Is there a relationship between a person's IQ and their ideology?

The study of intelligence is one of the areas that has generated the most clashes of points of view both in psychology and in social sciences in general.

Defining what intelligence is is itself a battlefield, and if it is also intended to relate the concept of IQ with the Politic ideology of each person, the controversy is served. The reason is clear: a high IQ is a trait that all advocates of political positions want to associate with their cause, because the Intelligence is not simply a personal characteristic, but also carries a strong moral value: being intelligent is well.

But, beyond all the opinions and biased value judgments, there is some research that, although it has limitations and could be victims of certain biases in its design, try to address the issue of the relationship between CI and political ideology in the least subjective way possible. So... Are people on the left smarter? Cento ones, perhaps? Let's see what has been found through these studies.

The left, the right and their relationship with the CI

In general, if we had to say whether people on the left or the right are more intelligent and we only had to give an answer without going into details, we would have to admit that there are more studies linking higher IQ to leftist ideologies than studies that do the same with right-wing positions. However, within this simplistic view of the results obtained through research there are several things that must be taken into account.

The first of these is that there are many studies that have reached contradictory results. There are two possible reasons that explain this. The first is that classifying political ideologies into "left and right" is a way of oversimplifying realityThe second is that the culture of each country and region seems to play a very important role in the way intelligence and ideology are related. Next we will see what this means.

What does it mean to be conservative?

One of the best known theories when it comes to explaining how the IQ and political positioning interact is the one that distinguishes between progressive Y conservatives.

According to Lazar Stankov, for example, conservative people are characterized by a certain cognitive rigidity: they value very positively the constant follow-up of the rules and respect for authority, traditions, orthodoxy when interpreting texts. In short, they endorse a framework of rules that has already been given to them by certain authorities or pressure groups.

This way of following rules can be seen as the antithesis of the concept of intelligence, which is related to the ability to find creative ways of behaving in novel situations through a good dose of mental agility, for which Stankov and other researchers have proposed that people with less intelligence are more seduced by political positions conservative. What's more, Stankov himself found correlations between a low IQ and a high score in conservatism, by which this theory was reinforced.

However... Doesn't this relationship between ideology and intelligence depend on the cultural context of each country? Currently there is information provided by studies that indicate the way in which the history of a country or Region affects how the dominant ideology "by default" is more situated to the right or to the right. left. Thus, while in Brazil there is a strong attachment to ideological centralism due to the country's historical instability, in Russia conservatism is more related to Stalin's orthodox communism, while in the USA the conservative character is related to anti-communism and the defense of military interventions out of the country.

The nuances within ideologies

Another aspect to take into account when seeing how IQ and ideology are related is the following question: can it be said that there is only one left and only one right? There are several studies that show that within the groups of people identified as conservative or There are details that show the extent to which these two categories have very different subgroups. each. For example, you can be economically liberal and socially conservative. This is what happens, for example, in people ascribed to right-wing positions related to the rejection of forms of non-Western life and the values ​​of the left that in turn defend the existence of the free movement of money.

At the same time, people who see themselves as advocates of centrist policies can be seen as members of a third group with their own characteristics that distinguish them from people with ideologies of the extremes. In this sense, there are both studies that relate a high IQ with a moderate center posture and others that find the opposite phenomenon: a high intelligence associated with people with more radical positions both on the right and on the left. Rindermann and his team of researchers found the first type of result, while Kemmelmeier found the second.

Why is this happening? There are many possible factors that can explain this difference, but one of them possibly It has to do with the characteristics of the groups of people that were studied in each of these studies.

Sophisticated political tastes

While Rindermann, who saw a relationship between high IQ and moderate ideology, studied people with an average intelligence level, Kemmelmeier studied people with higher than normal IQ.

This would suggest that gifted people with an intellectual level within normality would be more seduced by the moderate, while the more intelligent people would be more likely to explore more sophisticated and far removed from the socially established, finding ways in which these can seduce. It is a probable explanation, since also a relationship has been found between a high IQ and a greater tendency to affirm that there are well-defined political positions, while people without a defined political ideology tend to obtain lower intelligence scores.

In conclusion

Although very interesting results have been obtained throughout several investigations, results have not yet been obtained conclusive that allow us to affirm with a good degree of security that people of a certain political ideology are more smart.

Cultural factors and nuances within political spectra have an importance that makes it difficult to find universal trends.

Bibliographic references:

• Kemmelmeier, M. (2008). Is there a relationship between political orientation and cognitive ability? A test of three hypotheses in two studies. Personality and Individual Differences, 45 (8), pp. 767 - 772.

• Rindermann, H., Flores-Mendoza, C., & Woodley, M. TO. (2012). Political orientations, intelligence and education. Intelligence, 40 (2), pp. 217 - 225.

• Stankov, L. (2009). Conservatism and cognitive ability. Intelligence, 37 (3), pp. 294 - 304.