Are liberals and atheists smarter and more evolved than conservatives? Yes, according to a new (and, needless to say, controversial) study by psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa:
Kanazawa's theory is that intelligence—particularly our ability for on-the-spot problem solving and reasoning—arose as an adaptation to deal with the unusual and unexpected, such as a sudden forest fire.
Since disasters like that are rare in daily life, responding to them wouldn't likely be something our ancestors were hard-wired to "know" how to do. Surviving the fire required both the ability to think up a new behavior, and the willingness to try it out.
Passed down via genetics, those two traits are still the calling cards of an intelligent brain—expressed as a tendency toward adopting nontraditional social values and preferences, Kanazawa says in his new study, published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.
As a result of their iconoclastic ancestry, he suggests, people with higher levels of intelligence are more likely to adopt social values and behaviors that are relatively new to human life—liberalism, atheism, staying up late, and (for men) monogamy, for example.
Comments (71)
I know I am human and my ancestors were human all the way back to creation. So since there was no evolution involved in my family line, I accept that a liberal or atheist could be more evolved than me.
Maybe someday science will be able to leap the giant hurdles it needs to prove evolutionary theory as a fact and then we'll know for sure.
There is no such thing as "more evolved" - technically, we are all more evolved than people 2000 years ago, because our DNA is ever-so-slightly different. Evolution is all about change and fitness. Changes happen, and the environment culls out the unfit. The result is no better or worse than what came before...just different, and perhaps a little more complex.
And yet, pretty much all animals know to run away when the forest catches on fire. It's almost like they were hard wired to do so.
-PEACE
Projection is certainly a trait of conservatives..
Liberals and atheists tend to be rich and white. Rich white people have had many advantages.
There are no gods, so there is nothing to be afraid of. Just because someone feels certainty of uncertainty, doesn't make one smart... it makes one paranoid.
wrong again.....anything else fox news been tellin ya?
Awesome! well said could not agree more! and look at all the comments back, in order for them to believe in no god they need to think everyone else is stupid. Actually leaving no room for the possibility of a God is closing yourself off to possibilities and forward thinking. Furthermore they refuse to believe that what they hold is a belief, yet they cant prove their position as fact.
seriously, where do you people come up with this stuff?
whatever makes you feel better i guess but you're the 1 living everyday afraid of what a guy in the sky thinks about you....
Awesome! well said could not agree more! and look at all the comments back, in order for them to believe in no unicorns they need to think everyone else is stupid. Actually leaving no room for the possibility of a unicorn is closing yourself off to possibilities and forward thinking. Furthermore they refuse to believe that what they hold is a belief, yet they cant prove their position as fact.
http://uscnews.usc.edu/university/study_links_religion_and_racism.html
Chew on this, the immaterial proves the existents of God.
Why do you insist on pinning all your problems with the world on Christianity or religion in general. Seems to me that deep down inside you know the truth but don't want the truth so you live a veraciously biased life without even acknowledging that you are a fascist.
I see in these comments that everyone thinks there is no possible way to be an atheist without having a need to think everyone else is stupid, or they're scared, or so on and so forth.
All typical stuff that stupid religious people like you guys would say. Seriously, what a bunch of un-evolved mouth-breathers.
I meant "existence" not existents.
If I defined "more evolved" as having a stronger social structure and monogamous male-female long-term commitments (a.k.a. marriage), then I'm sure I could collect evidence to support my conclusion.
;)
Yes, religion in general. I don't know the truth, but does really saying "I know there is a god" any better than saying "there isn't one"? I don't see the difference; can you point that out to me? Hmm, you call me a fascist before you even know me. Hey, I got a great idea, why don't you call me a Nazi, and anti-Semite, and a demon worshiper while you're at it? There are plenty of names you call me, none of which will increase your credibility. Do you know why I don't believe? It's because I have no reason to, and the only reason to believe is to associate with likeminded people, and you are the probably the last person I would ever want to associate with. So there you have it, I don’t believe in god because of you. There you have it, now I blamed Christianity, so are you happy now?
Thank you for your comment.
Who's running from anything? It's stupid to believe in Loc Ness Monster, Sasquatch, or the Tooth Fairy, so why does believing in an invisible space god make my life any better? If I set myself to believing in "your" god, am I really keeping an open mind by ignoring every other religion in the world, or am I just doing the same as not believing in any of them as I am doing now?
