Thread: liberal nonbelievers are smarter :O

...What.

Tell us something we didn't already know.

I found this article to be pretty usa-ish..

Are liberal nonbelievers smart enough to know what a generalization is?

It's still a true generalization which requires explaining. But, as the article says, the correlation doesn't necessarily imply a causation.

i mainly brought this up because i thought it was funny that Psychology Today would have an article basically saying "liberals go to college but still want to f*ck so they vote for liberals and are smarter." i still would like a scientific explanation for... what the socially conservative mindset is all about

the article is amusing and the conclusion actually makes a bit of sense...too bad it only analyzes the extremes though.

For instance, at my college, the engineering building is decidedly more conservative (by this I mean small government, not anti gay or creationist) than the rest of campus. What is the explanation there? I am asking because unlike what most people seem to think, you dont have to be religious to be conservative. I certainly am not.

I think the word the OP is looking for is "pragmatic", not "smarter".

"smarter" was the word used in the title of the article.

Originally Posted by cygnus

"smarter" was the word used in the title of the article.

Then the article is looking for "pragmatic" instead of "smarter."

But I will readily settle for "idiotic."

Technically it's more like "Smarter people tend more to be liberal nonbelievers".

Hmm. I would argue that it depends on how far along the spectrum you go. On both the liberal and conservative side of things, there are those who know the half-dozen catch-all mantras of their parties. Either the democrats are the only ones who care about the working man, or republicans are the only ones who will save the economy and cut taxes, or they accept government conspiracies without questioning, or oil will be gone in x many years, yadda yadda yadda... And there are alot of ignorant people on any given opinion.

On another end, there are intelligent people on both sides- those who research the topics thoroughly.

Even more rare are the intelligent people who research the issues without bias.

In the pool of people in any given political party, there are probably more people who aren't all that well versed in their political doctorine than those who are. So why do I think that 'very conservative' people were less intelligent than 'very liberal?' Because the average liberal that you run into says that he/she is a mild or average liberal. Even most independents are more liberally minded than conservative, generally speaking. But ALOT of conservatives who aren't the most educated claim to be very republican. Alot.

So this doesn't mean more intelligent people are liberal. Not at all. Because it could just as easily mean that most conservatives with high IQs are mild conservatives.

I agree with Xaquaria that pragmatic is a more appropriate word than smart. You're right Cygnus, an article about the flipside, the socially conservative, would be interesting.

It doesn't surprise me that atheists have a higher chance of having a high IQ than religous people.