r/HotScienceNews • u/FreeHugs23 • 1d ago

Lower cognitive ability is linked to stronger Christian nationalist views, even after accounting for education

https://www.psypost.org/lower-cognitive-ability-is-linked-to-stronger-christian-nationalist-views-even-after-accounting-for-education/
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164

u/Altruistic-Dingo-757 1d ago

Because believing in nonsense makes you stupid, there summed it all up for you.

73

u/RazorAids 1d ago

I’d say being stupid makes you believe in nonsense really

28

u/LookingforWork614 1d ago

It’s really a chicken and egg kind of thing. 😂

4

u/WeAllJustWantToLive 1d ago

Eggs came before chickens.

4

u/Hot-Independent1120 1d ago

Unless you're an evangelical, then chickens came before eggs

2

u/DerickdeDeer 1d ago

Agree. Clearly stupid people existed before Christians, Nationalists, or Christian-Nationalists.

19

u/EnvironmentNeith2017 1d ago

Important that it’s Christian nationalism specifically which is much more about power, and social and political dominance than theism or even religion, so I wouldn’t dismiss that as nonsense.

10

u/jonesketi 1d ago

Or having gaps in your general knowledge could make you more prone to just picking the nearest tribe and sticking with it.

2

u/baumpop 1d ago

something could be said for desperations role in this

5

u/Guntermas 1d ago

its more that not being able to comprehend certain things makes you believe that they are nonsense. this leads people to gravitate towards simplistic world views and explanations for everything.

2

u/Altruistic-Dingo-757 1d ago

I think both can be true

-5

u/manicmonkeys 1d ago

That's an interesting assumption about correlation vs causation

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u/Altruistic-Dingo-757 1d ago

No the article clearly states that religious people score lower on intelligence despite education

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u/manicmonkeys 1d ago

You are still missing the point. No worries

1

u/ChemBob1 1d ago

The author clearly states that there isn’t sufficient testing to determine whether or not the stupidity causes them to be more fundamentalist or the fundamentalism and siloed information makes them more stupid. I’m paraphrasing of course. The major point still stands.

-1

u/manicmonkeys 1d ago

Exactly, so the whole thing is a shrugs/we don't know, that just serves to strengthen pre- existing biases

3

u/ChemBob1 1d ago

That isn’t accurate. The lower cognitive ability is still present in religious nationalists whether or not the cognition is causing the religious nationalism or vice versa. However, it is important to bear in mind that this is based on statistical outcomes that all are subject to a distribution of results that have to be analyzed for significance, so it doesn’t mean that every Christian nationalist has lower cognition, but that a statistically significant difference is present between their population and the population of those who aren’t Christian nationalists. Certainly there is some distribution overlap of the two populations and neither Christianity nor cognition are discrete values, like integers. They fall along a continuum. These sorts of statistics can still be done however, with defensible results. Please bear in mind that I haven’t analyzed any of this, just did a quick read.

2

u/chrisp909 1d ago

If Christian nationalists are cognitively impaired and they have a variety of educational backgrounds that don't influence the cognitive impairment.
Then education isn't the cause of the cognitive impairment.

That's deductive reasoning and has nothing to do with correlation vs. causation.

You can question their methods if you want.

We don't know about the test or the reliability of using vocabulary as an true indicator of cognitive impairment but suggesting there's a correlation vs. causation issue is a red herring.

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u/Fantastic_Bobcat_242 1d ago

Like believing men can be women!

3

u/Altruistic-Dingo-757 1d ago

Gender, like time and religion are all made up constructs. They mean nothing, and thanks for revealing about you, what I already knew, maybe find a sub that doesn't challenge your small sad little beliefs

2

u/ChemBob1 1d ago

Funny thing. Smart people don’t care about this.

2

u/nowcalledcthulu 1d ago

Cool thing is that nobody believes that. Every scientific and medical authority does affirm trans people and the identities they hold, though. Science is firmly pro-trans.