Left Brain, Right Brain

I appreciate Megan's grain-of-salt point (and Reihan's old take on studies of this sort), but I wouldn't be surprised at all if these results were at least roughly correct, and your average liberal has some cognitive advantage over your average conservative. How could it be any other way? It isn't just that the left, far more than the right, tends to tell brainiacs what they want to hear - that they were born to rule, that the world is just waiting to be reshaped for the better by their combination of smarts and expertise. (Though of course right-wingers sometimes give in to this temptation as well.) It's that we live in a society that makes an aggressive attempt to select for intelligence in the formation of its elite, and then educates that elite in a university system that is liberal to the core - not left-wing, necessarily, or not anymore, but certainly not conservative either, unless you think (as some fools do) that Thomas Friedman qualifies as a man of the right. The modern meritocracy has evolved to bring up most of its pupils to be Friedmanites, a minority to be Chomskyites, and a vastly smaller minority to be actual conservatives. Small wonder, then, that if you're brainy in America, you probably call yourself a liberal - you were raised that way, after all. Whereas conservatives are the stupid party - the party of the Boston phone directory, not the Harvard Faculty Club, with some crankish intellectuals thrown in for ballast. Thus we have been, and thus we shall always be, until the world - or at least America - is forever changed, and elanor and niphredil bloom no more east of the Sea.

(See - like I said, crankish.)

Comments

some GSS data here and here. i recall seeing something where high IQ conservatives & liberals had slightly diff. intelligence profiles: liberals were more strongly verbal and conservatives more strongly visuo-spatial/mathematical. i'll post when i find it....

Posted by razib | September 11, 2007 12:29 AM

So Ross, were you "brought up" by the "modern meritocracy" to be a conservative? You're just a pawn in their little game with no free will of your own?

Posted by tgb1000 | September 11, 2007 3:12 AM

Maybe if today's GOP hadn't spent so much time cynically courting the stupid vote, and maybe, just maybe, if they hadn't nominated an born-again ex-drunk called "Dubya" to lead their party into the 21st century (thus obliging the intellectual wing of the party to fritter so much of its intellectual capital defending the things "Dubya" would inevitably say and do) -- maybe they'd be better able to shrug off the unfair yet persistent conventional wisdom about their mental acumen. Something about making beds and lying in them.

Posted by Bill | September 11, 2007 9:13 AM

You could also add that, in general, conservatives, not liberals, make fun of "pointy headed intellectuals".

Posted by keatssycamore | September 11, 2007 9:27 AM

I always wonder when I hear the term "Chomskyite" if the person using it actually knows anything at all about Noam Chomsky's views. It's truly incredible, the degree to which his opinions are distorted, and the ease with which people invoke him in decrying opinions he doesn't hold. For example, he's accused of supporting terrorist attacks (he has always denounced terrorism), of being a 9/11 conspiracy theorist (he is emphatically not), etc. I wonder if Ross has every seriously confronted Chomsky's work at all.

And before you all start screaming about Milosevic, his opinion on that has been wildly distorted too.

Posted by Freddie | September 11, 2007 9:51 AM

But, remember most normal people just follow their material interests, and then just match their political ideology to fit. If you're a poor black inner-city woman, you're very likely to be a "liberal", but that doesn't really mean anything about respect for the cognitive overclass.

Posted by Chris | September 11, 2007 9:52 AM

It's very odd to me, this ongoing belief that the GOP is the party of "regular people" and the Democrats are the party of elites, when in 2004 John Kerry won significantly among people who made under $50,000 and Bush won huge margins among the minority who make more than $150,000.

The point being: the liberal nature of the country's universities notwithstanding, the ongoing association of upper-class signifiers with liberalism and good-old-American-middle-class-common sense with conservatism is a silly fallacy, a stereotype without much truth to it.

Posted by SDM | September 11, 2007 10:13 AM

This is sort of plausible, but it's also pure speculation that could easily be checked against facts--did the people in the study go to colleges? Which ones? Not that I think there's any value in the study anyway.

