From the RadioLIVE website:
A paper, published in Psychological Science, claims that people with ring-wing views tend to be less intelligent than those on the left. It claims that people of lower-intelligence tend towards right-wing views as they make them feel ‘safe’.
…. Children on the study were assessed for innate intelligence aged 10 or 11, then assessed politically at the age of 33.
… It found that people with a low childhood intelligence gravitated towards racist and anti-gay views as they grew up.
Here’s a link to the original ‘Daily Mail’ story for more detail. (If you care.) It includes this …
Individuals with lower cognitive abilities may gravitate towards more socially conservative right-wing ideologies that maintain the status quo. …
The authors claim that there is a strong correlation between low intelligence both as a child and an adult, and right-wing politics.
… ‘Conservative ideology represents a critical pathway through which childhood intelligence predicts racism in adulthood,’ says the paper.
‘In psychological terms, the relation between intelligence and prejudice may stem from the propensity of individuals with lower cognitive ability to endorse more right wing conservative ideologies because such ideologies offer a psychological sense of stability and order.’
Somebody’s having a laugh. But what if it’s true?
– P
As a self confessed right wing conservative, naturally I plead guilty to the charge of having lower than average cognitive abilities. You probably already guessed this from my posts.
Probably as a consequence of my diminished intelligence issues, I am having trouble understanding the report. I do not believe I hold either racist or anti-gay views. Furthermore< I didn't realise this was a requirement of being a right wing conservative. Indeed, I would have thought racism et al directly contradicts any and all libertarian views.
Perhaps, then, I am stupidly misunderstanding what "right wing" means?
Here's wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics
"In politics, the Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchically ordered society, justified by an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, and views the imposition of equality as detrimental to society."
No mention that you have to be a fascist, racist or a gay baiter to be a right wing conservative???
What does it all mean???
Rgds,
*p*
Yes, it’s
rubbisher problematic, in my view, to claim any ability to “assess politically” based on perceived attitudes towards race issues, sexual orientation and attachment to the status quo. Good grief.I haven’t read the study, poormastery, but I think I classify it about the same as the beer company sponsored ‘research’ into which celebrity writes the most negative tweets.
Chewing gum for the brain. Or someone having a laff.
-P
Funniest of all – is that if the study found that those who were left leaning were of a lower level of intelligence … some considerable portions of the right wing conservative bloc would have probably earnestly discussed this as the ‘missing link’ that justified their viewpoint.
One mans Goebbels is another mans Godwin i guess – or vice versa.
Its much like being a christian and looking for verses of scripture that justify your standpoint i suppose.
And who really these days of enlightenment – regards “wiki” as the fount of all wisdom.
What happened to independent thought and cognition if you will.
Make up your own mind what constitutes what … without seeking some protocols of the elders of zion to justify ones pathway.
Re Wikipedia … “Fount of all wisdom”? Er no, I don’t think anyone’s claiming that. That said, I have come around to being a fan.
And yeah, the racist homophobic change resister cliché doesn’t ring true for me any more than the “greedy landlords” stereotype.
POV is a wonderful thing.
-P
PS I assume your reference to the bogus and fraudulent Protocols of the elders of Zion is a wind up?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion
You’d be amazed how many people now take their entire POV (gotta love those slick acronyms) from Wikipedia. Im a fan of “quick and dirty info-bites” – but im also alarmed by it as well. Tongue in cheek observation.
The protocols – if you read my comment it isnt pro the protocols – as i’ve previously been falsely and totally unjustifiably (on any basis at all) accused of anti-semitism before – i thought i would throw in a reference to the Nazis favourite justifier text – not a wind-up at all. I’m all for independant thinking rather than partisan pre-ordained methods of determining outcomes.