Huh? Fluid-Crystallized Intelligence

As I scoured academe for stuff to blog about, I came across this study. Here's the abstract. Bold face emphases are mine.

Using the theory of fluid-crystallized intelligence, we argue that with growing age, political discussion becomes less important as a complement to news exposure in political knowledge building. We applied moderated mediation analyses to the survey data of N = 69,125 German respondents. The data supported the hypothesis that news exposure influences political discussion, which in turn leverages political knowledge. As expected, we showed that news exposure is more strongly associated with political discussion for younger age groups. The results are discussed with regard to how to integrate a psychological lifespan perspective into further research on knowledge acquisition.

Theory of fluid-crystallized intelligence? Wow. I used to think of myself as moderately well read in the political knowledge literature, but this one kinda frightens me. Sadly, I don't have access to the full manuscript, just the abstract, even with my office computer and IP#. Essentially this seems to be saying age matters. The older you get, the less important talking to people matters in political knowledge. It's based on a huge survey of 69,125 Germans. I wish I had access to the full study so I could peek at it further, but it may be some form of the Eurobarometer, but that seems less likely now that I think of it, as it's a survey of all of western Europe, not just Germany.

I did dig something up on this theory. Here's an older piece that says as you get older, you get less intelligent. Has to do with the plasticity of the brain, best I can tell.

Recycling and the News

People who regularly read newspapers are more likely to -- Captain Obvious time -- say they recycle newspapers and other papers.  

It's hardly surprising that people who regularly read a paper version of the newspaper are four times more likely to recycle paper, but how about recycling other things, like glass and plastic?  Glad you asked.

• Newspaper readers were four times more likely to recycle cans.
• They were twice as likely to recycle glass.
• And they were three times as likely to recycle plastic.

So reading the dead-tree version of a newspaper makes you an environmentally sensitive recycling type?  I don't think the causality is that simple, but I wonder if being forced to do one leads you to also do the others.

To test this I constructed a quick-and-dirty logistic regression model to predict the likelihood to say you recycle paper.  Note my italics on say.  I have no doubt many overestimate such positive behaviors like voting, attending religious services, and yes -- recycling.  But let's fight with the measurement we have.  To predict recycling of paper I threw in some basic demographics like age, education, and the like.  I threw in whether you're a strong Republican or strong Democrat.  I included political knowledge.  I threw in another recycling behavior, cans, as a control.  And then I added reading the newspaper to model. Yeah, it's an ugly equation, but allow me have my geeky fun.

Below are the results, vastly simplified and stripped of statistics.  Keep in mind this is a regression, meaning all these factors are statistically controlling for one another.

• What does NOT predict recycling paper?  Being a Republican or Democrat.  In other words, your party affiliation doesn't really matter.  I like that.

• What does predict recycling paper?  Just about everything, even controlling for each other.  Older, more educated, higher income, non-black respondents all report higher recycling.  Females more than males.  The greater your political knowledge score, the more likely you recycle.  And yes, recycling cans means you are 14 times more likely to also recycle paper.  Even after controlling for all this -- regularly reading a print newspaper means you are more likely to recycle paper.  Duh, I know, but kinda interesting nonetheless.

Yes, but what if you flip it?  Does reading a print paper predict recycling cans?  Oh yeah, it does.  Not as strong a relationship, but statistically significant even after all the controls, including one about recycling paper.

Why?

I'm fairly sure it has something to do with good citizenship.  That's roughly what I'm going to play with for a paper, not a blog entry, but that's going to take more time and won't include such quick-and-dirty analyses.  You get roughly the same results if you replace print newspaper reading with watching television news.  But you get no effect for those who read Internet news sites or blogs. This supports my working hypothesis that there's something different about mainstream news and how it promotes good citizenship.  Be watching an academic journal near you for the results.

Sometimes you read a journal article and think, "Dammit, I should've done this study."  Such is the case in the latest issue of Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, fresh in my mailbox today.  Even worse, the first two two authors are doctoral students.  Humbling.

What's it about?  To simplify, the dependent variables are political knowledge and political participation.  No big deal there.  These concepts have launched a million scholarly studies.  But what they did is so obvious, and the results so interesting, that it kinda ruins my day.  The study examines the difference between exposure to citizen journalism and professional journalism -- again, no biggie there -- but also trust in those media.  Best of all is a two-way interaction I'll discuss in a minute.

The basic result is this: after statistically controlling for other factors, exposure to traditional news was positively associated with political knowledge while citizen journalism exposure was negatively associated with knowledge. Knowledge in this case was an index of four standard political actor recognition items.  The results for offline and online participation are a little messier, so let's set them aside and focus just on knowledge. 

Here's the interesting bit.  While the exposure items line up pretty much like I'd expect them to (pro news positive, citizen news negative, in their association with knowledge), the authors also included trust in pro and amateur news.  The citizen news media trust measure was unrelated with knowledge, but trust in professional news media was negatively associated with knowledge. 

Let me say this again.  Exposure to pro news is a positive predictor of political knowledge, but trust in such media is a negative predictor.  This isn't terribly surprising, given that those who have the most to do with the news media tend to trust it less, largely because they are stakeholders or have been misquoted or know a lot about stories that journalists are forced to simplify, thus losing some of the nuances that come with any issue.

To clear this up, the authors examine a two-way interaction between the trust and exposure measures to find that among those high in trust of professional news media, exposure has no real effect on knowledge.  But, among those low in trust, as exposure increases, so does knowledge. In other words, exposure to news increases knowledge, but only for those who don't trust the news.  I'm not sure the discussion quite clears this up, and to be frank I need to think on it more myself before reaching some kind of conclusion as to what it all means.  But it is fascinating stuff.