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Fritz
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Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ
« on: 2010-02-26 19:19:35 »
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Hit and Run.

Cheers

Fritz


Source: CNN
Author: Elizabeth Landau
Date: February 26, 2010




(CNN) -- Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds.
Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.
The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning -- on the order of 6 to 11 points -- and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say. But they show how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people's behaviors come to be.
The reasoning is that sexual exclusivity in men, liberalism and atheism all go against what would be expected given humans' evolutionary past. In other words, none of these traits would have benefited our early human ancestors, but higher intelligence may be associated with them.
"The adoption of some evolutionarily novel ideas makes some sense in terms of moving the species forward," said George Washington University leadership professor James Bailey, who was not involved in the study. "It also makes perfect sense that more intelligent people -- people with, sort of, more intellectual firepower -- are likely to be the ones to do that."
Bailey also said that these preferences may stem from a desire to show superiority or elitism, which also has to do with IQ. In fact, aligning oneself with "unconventional" philosophies such as liberalism or atheism may be "ways to communicate to everyone that you're pretty smart," he said.
The study looked at a large sample from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), which began with adolescents in grades 7-12 in the United States during the 1994-95 school year. The participants were interviewed as 18- to 28-year-olds from 2001 to 2002. The study also looked at the General Social Survey, another cross-national data collection source.
Kanazawa did not find that higher or lower intelligence predicted sexual exclusivity in women. This makes sense, because having one partner has always been advantageous to women, even thousands of years ago, meaning exclusivity is not a "new" preference.
For men, on the other hand, sexual exclusivity goes against the grain evolutionarily. With a goal of spreading genes, early men had multiple mates. Since women had to spend nine months being pregnant, and additional years caring for very young children, it made sense for them to want a steady mate to provide them resources.
Religion, the current theory goes, did not help people survive or reproduce necessarily, but goes along the lines of helping people to be paranoid, Kanazawa said. Assuming that, for example, a noise in the distance is a signal of a threat helped early humans to prepare in case of danger.
"It helps life to be paranoid, and because humans are paranoid, they become more religious, and they see the hands of God everywhere," Kanazawa said.
Participants who said they were atheists had an average IQ of 103 in adolescence, while adults who said they were religious averaged 97, the study found. Atheism "allows someone to move forward and speculate on life without any concern for the dogmatic structure of a religion," Bailey said.
"Historically, anything that's new and different can be seen as a threat in terms of the religious beliefs; almost all religious systems are about permanence," he noted.

The study takes the American view of liberal vs. conservative. It defines "liberal" in terms of concern for genetically nonrelated people and support for private resources that help those people. It does not look at other factors that play into American political beliefs, such as abortion, gun control and gay rights.
"Liberals are more likely to be concerned about total strangers; conservatives are likely to be concerned with people they associate with," he said.
Given that human ancestors had a keen interest in the survival of their offspring and nearest kin, the conservative approach -- looking out for the people around you first -- fits with the evolutionary picture more than liberalism, Kanazawa said. "It's unnatural for humans to be concerned about total strangers." he said.
The study found that young adults who said they were "very conservative" had an average adolescent IQ of 95, whereas those who said they were "very liberal" averaged 106.
It also makes sense that "conservatism" as a worldview of keeping things stable would be a safer approach than venturing toward the unfamiliar, Bailey said.
Neither Bailey nor Kanazawa identify themselves as liberal; Bailey is conservative and Kanazawa is "a strong libertarian."
Vegetarianism, while not strongly associated with IQ in this study, has been shown to be related to intelligence in previous research, Kanazawa said. This also fits into Bailey's idea that unconventional preferences appeal to people with higher intelligence, and can also be a means of showing superiority.
None of this means that the human species is evolving toward a future where these traits are the default, Kanazawa said.
"More intelligent people don't have more children, so moving away from the trajectory is not going to happen," he said.
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Walter Watts
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Re:Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ
« Reply #1 on: 2010-02-27 18:58:20 »
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Quote from: Fritz on 2010-02-26 19:19:35   


<snip>

Participants who said they were atheists had an average IQ of 103 in adolescence, while adults who said they were religious averaged 97, the study found. Atheism "allows someone to move forward and speculate on life without any concern for the dogmatic structure of a religion," Bailey said.
"Historically, anything that's new and different can be seen as a threat in terms of the religious beliefs; almost all religious systems are about permanence," he noted.


<snip>



Thanks Fritz.

