Finally I Understand You Right Wingers - You Are "Evolutionarily Familiar"

Liberals and Atheists Smarter? Intelligent People Have Values Novel in Human Evolutionary History, Study Finds
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100224132655.htm

ScienceDaily (Feb. 24, 2010) — More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.

The study, published in the March 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Social Psychology Quarterly, advances a new theory to explain why people form particular preferences and values. The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years."

"Evolutionarily novel" preferences and values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have and our ancestors probably did not possess. In contrast, those that our ancestors had for millions of years are "evolutionarily familiar."

"General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions," says Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles."
An earlier study by Kanazawa found that more intelligent individuals were more nocturnal, waking up and staying up later than less intelligent individuals. Because our ancestors lacked artificial light, they tended to wake up shortly before dawn and go to sleep shortly after dusk. Being nocturnal is evolutionarily novel.

In the current study, Kanazawa argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel. So more intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be liberals.

Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) support Kanazawa's hypothesis. Young adults who subjectively identify themselves as "very liberal" have an average IQ of 106 during adolescence while those who identify themselves as "very conservative" have an average IQ of 95 during adolescence.

Similarly, religion is a byproduct of humans' tendency to perceive agency and intention as causes of events, to see "the hands of God" at work behind otherwise natural phenomena. "Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid," says Kanazawa. 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. "So, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to go against their natural evolutionary tendency to believe in God, and they become atheists."

Young adults who identify themselves as "not at all religious" have an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, while those who identify themselves as "very religious" have an average IQ of 97 during adolescence.
In addition, humans have always been mildly polygynous in evolutionary history. Men in polygynous marriages were not expected to be sexually exclusive to one mate, whereas men in monogamous marriages were. In sharp contrast, whether they are in a monogamous or polygynous marriage, women were always expected to be sexually exclusive to one mate. So being sexually exclusive is evolutionarily novel for men, but not for women. And the theory predicts that more intelligent men are more likely to value sexual exclusivity than less intelligent men, but general intelligence makes no difference for women's value on sexual exclusivity. Kanazawa's analysis of Add Health data supports these sex-specific predictions as well.

One intriguing but theoretically predicted finding of the study is that more intelligent people are no more or no less likely to value such evolutionarily familiar entities as marriage, family, children, and friends.

 

Moen,

Have you ever seen the movie Idiocracy?

 

Unfortunately, I have....

Idiocracy

The purpose of the program set up by the Pentagon, called the "Human Hibernation Project," is designed so that the military can save their best men for when they're needed most. According to the officers heading the project, too many times the talents and expensive training of the best pilots and soldiers go to waste during times of peace. So they enlist Bauers (Wilson), the most under-achieving average guy they've got, to be the test subject for the initial hibernation experiment. Also participating in the top-secret program is Rita (Rudolph), a prostitute who agreed to take part in exchange for dropping some criminal charges against her, among other things. Of course, the experiment, which was to last only a year, goes under due to the arrest of Officer Collins, who is busted for heading a prostitution ring. Seeing as though he was in charge of the experiment, one of the only ones who knew of its existence, and "due to a lot of top-secret red tape... and the massive scandals and base closure that followed, Joe and Rita were forgotten about. Written by Slider
Joe Bauers, an Army librarian, is judged to be absolutely average in every regard, has no relatives, has no future, so he's chosen to be one of the two test subjects in a top-secret hibernation program. He and hooker Rita were to awaken in one year, but things go wrong and they wake up instead in 2505. By this time, stupid people have outbred intelligent people; the world is (barely) run by morons--and Joe and Rita are the smartest people in America. Written by Anonymous

 

Oh come on, that movie was hysterical!

Brawndo, it's got electrolytes!

 

That study also states;

I read that as saying liberals are more generous. However, that has been proven to be the exact opposite; http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/conservatives_more_liberal_giv.html.

 

I just get my kick on how Moen is avoiding the " context" he asked for on the war thread.......and avoiding the spending thread in it's entirety. Out of sight, out of mind.......

Cmon Moen, ya know I have to keep you on your toes

 

Hard core elitist libs can't be bothered with facts- facts destroy their arguments!

 

Well Jack, let me be honest with you. Most threads from the very beginning head off on some obscure tangent and within 3 or 4 posts have nothing to do with the topic this one included, have attracted people only interested in playing "Gotcha!", and quickly boil down to entrenched political positions that are well-known to everyone here already. I admit that I lose interest in continuing with many of them mostly due to boredom.
I do like starting topics more than posting to them but often prefer to stay out of them and watch where they go. That is actually more entertaining than trying to talk to some of these "Evolutionarily Familiar" folks. Now I have research in a peer reviewed journal that allows me to understand why.
Keep entertaining me guys! You are priceless.

 

Moen,

I am not criticizing the study in question, but the analysis of the study and conclusions drawn by the author of article in the OP is a bunch of biased misleading crap. Specifically paragraphs 1, 5, 6, & 8.

 

The analysis is simply a contrast of the data and known human evolutionary characteristics. For the majority of human existence, we held pretty consistent behavioral traits due to environmental pressures. Comparing behaviors that wouldn't have been advantageous in the natural world with those exhibited by people with more liberal viewpoints vs. those with more conservative or religious beliefs one can delineate two distinct groups and test their IQ levels. With an N of over 20,000 participants, I think that the conclusions are certainly worth more investigation but are not completely out of the range of possibilities.

 

Way too much is based on extremely subjective labels such as "conservative" "liberal" religious" etc. This study seems to me to be one where the writer has determined the conclusion and molded the "evidence" to support his theory.

 

Perhaps you should actually learn how to apply knowledge. For example, the practice of questioning the validity of reading material would be classified as evolutionary novel. Accepting everything you read as fact would be evolutionary familiar.

The first paragraph of that article claims that more intelligent people are statistically more likely to exhibit political preferences that are evolutionary novel. In paragraph 5, the definition of conservative is listed as " caring mostly about their family and friends" and liberal "caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with". I could ask 1,000 people to define the words conservative and liberal and nobody would give those answers. My guess is that the Kanazawa did not intend the use of the words "conservative" and "liberal" to be political. We will never know since we don't actually have the study.

It seems quite clear however that the author of the article is using Kanazawa's findings to support his own political agenda. Now in paragraph 6 it gets really interesting. This clown (the author) quotes data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to support Kanazawa's study which he has already taken out of context. What the hell is the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health? What are their credentials? What data? Furthemore, the data is of the opinion of adolescents, in other words, teenagers. Now find me a teenager who even understands what a "conservative" or "liberal" is much less be able to classify themselves one way or the other. And even if they could, most do not have the requisite knowledge to make such a distinction in the first place.

Now this is the best part. When Add Health asked these teenagers to classify themselves as "conservatives" or "liberals" (in 1994), what definition of the words was given to the teenagers. I promise you it was not the same definition as that provided by Kanazawa. Therefore the use of the data to support Kanazawa is automatically flawed.

Since I could not have stated my conclusion any better, Moen read above!

 

Since our libs seem preoccupied at the moment, I checked the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. "The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health is the only nationally representative study of adolescent sexuality." That makes for some interesting context in conjunction with liberal and conservative

 

That have anything to do with republicans not being able to get la*d?

 

And just exactly how is that related to anyone's IQ? Oh! I get it. You are changing the topic again.

 

It has to do with internal fluid clogs, brain pressure and other republican oriented handicaps.

 

Sex does? or your new topic?

 

Huh?

Just when you thought he couldn't get any more stupid.

 

Well the last on topic post in this thread was 5 days ago. Guess I missed something at the end of my post!

CHECKMATE!