I have written yesterday about an article that a friend of mine posted on a social network (here). The article claims to explain the racial and anti-homosexual prejudices as the result of lower cognitive ability and general intelligence. It is also claimed that this prejudices are channeled via supporting conservative and authoritarian ideologies.
Ironically, the article itself presents an example of the phenomenon that it claims to investigate: it effectively affirms the existing among "liberal/progressive" community prejudice that the people supporting conservative ideologies or right-wing parties are less educated and less intelligent. This prejudice is particularly strong in the overwhelmingly left-wing academic communities, the members of which, by virtue of their higher level of education, consider themselves intellectually superior to the typically conservative "blue collar" public.
A few additional comments
1. The article discussed is essentially fascist in nature (or as a minimum extremely prejudiced). Indeed, one could conceivably obtain a very similar text by taking an article from a Nazi-time research journal and replacing the references to "conservative/right-wing ideologies" by "Jews/Communists/Liberal democracies", and the references to "lower cognitive abilities/intelligence" by references to "inferior race/scull shape".
2. It is quite embarassing that my friend posted such an article in a public forum, and that it is overlooked by most and even "liked" by some.
3. I admit the possibility that the article might be itself a part of another scientific experiment, similar to Milgram experiment or Standford prison experiment (or perhaps my friend is conducting such an experiment): the authors might have on purpose posted an extremely prejudiced peace of work in order to see the public reaction, and demonstrate how the prejudices similar to those, that have been historically discredited within various kinds of authoritarian/conservative ideologies, quite successfuly continue to exist under the disguise of "liberal/progressive/left-wing" (See my other post on non-liberal and non-progressive nature of many things called "liberal" and "progressive".)
I think you went way too far by comparing this paper with a Nazi-time article.
ReplyDeleteTake a look at Jonathan Haidt's research on political psichology (e.g. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/316/5827/998.full?ijkey=9S1Vi6nUWCqY.&keytype=ref&siteid=sci , see figure 1).
The conservatives consider in-group questions and authority questions as MORAL questions, whether liberals don't consider them that way.
watch also: http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
Although Haidt does not think intelligence has anything to do with political views, he acknowledges that liberals and conservatives view the world differently, and their positions are not mirror images regarding the so called "5 foundations of morality".
That's a very interesting topic, and surely an exciting discussion.
1. I don't think that people can be divided in "conservatives" and "liberals" - there are many shades of gray between the extreme cases. Being able to distinguish these nuances is precisely the case of the developed "cognitive ability".
ReplyDelete2. I also think that "liberals" are very often not really liberal: http://vpuller.blogspot.com/2012/01/about-liberalism-why-i-use-quotation.html
Identifying "liberals" with left wing parties is a feature of American politics. It is not always so in other countries, e.g. in France, where socialists are not necessarily perceived as liberals. And even in the US this is certainly not true in respect to economic views: "neo-liberals" - supporters of economic freedom - are always Republicans.
3. In my opinion there are more similarities between extreme left and extreme right than differences. Taken to the extreme they produce respectively communism and fascism - two very similar totalitarian systems. Unfortunately, for historical reasons "communism" is not considered as big an evil as fascism, even though communists committed (and continue to commit) more crimes than fascists/Nazis. Still, red flags and Che Guevara portraits are considered somehow more acceptable than Nazi uniforms.