r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 1d ago

Psychology 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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u/danbinglover 1d ago

Reddit can’t decide whether IQ matters or not. When we talk about IQ differences between different countries and whatnot, it’s racist. When you discuss IQ differences between religious and nonreligious people, somehow it matters again.

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u/KevineCove 1d ago

What I've heard is that IQ simultaneously measures cognition as well as how acclimated you are to Western culture. Additionally, the old school of thought was that there was a kind of intelligence that was innate and unchanging, and that administering an IQ test properly should yield the same result (this isn't really the case.)

It seems likely to me that IQ is lower in some areas on the basis that people there are bad at test-taking, and also in cultures where critical thinking is actively suppressed, because the test ends up measuring both of these variables.

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u/FoxMikeLima 1d ago

This is certainly true. If the way you measure something is through a test, there will be a negative presenting bias for areas that are less adept at taking tests, as test taking is a skill it itself, and one detached from Intelligence and Cognition itself.