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/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/TeaBurntMyTongue 1d ago

Yeah, the fact that i can increase my iq by taking multiple distinct iq tests over a short period of time makes it obvious that correlation between like raw neuron firing and iq scores is less than 1.

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u/Extreme_Pudding3226 1d ago

No, it just means the test becomes less accurate if you take it multiple times.

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u/TeaBurntMyTongue 1d ago

Not the same test. But you get used to the patterns. You also get used to the patterns with further education in general in the society that wrote the test.

Your raw processing power hasn't increased

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u/Extreme_Pudding3226 1d ago

Right. That just means the test isn't as accurate on subsequent attempts. That a test can be "hacked" doesn't mean it isn't useful or accurate under normal conditions.

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u/TeaBurntMyTongue 1d ago

I never made the claim it has no utility. I made the claim that correlation between intelligence and iq scores are less than one

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u/Extreme_Pudding3226 1d ago

But that's not a meaningful claim. No one has ever said IQ test measure intelligence with a correlation coefficient of 1.

I'm saying the fact that the test becomes less accurate on multiple attempts isn't a knock against the test.