Date: 26 January 2012 Time: 10:29 AM ET
There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and
prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to
stir public controversy.
The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely
to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a
vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a
psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults
tend to gravitate toward
socially conservative ideologies,
the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and
resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson
wrote in an email to LiveScience.
"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors
contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.
Controversy ahead
The findings combine three hot-button topics.
"They've pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics," said Brian
Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia
who was not involved in the study. "When one selects intelligence,
political ideology and
racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it's bound to upset somebody."
Polling data and social and political science research do show that
prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those
of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience. [
7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You]
"The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the
most challenging aspect of this," Nosek said, referring to the new
study. "It's not that a relationship like that exists, but why it
exists."
Brains and bias
Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and
higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed
a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens
in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births
in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April
1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age
10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism
and racism were measured. [
Life's Extremes: Democrat vs. Republican]
In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured
using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences
between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive
abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks,
defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words.
Average IQ is set at 100.
Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry
list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working
full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority."
Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with
statements such as "I wouldn't mind working with people from
other races." (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian,
do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson's work can't speak to this "underground" racism.)
As suspected,
low intelligence in childhood
corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained
the relationship between these two variables was political: When
researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those
ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.
People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races.
"This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that
intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and
consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice," said Hodson,
who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in
the journal Psychological Science.
A study of averages
Hodson was quick to note that the despite the link found between low intelligence and
social conservatism,
the researchers aren't implying that all liberals are brilliant and all
conservatives stupid. The research is a study of averages over large
groups, he said.
"There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and
not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled
conservatives and very intolerant liberals," Hodson said.
Nosek gave another example to illustrate the dangers of taking the findings too literally.
"We can say definitively men are taller than women on average," he
said. "But you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random
woman that the man is going to be taller. There's plenty of overlap."
Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology
might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the
world.
"Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order,"
Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low
intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute
to prejudice."
In another study, this one in the United States, Hodson and Busseri
compared 254 people with the same amount of education but different
levels of ability in abstract reasoning. They found that what applies to
racism may also apply to homophobia. People who were poorer at abstract
reasoning were more likely to exhibit prejudice against gays. As in the
U.K. citizens, a lack of contact with gays and more acceptance of
right-wing authoritarianism explained the link. [
5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]
Simple viewpoints
Hodson and Busseri's explanation of their findings is reasonable, Nosek
said, but it is correlational. That means the researchers didn't
conclusively prove that the low intelligence caused the later prejudice.
To do that, you'd have to somehow randomly assign otherwise identical
people to be
smart or dumb, liberal or conservative. Those sorts of studies obviously aren't possible.
The researchers controlled for factors such as education and
socioeconomic status, making their case stronger, Nosek said. But there
are other possible explanations that fit the data. For example, Nosek
said, a study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naïve views
like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way," might find that
people who hold these attitudes are also less bright. In other words, it
might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but
extremist views in general.
"My speculation is that it's not as simple as their model presents it,"
Nosek said. "I think that lower cognitive capacity can lead to multiple
simple ways to represent the world, and one of those can be embodied in
a right-wing ideology where 'People I don't know are threats' and 'The
world is a
dangerous place'. ... Another simple way would be to just assume everybody is wonderful."
Prejudice is of particular interest because understanding the roots of
racism and bias could help eliminate them, Hodson said. For example, he
said, many
anti-prejudice programs
encourage participants to see things from another group's point of
view. That mental exercise may be too taxing for people of low IQ.
"There may be cognitive limits in the ability to take the perspective
of others, particularly foreigners," Hodson said. "Much of the present
research literature suggests that our prejudices are primarily emotional
in origin rather than cognitive. These two pieces of information
suggest that it might be particularly fruitful for researchers to
consider strategies to change
feelings toward outgroups," rather than thoughts.
