Noah Carl tries to sort out the relationships. (pointer from Tyler Cowen.)
I first bring together data on the political beliefs of three separate populations: academics, the general population, and a high-IQ population. I then calculate the proportion of each population that identifies with various political positions (e.g., thinking of oneself as a liberal, supporting the Democratic Party). The extent of overrepresentation for any particular position is simply the percentage-point difference between academics and the general population (i.e., the total length of the right-hand bar in Fig. 1). And the fraction of this overrepresentation that can be explained by intelligence is simply the percentage-point difference between the high-IQ population and the general population divided by the percentage-point difference between academics and the general population
The results:
Overall, intelligence may account for: most of the disparity between academics and the general population on the issues of abortion, homosexuality and traditional gender roles; none of the disparity on the issue of income inequality (but see Section 3.2); less than half the disparity on liberal versus conservative ideology; and much less than half the disparity on Democrat versus Republican identity.
The conclusion:
Possible explanations for the remaining overrepresentation comprise: self-selection on personality, interests, cognitive style or preferences; social homophily and political typing; self-selection on strength and stature; individual conformity; status inconsistency; and discrimination.
I have to believe that a lot of the over-representation comes from discrimination. If you ask left-wing academics, they will tell you that essentially all of the over-representation comes from intelligence. This tells you that they associate conservative beliefs with stupidity and are therefore almost certain to under-rate the intelligence of anyone who fails to chime in with the appropriate left-wing dogma when relevant topics come up in casual conversation.
But read the paper for yourself. I think it is an important one.
An obsession of conservatives who never ask why most business, clergy, and military are conservatives.
Well, those in business and the military, clergy may need some more thought, deal with objective criteria for success or failure. Business people live by profit and loss. The military survive by defeating the enemy, or at least surviving an encounter. Academics, on the other hand, can live for decades under self-deception of some theory that has no objective test or, as with socialism, denial of the results.
Academics are usually very competitive. Especially natural science. Competing for grants and prestigious publications is brutal from what I’ve heard. Many PhDs have told me it’s highly political and not remotely a pure meritocracy, but of course nothing is. Also, most military careers have little to do with front line active combat.
Huh, I admit I haven’t really given that specific question much thought, but it seems obvious to me that the reason you don’t have a lot of progressives in those institutions is because progressives want to destroy them.
Conservatives, on the other hand, do not wish to destroy academia, but to restore it.
They never ask that because those questions because the answers are pretty obvious to anyone who isn’t being obtuse. I’ll address by category:
– Military officers are almost always conservative in any society, and will be conservative within the context of how that society defines “conservative.” (e.g. De Gaulle would not be considered conservative in the context of American politics but more or less defines conservative for France). The more accurate tendency is that they tend to be nationalists, which in most societies overlaps strongly with “conservative.” This is a recurring phenomenon across societies and epochs, and is not surprising to see it here.
– Clergy are only “conservative” due to the current alignment of US political parties. Before they became the secular humanist party, the Democratic party was the Catholic party for about 125 years. Clergy (Christian clergy that is- Jewish clergy are and almost always have been consistently liberal politically). Throughout US history the Christian clergy have been evenly split conservative vs liberal because until the 70s almost all conservative vs liberal arguments were conducted within the context of intra-Christian disagreements. Clergy on the whole were strongly on the side of the civil rights movement and pro- (but much less strongly) New Deal and Great Society. Where clergy are and always have been “conservative” is that they have always been anti-Communist and anti-radical left. They have taken that position mainly because the radical left in all its forms has almost always been militantly atheist. If you can’t figure out why clergy would be anti- militant atheism you need your head examined.
-Business is only “conservative” if you equate “conservative” with “Republican”. If you make that equation then you have clearly not been paying attention to anything that has gone on in the republican party over the past decade. Small business owners do tend to be strongly conservative across the spectrum, but once you get to medium and larger entities business leaders are only consistently conservative in the fiscal sense. “Fiscal” conservative vs liberal is almost always about the size and scope of the public sector vs the private sector. People in the private sector are (gasp!) usually on their own side in that fight. The main non-fiscal way business leaders are consistently conservative is in their hostility to unions. Given that business management’s primary job is to take the side of their shareholders in their wage disputes between shareholder and employee, this should surprise approximately no one.
My theory has always been that academics consider themselves to be experts, and the left would rather have experts make decisions for us than allow for bottom-up spontaneous order. Therefore experts lean left, because they want to have the ability to affect policy.
+1 for this.
In all my conversations with pro-abort leftists, I’ve never heard them give an argument that displayed any knowledge of biology or property rights. Not once.
Do you have any evidence of discrimination against conservatives in the natural sciences? From my experience (mostly in biology and computer science) I find it a bit hard to believe.
So, conservatives are less intelligent on average. GTK.
Does every occupation have to be balanced in age, sex, race, and political leaning, or only the good ones? Who wants to defend affirmative action for racists?
> So, conservatives are less intelligent on average. GTK.
That claim is very tenuously made by the paper, and they acknowledge lots of limitations (such as the fact that the test for intelligence focused on verbal rather than mathematical ability) and counter indications.
There is also this analysis: http://politicsandprosperity.com/2011/01/04/intelligence-personality-politics-and-happiness/ which argues that while most intelligent percentages of the population may not be card carrying Republicans, they are staunchly anti-Democrat. (Note: the author admits that his datasets are limited, but his reasoning is not obviously flawed).
> Does every occupation have to be balanced in age, sex, race, and political leaning, or only the good ones?
What? Neither I nor any conservative I know cares about equal representation. In fact, some degree of unequal distribution is even considered a obviously good thing because it means you probably aren’t living in a socialist hell-hole.
(Just out of curiosity, what do you make of the gender gap in high-intelligence professions, like computer science and engineering?)
The question is really whether academia is honest when it claims to be judging its members solely on intellect. Obviously, it is not.
How many feminists are pushing for more women doing jobs like trash collecting.
I would not discount the fact that a career in academia is becoming increasingly financially risky with limited financial payout. Intelligent conservatives are more likely to search out careers that are financially stable (while still providing sufficient intellectual stimulation).
It is funny how we assume education doesn’t work. High IQ people get in, then the indoctrination commences. But nobody thinks it works. It’s weird.