I've run into a few Scientogists too, I must say the result of those confrontations have been quite messy compared to discussions with Creationists.
I'd be the last one willing to say any particular trait is most "(r)evolutionary", because I do not know what the future holds for a particular species. The day may come when being small of stature can be a benefit.
Evolution has never been a one-way street.
"The day may come when being small of stature can be a benefit."
One day? Clearly you've never been to Japan! :D
I whole heartedly agree on you with that one. If there is evidence which attacks a persons belief system, no matter if it is proven true or not, they will almost always choose their faith over fact, and in most situations, blur the difference between the two. Sure, in what situations you can say "look at the statistics", but in another equal situations one can say "you can't always depend on statistics" if it's an undesirable result. Belief or politics, there isn't much difference, and various degrees of zealot involved for both. Well I guess that wraps that one up.
As for "evil"ution: Which is more credible:
1) More complex forms of life have evolved from simpler forms over hundreds of millions of years, and that the scientific evidence totally backs this up;
or
2) A supernatural being that is all powerful and knowing, who has no beginning and no end, and who, though male, is the only one of its kind, suddenly created all life as it exists now, and left zero evidence behind for all of this?
Why? Because it relies on IQ tests, and anyone who believes in IQ tests should shave 15 points off their IQ, minimum.
It also relies on the "progressive fallacy" that evolution is about things always getting better, when evolution is about adaptations to an organism's environment.
Being liberal and an atheist are cultural qualities that have nothing to do with how "evolved" we are. They have a lot more to do with status, education, tradition. What does liberal in this context even mean? It has a radically different connotation in Canada (where it means middle of the road) than in the U.S., where it means the opposite of conservatism.
That being said, the more you learn about science, philosophy and so on the less likely you are to believe in god.
Some of the progressive people (not necessarily liberal) in my past and present have been Black, Thai, Polish, Cape Verdian, Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, Bosnian, Serbs, Greek, Filipino, Nigerian, Cajun, Creole, Jamaican, Senegalese, Haitian, Native American and among them only ONE has been a Blue Blood with ties back before the USA was made.
BTW - I have seen each and every one of these ethnicities called "non-white" in the last year by conservatives.
Conservative = traditional
Liberal = tolerant; values generally more logic based
Many issues that I have with this "study"
First, the definition of liberalism includes: "in part, as caring about the well-being of vast numbers of people you'll never meet." This is not a value limited to liberalism at all. Many conservatives regularly attend religious ceremonies and pray for people they've never met. Some studies have claimed that conservatives donate more to charity than liberals.
Second, the definition of intelligence is not defined well enough. I'm a believer there are many types of intelligence: spatial, musical, mathematical, etc. Liberalism is "social" or "political" intelligence. A limited scope.
Third, from a personal standpoint (considering I am a far lefty leftist) I think pragmatism is a much bigger evolutionary advantage than strictly adhering to one political (or religious) philosophy.
Also, it is nearly impossible to find an unbiased, dependable and measurable test to prove that further mental evolution has occured in "liberals" and "atheists" - I'm sorry but I feel very uncomfortable calling people by simplistic labels :(
I say that as an Atheist.
I think it is a reasonable hypothesis that takingviews that are different of those around is a sign of intelligence.
But does this necessarily imply liberalism or atheism?
Sure, America as a whole is largely conservative and religious. But many people live in communities and peer groups that do not have these values. Many people, in short, grow up in peer groups that are liberal and atheistic. Thus, if they adopt these views, it is just a matter of following their conditioning.
Second, I find something offensive about the statement that liberals "have a belief in the welfare of millions of people they have not met."
This is really an unfair sterotype of conservatives. Government is basically a system of taking money from everybody by force, and using it to enact programs that people may or may not have the choice of "benefiting" from. Government sees very legitimate social needs, and answers them with a mandatory monopoly. The first point leads to a fact that money collected in the name of public welfare often goes to war. The second is that many "services" provided by the government end up causing a lot more harm than good - housing projects, farm subsidies, drug wars, foreign aid (id "guns for goons"), etc.
