I know you are, but what am I?

People never enjoy studies that come out which may seem insulting to a specific type of people. Such as one researcher who claimed to have discovered an intelligence gene which was most pronounced in Asians and least in.. well, I'll leave that out because it's.. well, insulting. After all, it's insulting to call someone less intelligent whether it's how they're born or how they choose to be. Personally, I have no problem admitting Asians are probably smarter than me.. but then, I'm not at the lowest level either.

So you can imagine the uproar that could very well be happening right this moment from a new study which concludes that there is a negative correlation between conservatism and intelligence. This means that when ones goes up, the other goes down. In this case, the more conservative a person is, the lower their intelligence.


"Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated. The evidence is based on 1254 community college students and 1600 foreign students seeking entry to United States' universities. At the individual level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with SAT, Vocabulary, and Analogy test scores. At the national level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with measures of education (e.g., gross enrollment at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels) and performance on mathematics and reading assessments from the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) project. They also correlate with components of the Failed States Index and several other measures of economic and political development of nations. Conservatism scores have higher correlations with economic and political measures than estimated IQ scores."

Now, of course, a study should be done on a larger scale and with a greater variety of people and not just those already seeking entry into university. I'm not going to say that this study creates a definitive fact which states that liberals are smarter than conservatives, but this, combined with other well known intelligence markers does make it quite interesting. For instance, the more religious a person is, the lower intelligence they're likely to have (and lower education) and, as we all know, the conservative movement is headed by one and only one group- christians.

Critical thinking skills are essential to intelligence (it's not all just memorizing facts and dates) which is something that most religious people severely lack and, in the same group, something conservatives usually lack.

So does this mean the more conservative parties are suddenly going to be known as the stupid parties? Well, to most liberals they already were, but realistically, probably not. Since facts tend to be insulting and no one wants that. Still, it'll be interesting to see where, if anywhere, this leads.