Posted by BP | September 11, 2007 10:31 AM

the ongoing association of upper-class signifiers with liberalism and good-old-American-middle-class-common sense with conservatism is a silly fallacy, a stereotype without much truth to it.

The upper class has "conservative" and "liberal" contingents. So do the middle and lower classes. Just depends on which upper, middle or lower class you're referring to, and what you mean by liberal or conservative. (The lower class largely does not vote.) For many if not most "ordinary" people in America "conservative" connotes conservative social values of the less tolerant variety. Conservative economic & foreign policy opinions are a dime a dozen, and are rarely based on convictions that could be defended with any consistency by the ordinary non-economist or non-poly-sci expert. People with conservative social values do tend to be from the middle or lower class, but the point is less their income level than their relative provincialism and level of education. People who graduate from college or get advanced degrees are more likely to hold socially liberal views, and people can draw their own conclusions about what exactly that means. (Liberal academic brainwashing? Or just having acquired a broader view of right vs. wrong, the inevitable byproduct of higher education?)

Posted by Bill | September 11, 2007 10:55 AM

Ross writes: "It isn't just that the left, far more than the right, tends to tell brainiacs what they want to hear - that they were born to rule, that the world is just waiting to be reshaped for the better by their combination of smarts and expertise."

I guess Ross hasn't been paying attention to what's been happening to his beloved right over the past few decades.

Newsflash, Ross - your beloved right has been taken over by the biggest pack of "born to rule" assholes this country has ever seen. They think they're anointed by Jeezus.

Smarten up.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 11, 2007 11:07 AM

You might find this post from Mixing Memory interesting. It's a cognitive scientist's take on the report (he finds it a bit perplexing, to give away the ending).

Posted by Justin | September 11, 2007 11:30 AM

Actually, the intellectual rule of the left began as a small rag-tag movement in the sixties, peaked in the seventies, and, despite a bitter end crowd at such places as Daily Kos and the New York Times editorial page, is presently in difficult straits. How else can one explain such a desperate move as the "Betray us" ad in the Times. It is true that the left commands the heights of academia, Hollywood, and media culture, though on the basis of a rather seriously cracked foundation.

I should say that over time the such "minority" intellectual places as First Things, Commentary, New Criterion et al would be more solid harbingers of the intellectual future. The people involved are far fron being mere braniacs, as they have organic ties to the best intellectual and religious traditions of the West.

Posted by Peter Leavitt | September 11, 2007 12:15 PM

Hoo-ah.

Posted by Adam Greenwood | September 11, 2007 12:16 PM

I don't have full text, but if the results are drawn from a self-selected (who volunteered for the test) group of students at UCLA, pulling out from possible factors in that selection can be very difficult.

Bill -- the problem is that truth is not particularly a democratic or even meritocratic object. I don't think "brainwashing" per se is the cause of the more liberal social views of the more educated. That they move in more diverse circles where traditional (let's say) sexual morals are more likely to offend -- at the office party or at a party -- is more the root. The affluent and educated can "afford" (and benefit materially and socially from!) liberal social values, so long as (which they generally do) they settle down to something fairly conservative in actual lifestyle after a youthful period of sowing wild oats. It's difficult, people being the rootless and amoral go-along-to-get-alongers that they are, to see why this wouldn't happen, especially as it makes it easier to avoid any pain from one's own fairly consequence-free shennanigans before settling to a long marriage and 1.5 children before inevitable death.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | September 11, 2007 12:17 PM

It's very odd to me, this ongoing belief that the GOP is the party of "regular people" and the Democrats are the party of elites, when in 2004 John Kerry won significantly among people who made under $50,000 and Bush won huge margins among the minority who make more than $150,000.

SDM, you are conflating "liberal" with "Kerry voter" and "conservative" with "Bush voter."

