Anti-intellectualism, political ideology, and religiosity

Anti-intellectualism and political ideology in a sample of undergraduate and graduate students.

Laverghetta A, Stewart J, Weinstein L.

Psychol Rep. 2007 Dec;101(3 Pt 2):1050-6.

To estimate correlations for scores on a student anti-intellectualism scale with scores on a measure of political conservatism, 235 students were given a survey containing a student anti-intellectualism scale, a political conservatism scale, and a demographics questionnaire identifying the participants' sex, college classification, ethnicity, political party affiliation, and self-described political ideology. The political conservatism scale contained two factors, Religiosity and Economic Conservatism, both of which were scored separately in addition to an overall Conservatism score. Students' Anti-intellectualism scores were correlated with Political Conservatism scores (1), with Religiosity scores (2), and with Economic Conservatism scores (3). An analysis of variance indicated a significant difference in students' Anti-intellectualism scores based on college classification (4). Specifically, freshmen had significantly higher scores than graduate students.

Department of Psychology and Human Ecology, Cameron University, Lawton, OK 73505-6377, USA. alaverghetta@cameron.edu

1. r = .37, p less than .01
2. r = .42, p less than .01
3. r = .17, p less than .05
4. F4,233 = 2.27, p less than .04

To Think or Not To Think

There is an expanding body of evidence pointing to innate neurocognitive differences between liberals and conservatives. It is well known that conservatives are more likely to be religious, and liberals to be atheistic. It is also well-established that liberals and atheists tend to be better educated and to score higher on IQ tests.

Conservative religious and liberal atheists differ in their criteria for making moral judgements, and these differences parallel Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development.

I'll start with a partial list drawn from familiar material, and I will continue to expand the information.

1. Reduced activity of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), an area devoted to detecting discrepancies, in conservatives versus liberals. The ACC has been dubbed the "truth center":

Differences in brain activity of conservatives & liberals [ Amodio, D. M., et al. (2007). Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism. Nat. Neurosci. doi:10.1038/nn1979. [Abstract] ]

2. Differences in personality profiles of believers versus atheists:

Personality and Religiosity

Here are a couple of pertinent videos: