Liberal people are more intelligent than conservative people
the verdict
INSUFFICIENT LEANING
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
3 sources for · 0 against
The retrieved scientific literature contains mixed findings regarding the relationship between cognitive ability and political ideology, with some studies indicating positive associations between intelligence and liberalism while others report positive associations with economic conservatism.
We investigate why people believe disinformation about health-related issues. Acting on disinformation could lead to severe injuries and even death. Five hundred eight American respondents each reviewed 10 different social media posts about health-related topics, and 60% of the posts contained disinformation. They were asked to evaluate the posts for their honesty and explain their decisions. Respondents successfully detected disinformation about 2/3 of the time. Across all participant responses, need for cognition was the only factor important to successful detection of disinformation. When investigating each social media post individually, need for cognition was key for 35% of the posts, while political affiliation was key for 15%. Neither factor was important for the remaining 50% of posts. People with a high need for cognition were adept at detecting online disinformation, but those with conservative political affiliations were not. Those best suited to detecting health-related disinformation either had a high need for cognition or a liberal political affiliation.
More than [Formula: see text] : Verbal and performance IQ as predictors of socio-political attitudes - PubMed
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## Abstract
Measures of intelligence predict socio-political attitudes and behaviors, such as liberalism, religiosity, and voter turnout. Little, however, is known about which cognitive abilities are responsible for these relationships. Employing several cohorts from the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research, we test the predictive performance of different broad abilities. Using multiple regression to compare verbal and performance IQ from Wechsler intelligence tests, we find verbal IQ more strongly predicts voter turnout, civic engagement, traditionalism, and measures of ideology. On average, the correlation between verbal IQ and our socio-political attitudes is twice as large as that of performance IQ. The same pattern appears after controlling for education and after performing the analysis within sibling pairs. This implies that the relationship cannot be entirely mediated through education, nor entirely confounded by upbringing. Positive and negative controls are employed to test the