On the Relationship Between Intelligence and Political Views
A Look at Research Plus Speculation
In many political circles, there is a desire to rationalize why one’s beliefs are superior to others’. This often takes the form of identifying particular indicators that one has stronger beliefs in. Some invoke the physiognomy meme, using a person’s physical attractiveness as an indicator of the quality of their beliefs. Others focus on the average education or intelligence of a group as an indicator of having better or more rational beliefs.
It’s commonly said that left-leaning people tend to be more educated and have higher IQs than right-leaning people. And indeed, some research supports this notion.
But what are the broad patterns of intelligence and political beliefs? How is intelligence related to political views, and what might be the explanations for why people of one set of views tend to be smarter than another?
The Link Between Intelligence and Beliefs
It’s important to note that the liberal advantage in intelligence does not show up in every study. For example, Carl (2014) found that individuals who identify as Republican have slightly higher verbal intelligence – a difference of 2-5 points.
The broader trend in intelligence and political views is not between left and right, but between classical liberalism and authoritarianism. When political viewpoints are split into economic and social views, it becomes clear that economically right-wing views, emphasizing laissez-faire free market capitalism, tend to be associated with greater cognitive ability. Similarly, socially left-wing views, which emphasize personal autonomy, are also associated with greater cognitive ability.
This link can help explain why there is disagreement among studies on whether right-leaning or left-leaning people tend to be more intelligent. There are different aspects in which a right-wing ideology can be linked to higher intelligence versus a left-wing ideology, and those aspects are likely captured to varying degrees across studies.
In fact, there is some research directly suggesting that ideological libertarians, who tend to be “socially left” and “economically right”, actually score higher on cognitive testing compared to both conservatives and liberals. It’s not about whether beliefs are right or left, but whether the beliefs are more in favor of freedom.
A second major finding concerns political beliefs and conformity. Intelligence appears to be related to beliefs that align with society’s broader cultural values at a given point in time. As such, in countries such as Brazil, where left-wing cultural bias is not as strong, a right-wing intelligence advantage appears stronger.
Rather than people arriving at certain beliefs because they are more “correct” or “rational”, it may be merely a status-signaling game, where those who are more intelligent are better at engaging in it.
It should be noted that these relationships do not work the same way at the extremes. For example, political extremists on both the left and the right tend to exhibit cognitive simplicity, or the tendency to think in black and white terms, as well as overconfidence, as they tend to be less knowledgeable than political moderates, particularly those slightly to the left and slightly to the right. This implies that, for example, people who are “extreme” libertarians, such as self-described anarcho-capitalists, may suffer from an IQ deficit on average.
Explaining the Relationships
Why is IQ positively related to classical liberalism? While it might be flattering to those who tend to lean more in favor of free markets and individual freedom (such as myself to a degree) to say that this is because smarter people tend to have the “correct” or “rational” opinions, I don’t think this is a reasonable assumption to make.
People’s political beliefs generally don’t come from a rational examination of research and reality, as they often remain consistent from adolescence to adulthood, despite significant cognitive development and increased knowledge of the world.
Indeed, some research suggests that cognitive ability can enhance motivated reasoning when presented with evidence. Rather than greater numerical abilities, a proxy for intelligence, leading to people’s views on a politically charged subject narrowing in range, it actually increased polarization in viewpoints. In many cases, people use their intelligence to rationalize their pre-existing beliefs rather than to come to the truth.
Instead of being due to rational assessments of the facts, I think the positive relationship between intelligence and classical liberalism is in large part due to other, deeper, psychological factors. I will identify two potential hypotheses here, which I think may shed some light.
Personal Projection Hypothesis
One fundamental reason some people are more in favor of personal freedom is the assumption that individuals are the best decision-makers for maximizing their personal happiness. As such, the government should be relatively hands-off in its activities, as it lacks the same level of knowledge individuals have about what is best for them.
Because individuals differ widely in traits, including intelligence, they differ in the degree to which they can engage in effective and independent decision-making. Effective decision-making depends in part on knowledge and cognitive abilities, among other traits, so some will be able to make better decisions than others.