People with what are generally considered liberal/progressive views are found disproportionately at the upper end of the income and (especially) wealth scales. They tend to vote Democratic. But the largest block of Democratic voters are racial and ethnic minorities, along with smaller numbers of white government employees, teachers and other union members.

These folks vote according to what they perceive to be their economic interests, but their views on a wide range of issues (e.g., environmentalism, immigration, abortion, gay marriage, international institutions, defense, etc.) by and large are not liberal/progressive. On many issues, in fact, these core Democratic voters are quite conservative, which is why the GOP has had such success over the past 40 years with "wedge issues" that undermine the Democratic base.

Posted by Simon | September 11, 2007 12:19 PM

I doubt the future belongs to any of the groups Peter mentions. The future belongs to a bunch of folks, and they're probably not going to like each other very much.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | September 11, 2007 12:22 PM

Moe, you may be right that Bush and co. (the last couple of decades? I didn't realize his nefarious career went back that far, gosh) thinking they are born to rule. The point, which you missed (as usual) would be that they didn't get there by telling _would-be intellectuals_ what they want to hear. Bush's electoral victories were not due to some tidal wave of eggheads.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | September 11, 2007 12:28 PM

Obviously, the tongue is planted in cheek here, but if we unpack the message behind the irony... Ross is universalizing from his own "elite" Ivy League experience, and framing the world in terms that describe his peers as conformist sheep and himself as a free spirit. So that means...

You are a tragically misunderstood genius, Ross! Congratulations! When do you start your Sophomore year?

Speaking seriously, the majority of American conservatives live in inland parts of the country where the educated "elite" is largely comprised of doctors, lawyers, bankers, corporate vice presidents, engineers, etc. They are intelligent, they are credentialed by respected universities, they have lots of money, and they are not the least bit liberal. Feel free to go through the election results county by county... the Republicans get a larger share of their votes in the suburbs than they do in rural areas.

There is, I think, a useful distinction between "intellectuals" who devote themselves to the life of the mind, and "intelligent people" -- many of whom view education as a mere credentialing process to get a nice, high-paying job and a big house in the suburbs. The former are generally more likely to either be idealistic liberals who want to change the world, or idealistic conservatives who want to preserve and/or bring back great traditions. Obviously, at the moment, there are far more intellectual liberals than conservatives in this country. But this is by no means a historical given.

The majority of successful, educated, influential people in this country are not "intellectuals." And the "big house in the suburbs" professional class is dominated by economic conservatives, regardless of their views about anything else.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | September 11, 2007 12:43 PM

TMoC replies: "Moe, you may be right that Bush and co. (the last couple of decades? I didn't realize his nefarious career went back that far, gosh) thinking they are born to rule. The point, which you missed (as usual) would be that they didn't get there by telling _would-be intellectuals_ what they want to hear. Bush's electoral victories were not due to some tidal wave of eggheads."

They sure weren't. They were the result of telling idiots what they wanted to hear while giving wealthy donors the tax breaks of their dreams. I didn't miss anything, though - the whiff of neocon stink has been ripe in the Repiglican hierarchy since the Reagan administration - Bush has just set it on fire.

Dumbya was busy with coke and gin at the time, but Cheney and Rumsfeld had, uh, "other priorities."

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | September 11, 2007 12:46 PM

People with what are generally considered liberal/progressive views are found disproportionately at the upper end of the income and (especially) wealth scales. They tend to vote Democratic. But the largest block of Democratic voters are racial and ethnic minorities, along with smaller numbers of white government employees, teachers and other union members.

Okay, okay, okay, waaaaaay too much assertion without evidence in this thread. Can we have some substantiation for all of the statistical claims that are being made here please?

