People who consider themselves liberals or atheists tend to have higher IQs than those who are more religious or conservative, a new study suggests.
Higher IQs also seem to make men less likely to cheat. Men with higher IQs place a higher value on sexual fidelity than men with lower IQs, although the same association with intelligence and monogamy was not found in women, according to the study.
Evolution
The reasons underlying the differences can be explained by evolution, contends study author Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
In evolutionary terms, religion stems from humans' tendency to try to make sense of natural phenomenon. "Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid," Kanazawa said. "This innate bias toward paranoia served humans well when self-preservation and protection of their families and clans depended on extreme vigilance to all potential dangers."
Likewise, humans have probably also evolved to have a natural tendency toward being conservative, which Kanazawa defines as having a strong preference toward caring for relatives and friends.
Problem solving
The purpose of intelligence, on the other hand, is to help humans cope with and solve novel problems. Therefore, more intelligent people are more likely to have religious and political preferences that go against the grain, such as atheism or a rejection of a higher power, and liberalism, which is provisionally defined in the study as caring about people who are unrelated to you.
"More intelligent individuals are more likely to recognise and comprehend evolutionarily novel entities and situations," Kanazawa said. "Some of these evolutionarily novel entities and situations form the basis of values, preferences and lifestyles."
The study is published in the March issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.
Experts question the findings
Ilya Somin, an associate professor of law at George Mason University, took issue with the study's definition of liberalism. "Concern for others not related to you" could apply to any political outlook, including religious and social conservatives who donate large amounts of money to churches, or even libertarians, who believe unfettered market forces provide the greatest benefits to all.
"He has an idiosyncratic definition about liberals caring about people who are not genetically related to them," Somin said. "That could be perfectly consistent with being a libertarian or a conservative as well."
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* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: S.Kanazawa@lse.ac.
Abstract
The origin of values and preferences is an unresolved theoretical question in behavioral and social sciences. The Savanna-IQ InteractionHypothesis, 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.
First published on February 16, 2010
Social Psychology Quarterly 2010, doi:10.1177/0190272510361602
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