Liberalism
razib | February 24, 2010Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent:
The origin of values and preferences is an unresolved theoretical question in behavioral and social sciences. The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, derived from the Savanna Principle and a theory of the evolution of general intelligence, suggests that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences (such as liberalism and atheism and, for men, sexual exclusivity) than less intelligent individuals, but that general intelligence may have no effect on the acquisition and espousal…
razib | January 18, 2010Another idea, Professor Is a Label That Leans to the Left:
The overwhelmingly liberal tilt of university professors has been explained by everything from outright bias to higher I.Q. scores. Now new research suggests that critics may have been asking the wrong question. Instead of looking at why most professors are liberal, they should ask why so many liberals -- and so few conservatives -- want to be professors.
A pair of sociologists think they may have an answer: typecasting. Conjure up the classic image of a humanities or social sciences professor, the fields where the imbalance is…
razib | March 28, 2009Faith in science and social conservatism:
Except for crime and gun control, faith in science is associated with socially liberal positions. For guns and crime, the direction of the relationship is liberal, but the relationships are not statistically significant.
I've dug through the GSS on this and this seems about right. Even on topics where many would assume that conservatives trump liberals, there isn't a strong difference. For example, Genetically Modified Foods:
The main exception seems nuclear energy. But the key is social liberalism; there's a lot of sympathy for economic…
razib | March 11, 2009The Center For American Progress has a new report out profiling the ideological disposition of the American populace. It simply repeats the old finding that the United States prefers Left-liberal policies a la carte to a far greater extent than the label liberal. This is natural, the electorate tends to favor lower taxes and greater spending simultaneously. I can't but notice the similarity with atheism here; many more Americans adhere to the atheist position than are willing to call themselves atheists. But in the younger cohorts this disjunction seems less noticeable, so I wonder if much…