Insofar as intelligence is a relevant factor in effective decision-making, smarter people would then be more likely to be the best decision-makers when it comes to maximizing their personal happiness or well-being. Thus, they will be more likely to support political liberalism than less intelligent people, who might prefer more rigid political or social structures that assist their decision-making or promote their general well-being.
One of the core assumptions of the “personal projection hypothesis” is that people’s political beliefs are in part derived from self-interest. If this is the case, this hypothesis suggests that political differences across the IQ spectrum are reducible to differences in interests.
In chapters 1 and 6 of his 2007 book “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies,” economist Bryan Caplan examines whether voters in fact act according to their own self-interest. He suggests that the notion of a self-interested voter is a myth in many cases and points to a couple of examples, examining how public opinion on political issues across demographic groups aligns with people’s personal or material interests.
Firstly, Caplan finds that the elderly, despite being the demographic that benefits most from Social Security and Medicare, are actually slightly less supportive of the two policies than the rest of the population. Second, he finds that men are, on average, more pro-choice than women, despite having less of a self-interested reason to hold that belief. However, more recent polling from Gallup disputes this second finding, instead suggesting that presently, women are significantly more pro-choice in their views.
Nonetheless, this shows that people’s personal interests do not always align with voting. This is not to say that the “personal projection hypothesis” is for sure false. However, it does indicate that there is no consistent pattern of individuals acting in self-interested ways regarding their political beliefs.
Anti-Instinct Hypothesis
Another hypothesis that could shed light on the matter concerns people’s instincts. A common theme in anthropological research is the reality that humans are, evolutionarily speaking, more neotenous than other primates. This means that our brains remain underdeveloped and “plastic” to a greater extent, and that this plasticity is maintained for a longer period of development than in other animals.
The concept of neoteny can help explain the greater degree to which environmental factors explain variation in human behavior compared to other animals. It doesn’t eliminate the biological roots of our behavior, but it does suggest that our behavior is more environmentally mediated than that of other animals.
Neotenous tendencies can manifest as a push towards less instinctive behavior, with higher intelligence overriding people’s natural tendencies. For example, in Jonathan Haidt’s research on morality, he identifies five foundations for human morality. Each foundation is a type of moral instinct that appears cross-culturally, suggesting it is a natural human universal, and includes care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity.
However, while they are universal among people, research suggests that higher cognitive ability is not associated with lower interest in some moral foundations, but with lower interest in all of them. In other words, more intelligent people tend to have lower moral intuitions across the board.
Because intelligent people may be generally lower in instincts, they may be less sympathetic to moral systems that rely on people’s instincts. For example, they may be more likely to oppose traditionalist views on sexual morality simply because they are less attached to cultural norms in general.
Similarly, religion appears to be a natural belief held by people from virtually every culture throughout history, in one form or another. However, an incredibly robust finding in psychological research is the fact that intelligence is negatively correlated with religiosity. This can be seen as another manifestation of adopting beliefs contrary to one’s instincts.
This is not to say that traditionalism or religiosity is intrinsically good or bad, just that sexual traditionalism and religiosity were once culturally dominant, and one evolutionary instinct is to adhere to past cultural norms because they generally ensure survival. In modern society, where technological development exceeds human evolution at a far faster pace, people’s natures will inevitably be out of step with the environment we are placed in. In evolutionary biology, this is referred to as “evolutionary mismatch”. As such, it may be beneficial to get away from certain social norms, and more intelligent people, due to having lower instincts, may be more likely to do so.
Conclusion
I am not necessarily advancing either of these theories. If I had to give my thoughts on them, I’d suggest that the “anti-instinct hypothesis” is stronger than the “personal projection hypothesis”. However, neither is mutually exclusive, and I don’t think either is sufficient to explain the correlation between intelligence and political views. Some things appear intuitively true about both of them. Still, practically every relationship between two variables is highly multifactorial in its origins, so it’s naive to pinpoint any relationship to a single factor.
Nonetheless, the relationship between IQ and political beliefs cannot automatically be used to say that a particular set of political beliefs is better than another. While many people on the “elite human capital right” (ex. Richard Hanania) are correct to point out intelligence differences between liberals and conservatives, and are even correct to point out that the relative sophistication of the ideologies could explain it, it should by no means be used as a “physiognomy” test in the way that some people like to use it. To engage in such reasoning is, ironically enough, intellectually lazy.