Enjoyed it.

Yes, the religious are handicapped from the start.

They go through life insistently trying to hammer the square peg in the round hole.

They then wonder about/deny the cognitive dissonance that comes from having wrong-headed dogma as a lens through which all of life is viewed.

Makes for a pretty goofy mindset I'd reckon. 



Walter
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Re:Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ
« Reply #2 on: 2010-02-27 23:42:40 »
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more discussed here>

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2010/02/liberals_atheists_are_smarter.php#c2308275

Posted on: February 25, 2010 3:20 AM, by Razib Khan

Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent:

    The origin of values and preferences is an unresolved theoretical question in behavioral and social sciences. The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, derived from the Savanna Principle and a theory of the evolution of general intelligence, suggests that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences (such as liberalism and atheism and, for men, sexual exclusivity) than less intelligent individuals, but that general intelligence may have no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar values (for children, marriage, family, and friends). The analyses of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Study 1) and the General Social Surveys (Study 2) show that adolescent and adult intelligence significantly increases adult liberalism, atheism, and men's (but not women's) value on sexual exclusivity.

I don't have access to the paper, but ScienceDaily reports the values. For the NLSY, which surveys teens:

Very liberal IQ = 106
Very conservative IQ = 95

Atheist IQ = 103
Very religious IQ = 97

I don't know if I buy the evolutionary psychological explanation. OK, I don't actually buy it. But I really need to start poking around the NLSY data set. The gap between very liberal and very conservative teens is rather large, ~2/3 of a standard deviation. But I don't expect liberal readers of this weblog to take much joy in that, after all, many of them don't think IQ is real. Here are the results, with counts, of the survey I took a few weeks ago in terms of attitudes toward IQ by ideology:

Screenshot-1.png

As you can see, attitudes toward IQ track the Left-Right axis pretty well. I'll present the data later, but those with a "Left" ideology among the readers are clearly more well educated than those with a "Right" ideology (much higher proportion with post-graduate educations), so I suspect that liberal readers of this weblog are more intelligent than conservative readers, but, they may not believe themselves to be more intelligent. Rather than innate dispositions driving their views, I assume they believe it is mostly indoctrination.

Note: These results aren't totally surprising. You can find similar results by looking at other data sets, though the gap between extreme liberals & conservatives here is rather large.
[end cut and paste]

Walter Watts said: "Yes, the religious are handicapped from the start."

that's a ridiculous thing to say. noone is born religious.

the snippet could also mean that adolescents have a higher IQ than adults.

[..]Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative. -- John Stuart Mill[..]
« Last Edit: 2010-02-27 23:50:35 by Mermaid » Report to moderator   Logged
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Re:Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ
« Reply #3 on: 2010-02-28 18:54:46 »
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Quote from: Mermaid on 2010-02-27 23:42:40   


<snip>

Walter Watts said: "Yes, the religious are handicapped from the start."

that's a ridiculous thing to say. noone is born religious.

<snip>



I should probably have been clearer:

"Yes, the religious are handicapped from the start of their religious indoctrination."

I took it as obvious to most people that the handicap didn't start at birth.


Walter

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Re:Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ
« Reply #4 on: 2010-02-28 19:06:56 »
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[[ author reputation (1.66) beneath threshold (3)... display message ]]

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Re:Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ
« Reply #5 on: 2010-03-06 16:19:59 »
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I think Walter got in right. Many are born with predilections for many things, that the environmentalists view of human physiology would deny, one is relating to imaginary beings, which is why I suspect since DSM III: talking with imaginary entities has be described as a clinically recognized psychosis.

Cheers

Fritz



Source: BBC Two
Author: n/a
Date: Thursday 17 April 2005

God on the Brain

Rudi Affolter and Gwen Tighe have both experienced strong religious visions. He is an atheist; she a Christian. He thought he had died; she thought she had given birth to Jesus. Both have temporal lobe epilepsy.

Like other forms of epilepsy, the condition causes fitting but it is also associated with religious hallucinations. Research into why people like Rudi and Gwen saw what they did has opened up a whole field of brain science: neurotheology.

The connection between the temporal lobes of the brain and religious feeling has led one Canadian scientist to try stimulating them. (They are near your ears.) 80% of Dr Michael Persinger's experimental subjects report that an artificial magnetic field focused on those brain areas gives them a feeling of 'not being alone'. Some of them describe it as a religious sensation.
"...a high probability [Ellen White] had temporal lobe epilepsy"
Prof Gregory Holmes, Dartmouth Medical School

His work raises the prospect that we are programmed to believe in god, that faith is a mental ability humans have developed or been given. And temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) could help unlock the mystery.

