Friday, February 26, 2010

Another Study Claims Conservatives Are Dumb

I just came across this article by John Cloud in Time regarding a paper written by Satoshi Kanazawa, a professor of evolutionary psychology at the London School of Economics which makes the claim there is a correlation between liberalism and intelligence.

All things considered, Cloud writes a reasonable article. It must be remembered he wrote the article on Ann Coulter when she appeared on the cover of Time in April 2005 and was less than amused with the criticism he received from liberals over it. One of the studies cited by Kanazawa claims that adolescents who identify themselves as liberal have a far higher IQ than their conservative counterparts. Cloud pointedly asks, "Do kids really know what it means to be liberal?" He could also ask academic researchers if they really know what it means to be intelligent?

Quite frankly I have no use for these studies. It kind of reminds me of those studies which argue that conservatives are mentally ill. Nor do I like studies that assert liberals are mentally ill as was the case when I critiqued Dr. Lyle Rossiter's book The Liberal Mind a couple of years back.
I far prefer evaluating people as individuals rather than to classify them into some narrow group I might like or dislike. It makes life so much more enriching.

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