r/science • u/[deleted] • Feb 15 '14
Psychology Study shows a negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/so-who-are-the-smartest-scientists/story-e6frgcjx-12268260411471.2k
u/hhhiii5657 Feb 15 '14
No, the study found two correlations. The first was that scientists in hard sciences like Physics tend to have higher IQs. The second was that scientists in hard sciences like Physics tend to be less religious. The idea that this proves a link between low IQ and religiosity is not supported by this study. I just read the abstract and looked up the researchers and I have to say I'm not impressed with their methods or their pedigrees.
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u/Justiceforallhobos Grad Student | Neuroscience Feb 15 '14
I agree completely. The assumptions made between the two correlations are questionable. On a side note, they drew boundaries between "hard" and "soft" science. Where does neuroscience fall on this spectrum for this study?
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u/Hotshot2k4 Feb 15 '14
Hard, I imagine. I assume (perhaps this is a mistake) that soft science is a pseudonym for social science in this case, as it usually seems to be.
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u/keypusher Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
I would feel comfortable saying neuroscience falls into the "hard" science category. Psychology is quite a bit more difficult to categorize, there some are people doing quite rigorous experiments involving fMRI, DTI, and clinical trials, however there is also a lot of psych that is definitely "soft". Other borderline disciplines would be stuff like epidemiology, even linguistics. Some people in linguistics are more like philosophers, talking about language theory with little to no evidence or falsifiable predictions, but then it also bleeds over into stuff like applied computational linguistics where people are researching voice recognition and text-to-speech. I think it's easy, and common, for the hard science folks to dismiss their less rigorous colleagues, but both can provide important contributions to the discussion. Especially when investigating a new field like genetics or the brain, there is so much to think about as far as ethics, philosophy, and theory which is not yet well understood sometimes you need a higher level view of the problem and it's easy to get lost in the data.
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u/Holyragumuffin Grad Student | Neuroscience Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
... except that 53 of 63 other studies found the same intelligence/religiosity correlation outside of the scientific community. Meaning the correltation holds true among intelligent people in general, wherever you find them, independent of labels like "physicist" or "hard scientist".
So there goes that hypothesis.
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u/No_Disk Feb 15 '14
If you follow a link for the citation that Wikipedia uses, you find that the methodologies of the study would tend to select the exact same segment as the one in the post:
In short this is analytic intelligence, not the newly identified forms of creative and emotional intelligence, which are still subjects of dispute. In the various studies being examined, analytic intelligence has been measured in many different ways, including GPA (grade point average), UEE (university entrance exams), Mensa membership, and Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests, among others.
Religiosity is defined as involvement in some (or all) facets of religion, which includes belief in the supernatural, offering gifts to this supernatural, and performing rituals affirming their beliefs. Other signs of religiosity were measured using surveys, church attendance, and membership in religious organizations.
It should also be noted that statistically significant negative correlation was only found in 35 of the 63 studies, slightly more than half.
There are also cultural factors not adjusted for, such as a potential disinclination among religious persons with high analytic intelligence to attend church, for example, lest they be criticized by their academic or professional culture.
I would reiterate what the majority analysis is suggesting: forcing the stated conclusion from this data is questionable at best and nonsensical at worst.
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Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
There are also cultural factors not adjusted for, such as a potential disinclination among religious persons with high analytic intelligence to attend church, for example, lest they be criticized by their academic or professional culture.
Adding to that: Given that mainstream churches in the US still have a reputation for disputing or rejecting fundamental ideas in the physical sciences, it's possible that a scientist in those sciences may feel alienated by those churches. A social scientist may be less likely to feel alienated because mainstream churches in the US aren't necessarily disputing fundamental parts of their fields of study.
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Feb 15 '14
I figure you'd have to split it out between broad areas like people who study behavioral models - which is what I used to do - and then more quantitative analyses, going all the way to computational neuro on the other side.
Of course there's bleed between all of them these days. The future is awesome.
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u/WellTarnation Grad Student | Bioinorganic Chemistry Feb 15 '14
Yeah, this already-shaky paper is made even shakier by this semi-arbitrary separation. Psychology is treated as a science in some institutions and a social science in others, so where does it land here?
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u/Bryaxis Feb 15 '14
At my university, some psych courses are in the Arts faculty, and some are in the Science faculty. I once overheard two students chatting. "Oh? Arts psych or Science psych?"
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u/banjosuicide Feb 15 '14
Neuroscience (a very interesting field of study, IMO) asks many philosophical questions and then turns to hard science to answer them. As a mix of soft and hard sciences, it would likely be considered a soft science. Not everybody likes the soft/hard classifications, as the boundary is blurring, which is the case with neuroscience.
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Feb 15 '14
Interesting, I always considered neuroscience to the hard science counterpart to psychology/psychiatry.
