From Noah Carl, “Can intelligence explain the overrepresentation of liberals and leftists in A
From Noah Carl, “Can intelligence explain the overrepresentation of liberals and leftists in American academia?”It is well known that individuals with so-called liberal or leftist views are overrepresented in American academia. By bringing together data on American academics, the general population and a high-IQ population, the present study investigates how much of this overrepresentation can be explained by intelligence. It finds that intelligence can account for most of the disparity between academics and the general population on the issues of abortion, homosexuality and traditional gender roles. By contrast, it finds that intelligence cannot account for any of the disparity between academics and the general population on the issue of income inequality. But for methodological reasons, this finding is tentative. Furthermore, the paper finds that intelligence may account for less than half of the disparity on liberal versus conservative ideology, and much less than half the disparity on Democrat versus Republican identity. Somewhat surprised by the amount of over-representation that can be explained by IQ. I’ve always had my money on some form of self-selection – like not caring about monetary reward – as being the overwhelming reason for high liberal presence in academia. -- source link
#politics#academia