Perusing Psychology

Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives? — The American, A Magazine of Ideas.

As someone interested in intelligence and politics this article is very interesting. It is written from a conservative viewpoint but it quite balanced (there are some mild jabs at the “liberal elite” though).

“Who are smarter, liberals or conservatives? This is the kind of question that could spark fierce and endless debates between political opponents, but what if we could know, scientifically, that one side has the edge in brainpower? Should that change how we think about political issues?”

Click on the link above to read the rest of the article. Any thoughts about the article? Does IQ really matter? Are conservatives “dumber” than liberals or vice versa? Is it even useful to compare intelligence across the aisle, so to speak?

I “clipped” this off of CNN for a couple reasons. One is to comment on the fact that I first saw this research months ago – CNN is pretty slow sometimes – okay, slow most of the time – at reporting new research. Second, even though there was a statistically significant difference between IQ scores of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd born children, there is only a difference of 3 points between 1st and 3rd. That doesn’t really mean anything in real life. Also, this is significant in part as a result of the huge same size – 200,000+. Additionally, the subjects all were male. There are other limitations pointed out in the CNN article.

We shouldn’t be so set on statistical significance (I worry about it in my research, of course). There is internal and experimental validity and then there is ecological validity. Intelligence research means very little without good ecological validity.

clipped from www.cnn.com But the debate over the impact of birth order gained new urgency this summer when the results of a new study were announced: Firstborns’ IQs tend to be higher than those of their younger siblings. Does that mean later-born kids are destined to be less accomplished and successful? Studies like this don’t tell the whole story — and neither do birth-order stereotypes. Here’s how to bring out the best in each child: Norwegian scientists analyzed test results and birth data from more than 241,000 military conscripts and found that oldest children had an average IQ of 103, second children came in at 101, and third-borns were at 100.