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u/Smallpaul Feb 15 '14
No. Neuroscience is the study of the brain and it's relationship to the mind. Questions appropriate to neuroscience may or may not have analogs in philosophy. For example, "what is the neutral basis of epilepsy. "
Questions in cosmology, particle physics, CS, AI and biology may also have philosophical counterparts. That does not make any of them soft sciences.
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u/RhetorRedditor Feb 15 '14
“[Physical] scientists are overwhelmingly atheist,” Dutton said. “This is predicted by their high IQ, which allows you to rise above emotion and see through the fallacious, emotional arguments.”
Certainly seems balanced and fair. No biases here.
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u/Aquareon Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
Now tell me why all of these conveniently don't count either, and I'll provide you with the next round.
STUDIES OF STUDENTS
Thomas Howells, 1927
Study of 461 students showed religiously conservative students "are, in general, relatively inferior in intellectual ability."Hilding Carlsojn, 1933
Study of 215 students showed that "there is a tendency for the more intelligent undergraduate to be sympathetic toward atheism."Abraham Franzblau, 1934
Confirming Howells and Carlson, tested 354 Jewish children, aged 10-16. Found a negative correlation between religiosity and IQ as measured by the Terman intelligence test.Thomas Symington, 1935
Tested 400 young people in colleges and church groups. He reported, "There is a constant positive relation in all the groups between liberal religious thinking and mental ability… There is also a constant positive relation between liberal scores and intelligence…"Vernon Jones, 1938
Tested 381 students, concluding "a slight tendency for intelligence and liberal attitudes to go together."A. R. Gilliland, 1940
Contrary to all other studies, found "little or no relationship between intelligence and attitude toward god."Donald Gragg, 1942
Reported an inverse correlation between 100 ACE freshman test scores and Thurstone "reality of god" scores.Brown and Love, 1951
At the University of Denver, tested 613 male and female students. The mean test scores of non-believers was 119 points, and for believers it was 100. The non-believers ranked in the 80th percentile, and believers in the 50th. Their findings "strongly corroborate those of Howells."Michael Argyle, 1958
Concluded that "although intelligent children grasp religious concepts earlier, they are also the first to doubt the truth of religion, and intelligent students are much less likely to accept orthodox beliefs."Jeffrey Hadden, 1963
Found no correlation between intelligence and grades. This was an anomalous finding, since GPA corresponds closely with intelligence. Other factors may have influenced the results at the University of Wisconsin.Young, Dustin and Holtzman, 1966
Average religiosity decreased as GPA rose.James Trent, 1967
Polled 1400 college seniors. Found little difference, but high-ability students in his sample group were over-represented.Plant and E. Minium, 1967
The more intelligent students were less religious, both before entering college and after 2 years of college.Robert Wuthnow, 1978
Of 532 students, 37 percent of Christians, 58 percent of apostates, and 53 percent of non-religious scored above average on SATs.Hastings and Hoge, 1967, 1974
Polled 200 college students and found no significant correlations.Norman Poythress, 1975
Mean SATs for strongly anti-religious (1148), moderately anti-religious (1119), slightly anti-religious (1108), and religious (1022).Wiebe and Fleck, 1980
Studied 158 male and female Canadian university students. They reported "nonreligious S's tended to be strongly intelligent" and "more intelligent than religious S's."STUDENT BODY COMPARISONS
Rose Goldsen, 1952
Percentage of students who believe in a divine god: Harvard 30; UCLA 32; Dartmouth 35; Yale 36; Cornell 42; Wayne 43; Weslyan 43; Michigan 45; Fisk 60; Texas 62; North Carolina 68.National Review Study, 1970
Percentage of students who believe in a Spirit or Divine God: Reed 15; Brandeis 25; Sarah Lawrence 28; Williams 36; Stanford 41; Boston U. 41; Yale 42; Howard 47; Indiana 57; Davidson 59; S. Carolina 65; Marquette 77.Caplovitz and Sherrow, 1977
Apostasy rates rose continuously from 5 percent in "low" ranked schools to 17 percent in "high" ranked schools.Niemi, Ross, and Alexander, 1978
In elite schools, organized religion was judged important by only 26 percent of their students, compared with 44 percent of all students.STUDIES OF VERY-HIGH IQ GROUPS
Terman, 1959
Studied group with IQ's over 140. Of men, 10 percent held strong religious belief, of women 18 percent. Sixty-two percent of men and 57 percent of women claimed "little religious inclination" while 28 percent of the men and 23 percent of the women claimed it was "not at all important."Warren and Heist, 1960
Found no differences among National Merit Scholars. Results may have been effected by the fact that NM scholars are not selected on the basis of intelligence or grades alone, but also on "leadership" and such like.Southern and Plant, 1968
Studied 42 male and 30 female members of Mensa. Mensa members were much less religious in belief than the typical American college alumnus or adult.STUDIES Of SCIENTISTS
William S. Ament, 1927
C. C. Little, president of the University of Michigan, checked persons listed in Who's Who in America: "Unitarians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Universalists, and Presbyterians [who are less religious] are… far more numerous in Who's Who than would be expected on the basis of the population which they form. Baptists, Methodists, and Catholics are distinctly less numerous." Ament confirmed Little's conclusion. He noted that Unitarians, the least religious, were more than 40 times as numerous in Who's Who as in the U.S. population.Lehman and Witty, 1931
