked with the adrenaline rush that the ancient, and not too ancient, humans would experience on seeing something/ someone different. Modern day prejudices, in my opinion are a form of that. We can strive to remove the prejudices with education, but instead of saying “prejudice is bad” we should adopt the line of saying “be wary, if you must, but be fair.
The article referred to in my response above can now be found here: http://www.lohar.com/blog/?p=104