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Guys, I hate to be pretentious, but lets not confuse socialism and communism. Communism is a style of government, while socialism is an economic system. I believe that liberalism, in the extremist of degrees, can lead to a socialist economic system- not a communistic form of government. For example, to some degree, the Obama Healthcare Plan is socialized medicine- however, Pres. Obama is not proposing the United States is run under a communistic government.
"A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance".- T.S. Eliot
I didn't? I said I had no political viewpoint apart from that I don't agree with communism. How is that confusing the two? Let's not jump to assumptions?
No, I'm not saying that you did. I'm just throwing that out there. In debates about political systems, communism and socialism are confused. Don't assume I'm assuming
"A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance".- T.S. Eliot
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If you can't be arsed to read all this, just skip to the bottom; I've written a little summary there.
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An interesting finding. We have to bear in mind, though, that it shows that liberals are on average more intelligent than conservatives: it does not show that any particular liberal is more intelligent than any particular conservative.
We should also be wary that all we've looked at so far is an old, informal article from TIME on Kanazawa's paper and not the paper itself, so here's the abstract for anyone who's interested:
The origin of values and preferences is an unresolved theoretical question in behavioral and social sciences. The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, derived from the Savanna Principle and a theory of the evolution of general intelligence, suggests that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences (such as liberalism and atheism and, for men, sexual exclusivity) than less intelligent individuals, but that general intelligence may have no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar values (for children, marriage, family, and friends). The analyses of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Study 1) and the General Social Surveys (Study 2) show that adolescent and adult intelligence significantly increases adult liberalism, atheism, and men’s (but not women’s) value on sexual exclusivity.
...turns out it says pretty much the same as the TIME article, albeit more concisely. Curses.
Inconveniently, though, this isn't the actual study that found the correlation: this is a paper attempting to explain the correlation. So, for those of you interested in the exact methodologies, I've done a bit of research for you.
The survey was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, roughly 90,000 students from grades 7 through 12 at 145 schools around the U.S. answered brief questionnaires to provide information about themselves and other aspects of their lives, including their health, friendships, self esteem, and expectations for the future. Parental support for the in-school survey was strong. Before students could participate, parents had to give their permission through procedures approved by each school. In some schools, parents volunteered their time to help administer the questionnaire.
In the second phase of the study, interviews were conducted with roughly 20,000 students and their parents in the students' homes. The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago trained about 500 interviewers to carry out these interviews in communities across the country. With the written consent of both the adolescents and their parent, interviewers conducted a 90 minute computer-administered interview covering each adolescent's health and health behaviors, family life, peer relationships, goals and aspirations, and related topics. They also interviewed parents about the adolescents' health, family relationships, family income and health insurance, and parents' own health behavior.
One year later, these students were interviewed a second time in their homes. Because these adolescents were interviewed twice, it is possible to measure directly the influence of theirexperiences at one time on their later behaviors, and the consequences that such behaviors have on later outcomes.
Quote:
The study collects information on:...
Education, including cognitive ability and individual, family, peer, and community influences on school performance...
So, interviews and and questionnaires here... it is unclear how exactly they measured intelligence or political standing, but it would appear that education was the unoperationalised "intelligence" variable, which could quite feasibly reduce the study's internal validity. Can't really comment on the political thing as I can't find any direct information on it.
Intelligence was tested in two ways: vocabulary and reasoning.
Here's an example of a vocabulary test:
Quote:
PreQuestion Text
1361. We would like to know something about how people go about guessing words they do not know. On this card are listed some words--you may know some of them, and you may not know quite a few of them. On each line the first word is in capital letters -- like BEAST. Then there are five other words. Tell me the number of the word that comes closest to the meaning of the word in capital letters. For example, if the word in capital letters is BEAST, you would say "4" since "animal" come closer to BEAST than any of the other words. If you wish, I will read the words to you. These words are difficult for almost everyone -- just give me your best guess if you are not sure of the answer. CIRCLE ONE CODE NUMBER FOR EACH ITEM BELOW. EXAMPLE BEAST 1. afraid 2. words 3. large 4. animal 5. separate
...and a reasoning test:
Quote:
PreQuestion Text
489. Now I'd like to turn to something a bit different. This section is about reasoning abilities, that is, about how people think. Most people take tests of their reasoning abilities and there is a lot of interest in how these abilities may change over time. What I'd like you to do is tell me how two things are alike.
Literal Question
A. In what way are an orange and a banana alike?
We can see that to measure political standing, participants were simply asked what their political ideology was:
Quote:
Literal Question
66 A. We hear a lot of talk these days about liberals and conservatives. I'm going to show you a seven-point scale on which the political views that people might hold are arranged from extremely liberal--point 1--to extremely conservative-- point 7. Where would you place yourself on this scale?
Descriptive Text
Card Q contained responses for punches 1 through 7. POLVIEWS was asked on both Form 1 and Form 2 at different points in the interview in 1978. See App. B for locations in the questionnaire. POLVIEWS appeared only on Form 1 in 1983. See also POLVIEWY [publicdata.norc.org] [publicdata.norc.org] [publicdata.norc.org] and POLVIEWX [publicdata.norc.org] [publicdata.norc.org] [publicdata.norc.org].
Literal Question
C. In political matters, people talk of "the left" and "the right." How would you place your views on this scale?
Descriptive Text
CARD S contained responses 1 through 10. POLVIEWX appeared on Form 2 in 1983. It is a variant of POLVIEWS [publicdata.norc.org] [publicdata.norc.org] [publicdata.norc.org]. See also POLVIEWY [publicdata.norc.org] [publicdata.norc.org] [publicdata.norc.org]. See Appendix T, GSS Methodological Report No. 29.
So, for the NLSAH, political standing and intelligence operationalised as education were measured through interviews (unclear whether structured, semi-structured or unstructured) and questionnaires. For the GSS, intelligence was measured with complex (and, I'll admit, somewhat obcure) tests, and political standing was measured simply through asking the political standing.
Both studies had huge samples and found the correlation to be largely statistically significant, but we could criticise the external (population) validity of the NLSAH, as it was conducted on adolescents only.
I have come to find that there is no barrier between the conservatives and liberals when it comes to intelligence. In my school the smartest kids come from both sides of the political lines, and I am one of these students.
I am a Liberal-Libertarian, and many of my ideals will match a Conservative's, and I have come to find if you judge someone based on political beliefs, you are stupid and ignorant for not getting to know the person.
I often don't have a rhyme or reason, only a rhythm.
Meh , Okay it is obvious that liberals can have a better conception on things around the world , But i would never say they are smarter :/
I find this a "prevalence" ... pretty much and if you like to Generalize things , then you pretty much are An Ignorant and Stubborn person indeed , As for the "Psyhological Test" thing ... oh well , its very difficult to tell Noone can tell ANYONE what or who they are...until the world creates a machine that would allow someone to be placed in your brain and experience your every thought.. :]
sometimes we put up walls , not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to knock them down.
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Re: Liberals more intelligent than Conservatives
and if you like to Generalize things , then you pretty much are An Ignorant and Stubborn person indeed , As for the "Psyhological Test" thing ... oh well , its very difficult to tell 