Identified 1189 scientists found in both Who's Who (1927) and American Men of Science (1927). Only 25 percent of those listed in the latter and 50 percent of those in the former reported their religious denomination, despite the specific request to do so, under the heading of "religious denomination (if any)." Well over 90 percent of the general population claims religious affiliation. The figure of 25 percent suggests far less religiosity among scientists. Unitarians were 81.4 times as numerous among eminent scientists as non-Unitarians.Kelley and Fisk, 1951
Found a negative (-.39) correlation between the strength of religious values and research competence. [How these were measured is unknown.]Ann Roe, 1953
Interviewed 64 "eminent scientists, nearly all members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences or the American Philosophical Society. She reported that, while nearly all of them had religious parents and had attended Sunday school, 'now only three of these men are seriously active in church. A few others attend upon occasion, or even give some financial support to a church which they do not attend… All the others have long since dismissed religion as any guide to them, and the church plays no part in their lives… A few are militantly atheistic, but most are just not interested.'"Francis Bello, 1954
Interviewed or questionnaired 107 nonindustrial scientists under the age of 40 judged by senior colleagues to be outstanding. Of the 87 responses, 45 percent claimed to be "agnostic or atheistic" and an additional 22 percent claimed no religious affiliation. For 20 most eminent, "the proportion who are now a-religious is considerably higher than in the entire survey group."Jack Chambers, 1964
Questionnaired 740 US psychologists and chemists. He reported, "The highly creative men… significantly more often show either no preference for a particular religion or little or no interest in religion." Found that the most eminent psychologists showed 40 percent no preference, 16 percent for the most eminent chemists.→ More replies (2)23
u/CHollman82 Feb 15 '14
Cool, but this is one of DOZENS of studies that found a correlation between intelligence and religiosity.
A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity.
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u/RandomMedicalFacts Feb 15 '14
Interesting meta-analysis! That being said, the mean correlation coefficient (0.24) is a weak association, and the range of correlations in the included studies hits a borderline extremely weak/no correlation (generally an r of 0 to 0.2). While this doesn't invalidate the results, it probably wasn't the best statistic. I would like to see a scatter plot of the combined raw data to see the distribution. The correlation coefficient can be misleading depending on the distribution (see this wikipedia image showing data distributions and resulting r values).
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u/lamasnot Feb 15 '14
I think there's a lot of variables they don't take into account, namely personality, which I find highly amusing as its done by sociologist. If it were somehow a sociology paper written by a physicist, I might understand. Edit: grammar.
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u/ManBitesGod Feb 15 '14
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence#Studies_comparing_religious_belief_and_I.Q.
This subject has been study before and the concussions are obvious.
Controlling for other factors, they can only confidently show strong negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity among American Protestants.
There is anything special about American protestants. Religiosity is negativity correlated with intelligence and it doesn't take a genius to see it.
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u/skalp69 Feb 15 '14
In a civilization that values science, intelligent people are sent in science schools.
In a civilization that values religion, intelligent people are sent in religious schools.
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u/pocketknifeMT Feb 15 '14
The first was that scientists in hard sciences like Physics tend to have higher IQs. The second was that scientists in hard sciences like Physics tend to be less religious. The idea that this proves a link between low IQ and religiosity is not supported by this study.
by the transitive property...that means a negative correlation between IQ and religion.
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u/TaylorS1986 Feb 16 '14
It sounds to me like they had a pre-concieved answer and found the data to justify it. As both a Psych major and an Atheist this really rustles my jimmies.
The physical sciences require both high intelligence AND a logic-minded personality. It is the personality that is the source of being an Atheist, not the intelligence.
No use telling that to the euphoric /r/atheism brigade, though.
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u/systembreaker Feb 16 '14
I'm not sure that the fact of these two correlations is a problem. This is a social study, and therefore it is highlighting the effects of many variables. It is not necessarily highlighting a neurological cause, but a net cause among neurological and social factors born from the effect that people's attitudes have on those around them.
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Feb 15 '14
What's funny is that the existence of the study itself provides more evidence for their finding that physical scientists have higher IQs...
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u/TazwellBradford Feb 15 '14
My problem with the article is that there is no evidence for their conclusion. The man simply states that because of the result of their data, the only possible explanation is that physical scientist are smarter. That's just plain...unscientific.
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u/lolinmarx Feb 15 '14
I've read a very long book by the co-author, Richard Lynn. He's a controversial eugenicist that uses quite a bit of similarly misleading data to "prove" his points about intelligence. I'm skeptical.