Religious leaders

History is full of charismatic religious figures. Could any of them have been epileptics? The visions seen by Bible characters like Moses or Saint Paul are consistent with Rudi's and Gwen's, but there is no way to diagnose TLE in people who lived so long ago.

There are, though, more recent examples, like one of the founders of the Seventh Day Adventist Movement, Ellen White. Born in 1827, she suffered a brain injury aged 9 that totally changed her personality. She also began to have powerful religious visions.

Representatives of the Movement doubt that Ellen White suffered from TLE, saying her injury and visions are inconsistent with the condition, but neurologist Gregory Holmes believes this explains her condition.
"These patients are more prone to religious belief"
Prof Vilayanur Ramachandran, University of California, San Diego

Better than sex

The first clinical evidence to link the temporal lobes with religious sensations came from monitoring how TLE patients responded to sets of words. In an experiment where people were shown either neutral words (table), erotic words (sex) or religious words (god), the control group was most excited by the sexually loaded words. This was picked up as a sweat response on the skin. People with temporal lobe epilepsy did not share this apparent sense of priorities. For them, religious words generated the greatest reaction. Sexual words were less exciting than neutral ones.

Make believe

If the abnormal brain activity of TLE patients alters their response to religious concepts, could altering brain patterns artificially do the same for people with no such medical condition? This is the question that Michael Persinger set out to explore, using a wired-up helmet designed to concentrate magnetic fields on the temporal lobes of the wearer.
"Feeling something beyond yourself, bigger in space and time, can be stimulated"
Dr Michael Persinger, Laurentian University

His subjects were not told the precise purpose of the test; just that the experiment looked into relaxation. 80% of participants reported feeling something when the magnetic fields were applied. Persinger calls one of the common sensations a 'sensed presence', as if someone else is in the room with you, when there is none.

Horizon introduced Dr Persinger to one of Britain's most renowned atheists, Prof Richard Dawkins. He agreed to try his techniques on Dawkins to see if he could give him a moment of religious feeling. During a session that lasted 40 minutes, Dawkins found that the magnetic fields around his temporal lobes affected his breathing and his limbs. He did not find god.
"A talent for religion... some people have and other people don't"
Bishop Stephen Sykes, University of Durham

Persinger was not disheartened by Dawkins' immunity to the helmet's magnetic powers. He believes that the sensitivity of our temporal lobes to magnetism varies from person to person. People with TLE may be especially sensitive to magnetic fields; Prof Dawkins is well below average, it seems. It's a concept that clerics like Bishop Stephen Sykes give some credence as well: could there be such a thing as a talent for religion?

Brain imaging

Sykes does, though, see a great difference between a 'sensed presence' and a genuine religious experience. Scientists like Andrew Newberg want to see just what does happen during moments of faith. He worked with Buddhist, Michael Baime, to study the brain during meditation. By injecting radioactive tracers into Michael's bloodstream as he reached the height of a meditative trance, Newberg could use a brain scanner to image the brain at a religious climax.
"People meditating describe a loss of sense of self"
Dr Andrew Newberg, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania

The bloodflow patterns showed that the temporal lobes were certainly involved but also that the brain's parietal lobes appeared almost completely to shut down. The parietal lobes give us our sense of time and place. Without them, we may lose our sense of self. Adherants to many of the world's faiths regard a sense of personal insignificance and oneness with a deity as something to strive for. Newberg's work suggests a neurological basis for what religion tries to generate.

Religious evolution

If brain function offers insight into how we experience religion, does it say anything about why we do? There is evidence that people with religious faith have longer, healthier lives. This hints at a survival benefit for religious people. Could we have evolved religious belief?

Prof Dawkins (who subscribes to evolution to explain human development) thinks there could be an evolutionary advantage, not to believing in god, but to having a brain with the capacity to believe in god. That such faith exists is a by-product of enhanced intelligence. Prof Ramachandran denies that finding out how the brain reacts to religion negates the value of belief. He feels that brain circuitry like that Persinger and Newberg have identified, could amount to an antenna to make us receptive to god. Bishop Sykes meanwhile, thinks religion has nothing to fear from this neuroscience. Science is about seeking to explain the world around us. For him at least, it can co-exist with faith.
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