Posted by Freddie | September 11, 2007 1:25 PM

Is it really in question that the largest _block_ of vote for Democrats is black voters? At rates often around 90%. Maybe not enough voters to be numerically the largest, but I'd be surprised.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | September 11, 2007 1:33 PM

When I first started following political conversations on the internet more than a decade ago, I was surprised by conservatives' constant reference to those on the left as members of "the under-class." In criticizing the left those on the right commonly presumed that those on the left were motivated by "class envy," that their views both arose from and contributed to their lesser economic status, etc. Those on the left were "unproductive" and life's "losers." Those on the right were "productive" and virtuous.

Then came welfare reform.

With breath-taking speed, the left was transformed from the "under-class" into the "elite."

If there is a conservative here with a scrap of honesty, and even a modicum of ability to laugh at yourselves, you'll admit that my observation is absolutely right on.

These conversations -- about the "kind of people" who hold particular political views, are absurd, vile and incredibly destructive.

I'll just leave you with a thought from Thomas Jefferson:

"I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality. I know too well the weakness and uncertainty of human reason to wonder at its different results. Both of our political parties, at least the honest part of them, agree conscientiously in the same object--the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good."

Posted by esmense | September 11, 2007 4:31 PM

I think Jefferson is partly out to lunch here, frankly. On _some_ matters -- at least the social/religious/sexual axis of politics, I think the disagreement is not merely about means of promoting good, but about what that good is. Most traditionalist conservatives have a fairly radically different view of "the good life" than either economic laissez-faire libertarians or traditional liberals. At the very least, they have different _bounds_ to the range of "the good life." Jefferson's optimism and meliorism made him blind to how much "good" men could differ not only over means but over ends. Perhaps (I'm not sure) the radical worldview divergences within a peculiar _policy_ convergence that appear now would not have been plausible to any mind of his time, in any case.

I think esmense's observation is not "absolutely" right on -- it's partly and complicatedly sort of half-way "right on". The anti-egghead branch of conservatism and the "we are your best & brightest and we know what's good for you" element of liberalism were genuinely present long before welfare reform. If you don't doubt it, you may wish to consult the Kennedy, Nixon, Eisenhower, or Stevenson campaigns, among others.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | September 11, 2007 4:47 PM

Marquis of Carabas --

I was talking about specific political arguments made quite frequently in the not too distant past. And making a simple, ironic point -- many of the same people who made those disdainful arguments against liberals as society's losers yesterday today disdain them as society's elite. It's impossible for both arguments to be true, and unlikely that either of them is.

What I was not doing was making a comment on the relative class status, comparative intellectual pretentiousness or actual intellectual capacity of members of any political party or ideological leaning. I think both intellectual capacity and pretentiousness are pretty fairly distributed across the political spectrum.

Personally, I believe political leanings are most determined by experience and self-interest. And one of the tragedies, for a democracy, in a political conversation that falsely presumes political leanings are determined by merit and virtue -- intellectual or moral -- is we lose the capacity for respectful interchange and the opportunity to learn from others experience or reach some understanding of their interests (and therefore a better understanding of our own and nation's as a whole.)

As for yesterdays "best and brightest" -- many of them were Republicans. (Kennedy's appointments were often bi-partisan.) That term applied to men of industry and the rising managerial class, not simply, or even primarily, the political class.

I don't think Jefferson would disagree that good men can differ not only as to means but as to ends. But, in either case, whether they differ over means, ends, or both, the vast majority of people promote the means and ends they believe best serve "the public good."

Posted by esmense | September 11, 2007 6:34 PM

esmense -- after you elaborate, I have nothing much to disagree with.

Though it could be true that 1) liberal _ideas_ and agendas tend to derive from the top-elite types who run law schools and major newspapers and 2) liberal _votes_ come to a large extent from lower educated and lower income people.

If I recall, the last couple of elections showed that Democrats won handily among those with post-graduate degrees and those without a high school degree, but lost the college educated. This would suggest that a very rough model of "elites + losers" isn't completely awry. There's obviously more to it than that, but it's not total nonsense or even completely inconsistent. Which side of this alignment is emphasized will depend on which way the political winds are blowing, and how the most votes may be picked up.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | September 11, 2007 7:42 PM