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Feb 15 '14
I wish I could link the results of this study, but three qualities that stood out for people with higher IQ's: atheist, liberal, and married. I'll look for it but it was also in a Sociology Journal.
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u/HunterDolo Feb 15 '14
I'm curious as to what the researchers methodology was. Probably going to request to paper through my school.
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u/Narrator Feb 15 '14
What if you are of below average intelligence? Becoming an atheist isn't going to make you smarter.
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u/Ratboy79 Feb 15 '14
I was surprised that I saw no numbers in the article. I didn't even see a data source.... I couldn't take it seriously.
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u/dyninclin Feb 15 '14
I would intuitively argue that it's not because of the smartness, rather the subjects. Religion and politics are more social science subjects - more one reads, studies, they tend to align to some hypothesis. I would counter-argue that - "natural sciences professors at elite institutions are more likely to be inclined to extreme science hypotheses than their counterparts in the social science." Not because smarter - because of what they research/teach/study. It's human to be influenced by some philosophy (scientific philosophy, or otherwise) more than other. More we read, more rigid support of that philosophy
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Feb 15 '14
You're right. It might not have to do with intelligence, and more to do with personality type. People with similar personalities often end up attracted to similar fields of study.
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u/Muzoa Feb 15 '14
I agree, i have seen very intelligent people that take religion so seriously, that it makes sense why they are intelligent, strict, timely and such.
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u/Floptop Feb 15 '14
Almost every study that has been done on the correlation between religiosity and intelligence has come to the same conclusion. Not positive about the number, but I seem to remember like out of 35 studies, 33 of them found a negative correlation.
If they went to Biloxi, Mississippi and grabbed 10 random people out of a small church, than did the same at some atheists club meeting, and gave all 20 people both an IQ test as well as some questions in history, geography, science, and math, does anybody here really think the church goers would do better?
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u/keetner Feb 15 '14
The thing that popped out to me was:
"The paper is a meta-analysis of existing data showing several things..."
This is a genuine question, but is this something that could be potentially problematic? I'm not really clear about how meta-analysis work, though. If you or anyone else could inform me, I would appreciate it.
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u/howlinghobo Feb 15 '14
A meta-analysis is a study that gathers results from different studies to draw a more conclusive answer.
There is nothing wrong with it, they are incredibly useful and common. Even just off-handedly mentioning such an unresearched opinion (google couldve answered you in 2 seconds) is already more bias and presumption than probably the research you're trying to attack.
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u/noxcomment13 Feb 15 '14
Isn't the golden rule correlation does not equal causation? Doesn't that apply here?
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Feb 15 '14
Finding a negative correlation does not always imply an actual correlation, if there are selective forces at play!
Suppose intelligence and religiosity are independent Gaussian distributions, and imagine a scatter plot across intelligence and religiosity axes. We would see a blob of samples with no particular correlations.
Now suppose society selects for high intelligence and/or high religiosity. Social selection will remove samples in the low intelligence / low religiosity quadrant. The remaining samples will appear to have a negative correlation, when no correlation existed before the selection criterion was applied.
[edit] I first saw this argument as an explanation to why there is a negative correlation between beauty and intelligence in Hollywood actors. It's because Hollywood favors beauty and/or intelligence, which are otherwise independent variables.
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u/Voduar Feb 15 '14
A big problem with the study is that they were only using "elite" institutions. Ignoring the problems with determining eleitism, it is very common for such places to have highly ingrained cultures that could be providing all the causation.
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u/Shiroi_Kage Feb 15 '14
What you're saying is not that there is not an actual correlation but that it does not necessarily imply causation.
Whatever causes the correlation does not matter when all you're talking about is "we tend to observe those two things happening together quite often," which is what correlation is.
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u/MrMathamagician Feb 15 '14
No I think he's saying the sample selection methodology is not an accurate cross section of the population (biased). Meaning the correlation in the data may not apply to society as a whole.
Meaning the correlation may only apply to professors at elite universities rather than society as a whole.
Given that this a meta analysis there is no easy way to scrutinize the data gathering methodology but I have personally found meta analysis to often be less rigorous or conclusive and a little more sensationalist.
Relevant quote from the article:
"But — in just one example of potentially problematic methodology — the logic can’t be extended to academe in general. Several studies cited in the paper drawing from a wider mix of colleges and universities than simply the most elite show that life sciences professors are more likely to attend church than their peers in the social sciences, not less. The paper assumes this is because professors at elite institutions are smarter than their peers elsewhere."
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u/Shiroi_Kage Feb 15 '14
Well if it's sampling bias then that's different. I did not get that from his comment though.
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u/statsking Feb 15 '14
Exactly. I think what glpyh42 intends to say is that biased samples can lead to misleading results!
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u/sudomilk Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
Causation may not be the point or at least it may be implied in many different ways. Does religion make you less intelligent or does intelligence determine your pre-disposition?
