Are Liberals More Intelligent than Conservatives?

I saw this in Psychology Today and just shook my head (even though it was suggested by one of my favourite bloggers there) - but luckily, other psychologists are now weighing in to dispute this crazy notion. Here was the graph that started it all.

Among the things you should know are 1) Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and 2) Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) 3) verbal intelligence (VIQ) and performance intelligence (PIQ) 4)  It is common among the highly educated for VIQ to be significantly higher than PIQ (see for example Kaufman & Lichtenberger, 1999). 5) Moreover, children who struggle with VIQ but who have perfectly solid PIQ scores are more likely than their counterparts to drop out of school (Romi & Marom, 2007). 6) Instead, his definition of “more intelligent” is biased toward those with relatively higher VIQs and away from people with relatively higher PIQs. 7) In an in-depth study of the political orientation of college professors, Gross & Simmons (2007) reported that 62.2 percent of professors identified as liberal, while only 19.7 identified as conservative.  Also as people age (especially men) they become more Conservative.


Well that was some of it anyway.  Read the whole article.