I actively think about the welfare of people in the world as a whole. I am a great believer in charities and NGOs. And I actively promote the abolition of the intellectual framework that has been most dangerous to human progress, livelihoods, and freedom - the idea of "mandatory monopoly government."
In effect, I am so conservative that I am anarchistic.
Does this mean that I have just taken the social values I have been raised with unquestioningly, and am thus of lower intelligence?
Ben, this comment it awesome! You just discredited a whole study in one post! Religion is a more recent trait, you're right. This study, I believe, is no better than any other in the sea of "studies" that show one group of humans to be more evolved than another. It is pseudoscience and bigotry with tragic results. Always has been. I'm a little ashamed of National Geographic for giving this the time of day. Perhaps Kanazawa can send his study to the International Association for Voluntary Sterilization. This study is a regurgitation of Hernnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve
"you're the 1 living everyday afraid of what a guy in the sky thinks about you...."
I'm not "afraid" what "a guy in the sky" thinks of me - I know (read as: John 3:16)
So they're smarter-in what way? And in what situations? And sure, I could get into the whole 'sure smacks of measuring the width of heads now, don't it' angle, but that'll just set some delicate egos on fire. And why do liberals and athiests have to prove superior intellect? What's the allegedly objective reasoning behind this study? I can't prove, but feel that the objective could potentially be a desire to prove the reasoning behind one's position, based on any findings that demonstrate an overall greater intellectual capacity-'See? we're right, because we're smarter.'
Never mind that one does not even need to be a physicist to observe the obvious-that questions of such nature, such as is there conciousness, a soul, free will, or God, are very very likely to exist comfortably within a 4D and 5D dimension. We're developing instruments to observe such, but they're primitive. In other words: attempting to define, explore, or dismiss, the nature of things or even non-things, on higher dimensional planes, using only a # dimensional mind, which the secularists insist is the case anyways, will net very poor results, if any results.
I feel, personally, that athiests are far better off simply stating personal bias-like vegetarians. Should a vegetarian say to me (and some have) "I don't eat meat out of personal choice, because this is what I believe animals to be", I have no argument, I'm cool. Just don't preach to me, we'll get along fine. But when they use the biological argument, well now. Same with athiests. I got no problem with a simple, much more practical, and not at all a sweeping statement-"I choose to not believe in God, or that there is meaning to it all, or conciousness or mind."
But no, they gotta go and do exactly what many of the more fundamentalist Christians do (and yes, there are many, many liberal Christians, who talk of their faith as personal choice.) which is to make a sweeping pronouncement, as if it's fact, and that's all there is to it. Because even a cursory bit of research will easily demonstrate that it aint no fact. I'd love to see an athiest actually use the phrase I suggested. To describe it in terms of personal choice, nothing more. Because we all know, we're on a wee little planet, in a very large universe, with lot's of extra dimensions we don't have access to, so making grand pronouncements on the nature of it all, aint remotely rational.
And how does this relate to the study? So some liberals and secularists are allegedly smarter in some specific areas. Or perhaps slightly more adapted. So? Whoopy doo. I'm plenty smart6 myself, and have friends who are much smarter. Heck, I have a pagan friend whose smarter. Does that mean the pagans are right? Nope. It's generally meaningless, and once again, the athiests prove that their not quite getting the point. No big deal-welcome to the human race, lot's of spend lot's of time getting some points, not getting others, and generally having quite a good time mucking about in all of that.
In the meantime, I shall insist to any of my athiest friends that the least they could do, is to either keep their views to themselves, or at least have mininum social skills-simply hold that a certain viewpoint, or way of looking at things, is personal choice, and no more than that.
Perizade: a bit of disagreement here, based on a couple things, first, that fossils do not describe what any given lifeform does or does not know, or believe, and second, it's a kind of bogus claim-that the absence of belief proves animals were athiest. That's kinda silly. One does not define animals in terms of theistic or non-theistic tendencies. But that's mostly just a quibble.
It's along the line of "How does something without free will, no it has no free will? Or you could use conciousness as well.
Complete misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Complete misapplication of one's own moral and ethical beliefs to support one's crackpot theory.
Well, maybe it was good for a brief laugh, but there's the danger that some idiot (like a Scientologist) will belive it.