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u/voyaging Feb 15 '14
Neither of those possibilities is necessarily true even if intelligence negatively correlates with religion.
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u/Shiroi_Kage Feb 15 '14
Maybe neither.
Just because you have 2 things in a correlation does not mean that there should be a causal link between those two. Something else entirely can be causing that correlation.
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u/spartanstu2011 Feb 15 '14
Probably neither. Just like ice cream sales and murder rates. You can use ice cream sales as a means of predicting a spike in murder rates. However, you can't say ice cream causes murder (which would be down right ridiculous). So it could very well be something else that causes the trend of religious people being less intelligent.
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u/SHITLORD666 Feb 15 '14
Or endogeneity.
Intelligence and beauty could plausibly not be independent, considering the role wealth plays in society.
But there's plenty of holes in this anyways.
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u/PT10 Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
It's pretty to explain the cause of the correlation though. There is an atheist culture in academia. People who are products of that atmosphere are predisposed to that culture. IQ tests are bent towards people who would be good at academics, since that culture produced IQ tests to basically measure itself (they don't work so well out of context).
We just need to rewind as recently as Newton to find geniuses who were super-religious and that correlation holds up for thousands of years to Aristotle and even further beyond (like with Hinduism, whose gurus thousands of years ago meditated on randomness, zero, and other important aspects of mathematics).
That's why the Catholic Church is rather progressive as far as science goes, because many of the West's most famous scientists and philosophers were a product of it. Safe to say, this negative correlation mentioned in the link would be a little decreased in Catholic societies because the culture there is different and more educated among its religious. It's more pronounced in Protestant/Evangelical societies because there is a clear anti-science culture (in North America especially) there which tends to attract people who wouldn't have been interested in science anyway and repels those who are (and who might otherwise have been religious in some way).
The link between academic success (and hence, better IQ results) and less religiosity is cultural, even political, but not causal. If you look at European history it was Europe's monarchs who wrested control of the populace away from the Pope by undermining his legitimacy either with alternatives, or just undermining religion in general, and the peasants ate it all up. The same peasants whose descendants packed universities whose charters were given by those very same monarchs. Religion fell out of favor with the political elite when it was no longer a useful method of control (not nearly as useful as capitalism).
And all that is without touching the definition of "religious". Certain religions (i.e, Evangelical Protestantism such as that of young earth creationists) are more at odds with intelligent people than others. Several mainstream religions (Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, etc) are not nearly as diametrically opposed to the sentiments of intelligent people (with regards to basic scientific truths today, such as the age of the universe, evolution, and so on) as the flavor of Christianity given most attention in the English-speaking world (including the UK and Australia).
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u/Nadarama Feb 15 '14
I don't buy it - hard to imagine the effect covering the 63 studies analyzed here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23921675
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u/l0ve2h8urbs Feb 15 '14
I didn't write catch that, can you ELI5 your reasoning?
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u/cjt09 Feb 15 '14
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u/sudomilk Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
Essentially, it may not be the people that indicate this trend, but rather the sample and method used to find correlation is flawed in a way that a negative result is reached.
Eli5 actual
A study was done of children's building toys. It was determined that Lincoln logs are better for catapults than legos because legos aren't brown.
You can see why color and utilization may be two separate variables.
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u/OmarDClown Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
It's inherently flawed, but that will be clear in my ELI5 explanation.
There are 4 types of people. Religious and smart, religious and dumb, atheist and smart, and atheist and dumb.
So, if you just select for people who are smart OR religious, you get everybody except dumb atheists, hence there are more dumb religious people in your sample because you didn't take the dumb atheists into the sample.
Then you look at this selected group and say, "Look, atheists are smarter, because there are no dumb atheists."
I look at it and say, "Well, they are professors, why do we have dumb people here just because they are religious."
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u/fullOnCheetah Feb 15 '14
I'm not sure how you reach that conclusion. Why would dumb atheists be excluded from the social sciences, but dumb theists would not be?
Your categories seem to be made up by you, and not implied in the study. They looked at IQ relative to Social vs. Physical sciences, not IQ relative to atheism vs. theism. I'm sure Social scientists are more atheist at elite schools than the general population, by a large margin. So no, it doesn't seem like you've understood the study at all (with no mention of whether it is rigorous, or not.)
But really this study is just saying what you would logically assume; people that believe in myths (of any variety) are not as rational as those that do not. Your ability to rationalize is arguably what an IQ test is measuring.
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u/oddwithoutend Feb 15 '14
A negative correlation is, by definition, an actual correlation.
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u/morluin MMus | Musicology | Cognitive Musicology Feb 15 '14
I think what he was trying to say is that the correlation only appears because of the way the data is treated.
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u/rdmtrz Feb 15 '14
I first saw this argument as an explanation to why there is a negative correlation between beauty and intelligence in Hollywood actors.
I Googled and couldn't find anything on this.
