Study Proves Liberals Are Smarter Than Conservatives

The next time I refer to conservatives as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, I can do so with the full backing of solid science behind the statement. According to a study in Psychology Today, the more intelligent you are, the more likely you are to be a liberal. Conversely, the less intelligent you are, the more likely you are to be a conservative. Of course, that's not really news to anyone who's been alert the last thirty years or so. I mean, we almost had Dick Cheney as president after George Bush nearly choked to death on a pretzel. Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Dan Quayle, Ronald Reagan -- these are not the brightest folks in the world. Let's go right to the study. "Those who identify themselves as 'very liberal' in early adulthood have a mean childhood IQ of 106.4, whereas those who identify themselves as 'very conservative' in early adulthood have a mean childhood IQ of 94.8." The idea that different groups of people identify differently politically is not new. Studies have long shown that women are more liberal than men, and African-Americans are more liberal than caucasians, for example. What is new is the link between intelligence and political ideology. The study argues that there is a fundamental, evolutionary reason for this link. The authors went through the The Encyclopedia of World Cultures, and looked at more than 1500 cultures across the world. What they found is that, in traditional cultures, values of liberalism simply don't exist. People in traditional cultures will share resources WITHIN their small tribe, and they will trade with other tribes, but they do not share resources freely with OTHER tribes. This is the defining feature of economic liberalism, isn't it? Liberals are quite content with pooling together resources and taking care of the entire spectrum of humans, regardless of "tribe". Conservatives might be OK with taking care of their own (say, Social Security for white grandmas) but are not OK with pooling resources to fund welfare programs for minorities or education programs for immigrants. I guess this means we can quite literally blame racism on a lack of intelligence. It also means is that liberalism is a newer form of thought, evolution-wise. Because of how evolution works, even as we have evolved, we have a difficult time working with phenomena that did not exist in ancient times. Since concepts like "sharing with everyone" did not exist in ancient times, the theory argues, people have a hard time adapting to that line of thinking. It is literally more difficult, logically, to be a liberal, because you have to have evolved more than conservatives in order to break through and be a liberal. A superior intelligence, however, allows an individual to overcome that blockade against the new, liberal thinking. Just as it was the sharper minds of our ancestors that invented the wheel and discovered fire, it is the brighter among us that invent and promote ideas such as social welfare and universal health care. That explains the correlation with intelligence and political ideology. It also explains some of the seemingly unsolvable divides in American politics. I suppose that leaves us with one final conclusion: Republicans need to evolve. If only they were smart enough to realize it... You can reach the author by email john@benzinga.com or on twitter @johndthorpe.