Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario, Canada, served as lead researcher for a study that had some not so surprising results. According to his team’s findings, there is a significant positive correlation between prejudice, low intelligence, and social conservative ideology, reports LiveScience.

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Not only are children with low IQs more likely to be prejudiced adults, Hodson uncovered a hidden bias that exposes the relationship between prejudice and conservatives:

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an e-mail to LiveScience.

Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood.

Briain Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, believes that this study will trigger a storm of controversy:

They’ve pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics, said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. When one selects intelligence, political ideology, and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it’s bound to upset somebody.

Interestingly, politics seemed to be the connecting force between “brains” and “bias.” The study found that the inability of children with low intelligence to understand and empathize with the perspective of others — especially those of different ethnicity and class — was a clear indication that they would embrace right-wing ideology:

Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions. The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this,” Nosek said, referring to the new study. It’s not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists.

The working definition for “social conservatives” for this study’s purposes relied upon participants’ agreement with statements such as:

‘Family life suffers if mum is working full-time,’ and ‘Schools should teach children to obey authority.’ Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as, ‘I wouldn’t mind working with people from other races.’

Hodson is very clear that he doesn’t want people to think that he is characterizing all conservatives as unintelligent. He points to the example of men, in general, being taller than women — though there are some women who are taller than men — as evidence of the generality of the study.

My speculation is that it’s not as simple as their model presents it, Nosek said. I think that lower cognitive capacity can lead to multiple simple ways to represent the world, and one of those can be embodied in a right-wing ideology where ‘people I don’t know are threats’ and ‘the world is a dangerous place‘. … Another simple way would be to just assume everybody is wonderful.

In simplified terms for any conservatives that may be reading, this study seems to prove the popular wisdom that all Republicans may not be racists, but all racists are more than likely Republican.

It also begs the question, since many Democrats of color are social conservatives:  Are their political perspectives also informed by prejudice — as this study suggests — or religion?

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Using language that compares abortion to slavery and the infamous “three fifths” clause of the Constitution describing blacks as subhuman, these anti-choice messages attack African-American females with loaded words.

Instigated on Juneteenth, a day founded to celebrate blacks’ liberation from true slavery, the Radiance Foundation has used this date to make an offensive case, claiming legal access to abortion shackles blacks in modern chains.

Through statements such as “The 13th Amendment Freed Us. Abortion Enslaves Us,” and “Abortion Makes Three Fifths Human Seem Overly Generous,” the Radiance Foundation has co-opted the suffering African-Americans have endured to promote its pro-life agenda. Their justification? “Roe v. Wade has made a mockery of Civil Rights history by offering destruction and bondage instead of possibility and freedom,” according to their press release. But black leaders are balking at this simplistic line of reasoning.

Rep. Barbara Lee issued a statement blasting what she called “race-based billboards that… stigmatize women of color and perpetuate myths about parenting skills.” Yet some people agree that abortion is disproportionately killing children of color as part of a larger conspiracy to keep the number of African-Americans from growing. Leftist news site Think Progress reports:

Like other similar campaigns, the new slavery billboard is based on the conspiracy theory that abortion is actually a secret plot by groups like Planned Parenthood to execute “Black Genocide,” since the African American community has a higher rate of abortions than whites. In reality, as the Guttmacher Institute notes, the higher abortion rate reflects a greater prevalence of unintended pregnancies resulting from, among other factors, a lack of access to effective contraception. This problems, ironically, is exactly what groups like Planned Parenthood actively seek to solve.

But this theory, nonetheless, has some some powerful believers. Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) said last year that African Americans were better off under slavery than they are now, because abortion was illegal then. Franks also has a bill to criminalize race- or sex-based abortions. GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain actually served as a spokesman for a group pushing the black genocide theory, cutting a radio ad that accused Democrats of wanting to kill “black babies.”

Regardless of whether such a conspiracy could be true, the fact that abortion is a choice renders such an implausible secret plan ineffective. It is precisely because women have the right to an abortion, or to carry a child to term, that they maintain power over their lives. And power is freedom. The Radiance Foundation and other anti-choice groups who want to seize this freedom by reducing women’s options in life are actually trying to recreate slavery by making women submit to dogma. This is a bondage to which African-American women will never return.

As we head into the fall election season, stories from Nevada and Delaware suggest that some of the loving, peaceful souls in the Tea Party faction of the right are prepared to turn violent if they don’t get their way: and not merely against evil liberals and leftists, but against those in their own party who are insufficiently committed to their wingnut world view.

To wit, the GOP chair in Delaware who was threatened with a “bullet in the head” for supporting the establishment Republican candidate, rather than the ultra-right wing Christine O’Donnell.

And then there’s Danny Tarkanian, who lost in the Nevada Senate primary to Sharron Angle. Tarkanian notes that as he was going around the state there were conservative activists angry with him for being unwilling to advocate armed rebellion against the government.

So is this what we have to look forward to if the far right doesn’t get it’s way in November, or other elections? Do they turn violent if they don’t win, or don’t convince enough of their own to support their far-right views?

Text continues after Pictures of the week gallery:

Read entire article at TimWise.org

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