Liberalism, Atheism, and IQ

I'm not sure exactly what to make of this story that reports:

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.

I suppose we can insert a snarky comment here, depending on our particular ideological viewpoint.  The differences, while not huge, were statistically significant -- meaning large enough to suggest they're real and not by chance.

So how does the causality work here?  Does being liberal or an atheist make you smarter, or vice versa?  According to the story:

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.

So higher IQ folks might be drawn to beliefs that set them apart and signal that, ahem, they're smart.

Data for the study came from this big health study and from the General Social Survey, which is a huge and useful dataset that I've used myself.

And there's sorta good news if you're a meat eater like me.  According to the story, vegetarianism is often linked to intelligence in other research, but this study found no association with IQ.  Whew!  But the evolutionary idea remains the same, goes the reasoning.  Vegans may in general show some higher intelligence because smarter people like to demonstrate superiority -- thus eating their veggies and skipping their burgers.

Of Liberals and Conservatives

Interesting Nicholas Kristof column in today's NYTimes that touches on some of the recent social science research on how liberals and conservatives differ (other than the obvious stuff, such as liking Obama).

He manages to get at selective exposure, political perceptions, moral values, and a host of other favorites in the social science arena, all in one quick column. Basically the argument is this: liberals and conservatives differ not only on the obvious political preferences but also in basic moral values. That isn't a surprise to the talk show blowhards, but it's deeper than they realize. Liberals like fairness and prevention of harm, conservatives focus on authority, loyalty, and "revulsion at disgust." And some of it is just plain weird. You can tell a conservative by the level of disgust registered at nasty smells or stepping on squishy things or using a public toilet.

For those of you who read the classic The Authoritarian Personality, some of this comes as no surprise. Then again, I'm fairly certain the classic book failed to mention toilets.

Kristof mentions a web site terribly busy today and hard to reach: www.yourmorals.org. Try again in a few days, once the post-NYTimes attention eases.

This all kinda fits something I blogged about a couple of days ago, how journalism needs to look to social science for fresh material, for intellectual scoops, for new ways of helping people understand the world.