Intelligence and Prejudice
Intelligent people are just as prejudiced as less intelligent people - but toward different groups
The two graphs below explore the relationship between intelligence and prejudice. The first shows the correlation between people’s intelligence levels and how prejudiced they are toward various groups. The second compares the average levels of prejudice for individuals of below- vs. above-average intelligence. The main takeaway is that, contrary to a popular view in psychology, intelligent people are just as prejudiced as less intelligent people, but toward different groups.
The graphs come from a paper by Mark Brandt and Jarret Crawford titled “Answering Unresolved Questions About the Relationship Between Cognitive Ability and Prejudice.” Here’s the abstract:
Previous research finds that lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice. We test two unresolved questions about this association using a heterogeneous set of target groups and data from a representative sample of the United States (N = 5,914). First, we test “who are the targets of prejudice?” We replicate prior negative associations between cognitive ability and prejudice for groups who are perceived as liberal, unconventional, and having lower levels of choice over group membership. We find the opposite (i.e., positive associations), however, for groups perceived as conservative, conventional, and having higher levels of choice over group membership. Second, we test “who shows intergroup bias?” and find that people with both relatively higher and lower levels of cognitive ability show approximately equal levels of intergroup bias but toward different sets of groups.
Two notes on the data used in the study:
The measure of intelligence was the Wordsum test, which is a ten-item vocabulary test. Though far from perfect, Wordsum is a serviceable proxy for IQ.
The measure of prejudice was people’s “feeling thermometer” ratings for each of the groups in the study. The feeling thermometer rating scale ranges from 0 to 100, where 0 means “unfavorable and very cold” and 100 means “very warm and favorable.” As the authors note:
we define prejudice as “a negative evaluation of a group or of an individual on the basis of group membership.” This definition focuses on the psychological phenomenon behind prejudice (i.e., negative affect) and removes value judgments such as whether or not the prejudice is unjustified or unjust. These latter criteria are difficult to prove decisively and likely differ depending on the perceiver’s social context and time in history.
Anyway, it’s a good little paper and worth reading if you get a chance. You can access a free version here.
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Arguably, it makes sense to feel colder towards people who've opted in (or failed to opt out of) a group defined by a belief system or lifestyle.
For example, if you believe that Christian fundamentalism has mostly negative social consequences, you'll likely have a dim view of the Christian fundamentalists who propogate those negative consequences. When then asked to report the feeling tone that arises when contemplating only this aspect of a person's identity, all a person has got to go off is their overall attitude towards Christian fundamentalism, which could be shaped by rational factors. The paradigm might be indirectly assessing someone's answer to the question "do you think Christian fundementalism is mostly good or mostly bad?"
People can change their beliefs (e.g. religion) and lifestyle (e.g. military career). They'd can't change the colour of their skin. At the very least, I'd say that appraising someone negatively for their race shows a different kind of prejudice than appraising someone negatively for a changeable group affiliation. The former feels more like what is ordinarily meant by "prejudice," which connotes pre-judgement that is unreasonable.