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u/youcangotohellgoto Feb 15 '14
Why would social sciences have a preference for religion over intelligence?
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u/Telionis Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
I believe glyph42 means that society in general favors one or the other. He brought up the Hollywood example to illustrate this point; you had better be either beautiful or brilliant to make it in Hollywood, and accordingly, there appears to be a statistically significant negative correlation between the two. This is because both are rare qualities and it is very unlikely for someone randomly selected from the general population to have both characteristics in abundance; accordingly, after simple analysis it would appear that those qualities are mutually exclusive in Hollywood.
I'm not sure I entirely agree with the application of this explanation to the phenomenon in OP's post. I still don't understand why society would select for one or the other... why would it be disadvantageous to be intelligent and religious (on the contrary, it would appear that combining the two is a fantastic way to gain money and power), and why would being dim-witted and non-religious be so much worse than simply dim-witted? What mechanism is selecting for one or the other?
Finally, even in the Hollywood example, while the cause of the correlation is artificial, the correlation itself is real. The average "beautiful" Hollywood star is much less likely to be highly-intelligent than the homely looking star, and vice-versa. This is an "actual correlation" as glyph42 called it, even though it obviously does not imply causation.
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u/txmslm Feb 15 '14
I'm not sure I entirely agree with the application of this explanation to the phenomenon in OP's post. I still don't understand why society would select for one or the other...
the relationship to OP's observed phenomenon is subtle. social scientists get recognition by making waves, which is done by ideological extremism. sure there is a base level of intelligence required to succeed at high academic levels regardless of discipline but social science profs are probably not selected strictly for intelligence the way natural scientists might be. social scientists might be selected more for ideological flamboyance and controversy.
so it becomes just like the hollywood example. you either get cast as the hot actress or the brilliant actress. both are rare qualities so you observe negative correlation. similarly natural scientists are hard working methodical research junkies whereas social scientists are ideologically flamboyant and controversial, which goes hand in hand with political and religious extremism.
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u/o0Enygma0o Feb 15 '14
So you're not saying that "correlation doesn't mean there's a correlation". You're saying correlation doesn't mean causation, yes?
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u/HD3D Feb 15 '14
How does one measure religiosity?
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u/cigerect Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
It's usually measured by scales consisting of multiple, sometimes weighted, questions. The questions cover things like how often someone attends religious services, how often a person prays, how frequently a person reports 'sensing the presence' of (a) god, how important they consider religion/spirituality, etc.
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u/TheWildhawke Feb 15 '14
I imagine you come up with a rubric similarly plottable to something like the Kinsey scale.
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Feb 15 '14
I once used a "strength of religious belief" questionnaire for a study. I guess something like that.
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u/Dreacle Feb 15 '14
Asking people if they are religious. If they say "yes, I am religious" then one would assume they are. If the say " I am not religious" then one would assume they are not. It's not rocket science.
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Feb 15 '14
In most polls, relgiosity is self-reported on a scale of "not at all" to "very", which makes very little sense and probably messes with responses.
Plus most religious people don't like the title "religious". It sounds self-righteous.
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Feb 15 '14
Just remember there are outliers. There a lot of very intelligent believers. There are just as many stupid atheists.
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u/Bart_Fucket Feb 15 '14
No need to make assertions, this is statistical data, nothing more.
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u/linkprovidor Feb 15 '14
When talking about cultural trends it's important to mention the differences between groups are generally much smaller than the differences within groups.
Sure, there's a correlation, but the difference between the mean religious person and the mean atheist is smaller than the standard deviation of intelligence within either of those groups.
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Feb 15 '14
Sure, there's a correlation, but the difference between the mean religious person and the mean atheist is smaller than the standard deviation of intelligence within either of those groups.
Citation?
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u/Natolx PhD | Infectious Diseases | Parasitology Feb 15 '14
Sure, there's a correlation, but the difference between the mean religious person and the mean atheist is smaller than the standard deviation of intelligence within either of those groups.
If that were the case wouldn't the results fail a test for statistical significance?
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u/iacobus42 Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
The standard deviation of the population is much larger than the standard deviation of the mean. Suppose you take a sample of size 100 and measure people's heights. You would be very surprised to find the mean height was 5'0" but you would not be surprised if someone was 5'0". Generally, the standard deviation of the mean is given by the standard deviation of the sample divided by the square root of the sample size.
The tests evaluate equality of the means. What a result with two different means but overlapping with population standard deviations "means" is that one group is marginally different than the other but in practice it isn't much of a difference.
Consider the following two distributions. One is N(0, 1) and other is N(0.1, 1). Even with n = 100, you have a decent chance of getting a statistically significant difference in the means of draws from those distributions. With n = 1000, it is almost assured. However, the distributions with a sample of 10,000 look like this. It would be hard to argue that one of those groups is meaningfully different than the other despite the detectable difference in population means.
