Canadian Cynic recently informed us of an American college professor who claims that his conservative students are smarter than his liberal students.
A bit of background. Peter Schweizer published an article in the National Post where he took issue with the widespread belief that liberals in America are smarter than conservatives. Apparently, George Bush has a higher IQ than other presidential candidates and got higher grades in school [The arrogance of uneducated liberals].
Popular culture has greatly contributed to the myth of ignorant conservatives and enlightened liberals. One study by a group of academics found that by examining 124 characters in 47 popular political films spanning five decades, liberals were routinely depicted as “more intelligent, friendly and good” than conservatives.Sounds about right to me.
The arrogance of some liberals in this regard is astonishing. You don’t even have to be highly educated yourself to complain about how uneducated conservatives are. Michael Moore, college dropout, travels all over Europe talking about how “idiotic and uneducated” conservatives are. He also said: “Once you settle for a Ronald Reagan, then it’s easy to settle for a George Bush, and once you settle for a George Bush, then it’s real easy to settle for Bush II. You know, this should be evolution, instead it’s devolution. What’s next?”
One of the commenters (jdcarmine) on the National Post website chimes in with ...
Wonderful! I am a college professor and this is even more stunning when comparing liberals and conservatives. For example, last semester none of my liberal students had even the foggiest notion where Iran was relative to Israel and none could find the West Bank on a map. None knew where China and Russia were relative to the Middle East. But...All the conservative students knew these basic facts which made it easier for conservatives to discuss the significance of the Iraq war whereas the liberals could only spew platitudes about it.Now here's the fun part. Canadian Cynic quotes a study done some years ago by WorldPublicOpinion.org [Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War] They asked about three misconceptions concerning the war in Iraq: (1) there were links between Iraq and al Qaeda; (2) weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq; (3) world public opinion supports the US invasion of Iraq.
They then compared the number of people who believed none of these misconceptions with their source of news. This is an indication of the politics of the people in the survey. People who watch FOX news are assumed to be more conservative that those who get their information from NPR. Here are the results ...
I think Canadian Cynic has a point. Sure, this doesn't prove that conservatives are stupid and liberals are smart, but it sure says something about gullibility and it's reasonable to assume that there might be a correlation between that and intelligence.11. I get most of my American news from CNN. I guess that makes me about average in intelligence. My main concern is that watching Larry King and Lou Dobbs will make me dumber than I am already.
I've seen something like this before, though I don't recall where. It went a step further, however. IIRC, it showed that if you pick a different set of misconceptions, you can show that liberals get them all wrong, and conservatives get them right.
ReplyDeleteThe point was that such exercises probably tell us little or nothing about intelligence or education of liberals and conservatives, and much more about how everyone is susceptible to confirmation bias, regardless of their ideology.
The problem here is what is meant by "conservatives".
ReplyDeleteMy "educated guess": those who watch FOX are the NASCAR or the Social conservatives; e. g., those who think that the world was made 6000 years ago, that Jesus spoke English, etc.
The conservatives that make it to college are probably more likely to be those who are conservative for economic reasons; many of these accept evolution and actually know a bit of history.
Hence what the professor was saying and what the "Canadian Cynic" were saying were both probably true, but reflective of completely different classes of people.
There are also many different classes of liberals as well; many accept science but others happily accept healing pyramids, homeopathy, etc.