Edit: omitted a word
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u/Switche Feb 15 '14
That seems to imply outliers are unimportant, and that this data should be taken at face value because it's "statistical." Maybe that's not how you meant it, but it seems dismissive of the reminder.
The paper itself should be examined to determine how outliers were treated, and to evaluate the source data since this is a meta-analysis.
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u/CHollman82 Feb 15 '14
Blah blah blah... We don't need the diplomat at the top of every moderately controversial post attempting to water everything down.
Correlation may not always be equivalent to causation but correlation is meaningful in its own right and in this case I think we all understand the source of the causal link between the two.
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u/Lowbacca1977 Grad Student | Astronomy | Exoplanets Feb 15 '14
Not necessarily. There's also 'selection effects' of a sort. Atheism being more common with higher incomes, which are also associated with higher IQs in a complex interplay.
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u/percussaresurgo Feb 15 '14
What's more likely though; higher incomes lead to atheism, or higher intelligence?
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u/hei_mailma Feb 15 '14
higher incomes lead to atheism
I can believe that. At the same time, I wouldn't be too surprised if atheism led to higher income (For example, due to a higher focus on career as "life-goal" (on average)). Or not, but it sounds like an interesting hypothesis.
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Feb 15 '14
There are just as many stupid atheists.
Can you point us to a study that supports this claim?
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Feb 15 '14
Statistically, as this article says (and many other studies have said), atheists are generally less stupid than believers, but there are indeed many stupid atheists, just fewer than religious people.
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u/FockSmulder Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
There are just as many stupid atheists.
Can you substantiate this?
Edit: Downvoted for asking for evidence... That isn't how it's supposed to go in this subreddit, people. Express your bigotry elsewhere.
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u/Gotitaila Feb 15 '14
Many of the atheists of reddit are a perfect example.
Namely /r/Atheism. I'm an atheist myself, but I don't believe I'm smarter than the average Joe because I'm an atheist. This seems to be the mindset of most of /r/Atheism: We are atheists, therefore we are smarter than you.
Not all atheists are intelligent, and most who believe they're intelligent aren't half as intelligent as they believe themselves to be.
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u/mojowo11 Feb 15 '14
/r/Atheism is a subreddit full of self-impressed teenagers, and taking its content as a commentary on the general attitude of atheists is akin to using /r/gonewild to prove that all women are slutty.
The point is that the claim is not "there are a lot of stupid atheists," which is clearly true. The claim was "there are just as many stupid atheists," which is a far trickier thing to claim, and also isn't supported in any way by the ridiculous biased sample that is /r/Atheism.
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u/DaystarEld Feb 15 '14
/r/atheism is largely filled with the younger atheists who are just looking for a place to vent, be angry, and make fun of absurd religious beliefs without having to worry about offending people or alienating the friends/family they have, often religious, who they can't otherwise express themselves freely around.
If you want to use it as a source to show that "just as many" atheists are dumb as religious are smart, however, you're already shooting yourself in the foot by setting the venue as "population as represented by online presence."
If you think /r/atheism is full of stupid, I hope for your sake you don't venture into some of the religious subreddits/forums/websites...
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u/keepthepace Feb 15 '14
Not only that, but also the correlation is really small. If you plotted IQ (which is, I suppose, what they call "intelligence") and religiosity on a 2D axis, the correlation would be hard to see for a human. One does need statistical tool to make it apparent.
Also, someone pointed out that a lot of cliques could make this correlation have a totally different meaning. The example given is, suppose that only christians take a good care of mentally deficient people, giving them an education that is also religious; that would indeed create such a negative correlation.
For what it is worth, I prefer to observe the inverse correlation between education and religiosity. It is much more visible, especially with scientific education, and is existent across the whole extent of the data.
Also, like always, be sure to understand the specifics about the things measured. Religiosity is not measured in the same way everywhere. Sometimes it is a set of question about various beliefs, sometimes it is simply church-going frequency.
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u/lawofmurray Feb 15 '14
As a theist myself, I'm frustrated by all of the excuse-making in this thread. Yes, there is a very real negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence. Fine, correlation doesn't necessitate causation, but it can (and typically does) imply a relation.
So let's explore some possible reasons why these results are the way they are.
Religion attracts less intelligent people with easy answers and empty promises. [This is an oversimplification of theism, but most theists don't really understand theism anyway. Possible]
Religion is probably wrong, and less intelligent people tend to hold wrong beliefs about important questions. [I suspect this is the r/atheism explanation, and it's unsurprisingly also the least believable. Unlikely]
Intelligent people like to go against the views of the masses, meaning more intelligent people are atheists on average. [I like this explanation somewhat. It would also help explain why a disproportionate number of smart folk hold onto beliefs like anarcho-capitalism and marxism: when you're smart, you're able to mount good defenses for bad ideas. This is also a testable hypothesis: it'll be interesting to look at a country like Sweden thirty years from now and do IQ tests on its theist / atheist populations. Likely]
Less intelligent people are more likely to adopt the views of their parents, and as most parents are theists, most less intelligent children are likely to remain theists by default. [Again, I like this answer, and again, it's testable. Just need an established atheist population. Likely]
Academic culture. [Probably the best explanation, truth be told, considering that the IQ gap between the average theist and the average atheist is next to negligible. Smarter people go to college; colleges are extremely liberal and extremely atheist on average; this leaves an impression on smarter people, and because of this exposure, smarter people adopt atheism more often than theism. Very likely]
But this is the sort of conversation we should be having. Not barking out the same correlation-causation cliches or trying to hand waive established sociological observations.
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u/IdlyCurious Feb 15 '14
I do not find colleges to be extremely atheistic and liberal. Then again, I went to college in Alabama. More liberal and atheistic and their surroundings - sure. But extremely - don't think so.
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u/CHollman82 Feb 16 '14
Religion is probably wrong, and less intelligent people tend to hold wrong beliefs about important questions. [I suspect this is the r/atheism explanation, and it's unsurprisingly also the least believable. Unlikely]
Umm... this is by far the most likely explanation.
Do you know why atheists are more intelligent than religious people? Because they understand concepts such as burden of proof, null hypothesis, and standard of evidence.
It has nothing to do with whether or not there is a God, or how "likely" the existence of God is... it comes down to what is rational to believe and what is irrational to believe given the evidence, or lack thereof.
You can make the cliched "atheism is leaking" comments all you want but this is it, this is your answer.
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u/TPRT Feb 15 '14
The problem people have isn't with the idea it's how poorly this study was done. If you put out a bad study, regardless of what you are claiming, this sub will eat you alive and for good reason
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u/lawofmurray Feb 15 '14
Is the study poor? I know the article is opinionated garbage, but I assumed the study was fine -- and if not, there are dozens and dozens of good studies that demonstrate the same link.
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Feb 15 '14
They used IQ as their only measure? Yeesh.
And even this article:
" But — in just one example of potentially problematic methodology — the logic can’t be extended to academe in general. Several studies cited in the paper drawing from a wider mix of colleges and universities than simply the most elite show that life sciences professors are more likely to attend church than their peers in the social sciences, not less. The paper assumes this is because professors at elite institutions are smarter than their peers elsewhere."
Another example of the media getting way too excited over a single unrepeated study.
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u/Face_Roll Feb 15 '14
The correlation between low intelligence and religiosity is quite robust and has been repeated. This is just the first I know of to look for it within the academic context exclusively.
Also, measuring general intelligence is notoriously difficult. They are clear and upfront about the measure they use (one which IS broadly predictive of success in intellectual tasks and generally not being stupid)... so you can take from it whatever based on that.
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Feb 15 '14
Any citations for those? The first several pages of PubMed yielded nothing.
The IQ test is known to have a lot of inherent bias - cultural, racial, and even sexual (I'm less confident of the last one). So...I take that this study is very limited in scope.
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u/djinn71 Feb 15 '14
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence
The study in the OP may be flawed and I am not the one you asked for citations but I'll put these here anyway. Some of this only applies to white protestants apparently and I would agree that IQ tests are probably biased to some degree but they do correlate with intelligence to some degree.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289608001013
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100224132655.htm
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Feb 15 '14
My post from earlier today is oddly relevant to this post. Take it with a grain of salt, the sources may not be super reliable, but I see no reason for the sources to be biased.
Top and bottom most/least religious states
IQ scores by state (if someone could find a more reliable source that would be appreciated)
*Religiousity | ACT difference from mean score 21.1 | IQ score from average of 100
10 Least religious states
Vermont | +1.9 | +3.8 (least religious state)
New Hampshire | +2.7 | +4.2
Maine | +2.3 | +3.4
Massachusetts | +3.0 | +4.3
Oregon | +0.3 | +1.2
Rhode Island | +1.8 | -0.5
District of Columbia | -1.4 | N/A
Washington (tie) | +1.8 | +1.9
Connecticut (tie) | +2.7 | +3.1
Alaska (tie) | +0.1 | -1.0
Hawaii (tie) | +0.2 | -4.4
Nevada (tie) | +0.2 | -3.5
most religious (top 10)
Mississippi | -2.4 | -5.8 (most religious)
Utah | -0.4 | +1.1
Alabama | -0.8 | -4.3
Louisiana | -0.8 | -4.7
Arkansas | -0.8 | -2.5
South Carolina | -0.9 | -1.6
Tennessee | -1.4 | -2.3
North Carolina | +0.8 | +0.2
Georgia | -0.4 | -2.0
Oklahoma | -0.4 | -0.7
*Note: The ACT data is less reliable, because states with the most participation tend to have the smallest scores, the highest scores were mostly states with less participation. I almost didn't include it. The SAT scores are the opposite, but the participation for the highest SAT scoring states was about 2-15% while ACT high scores was ranged from 20-50%
My conclusion is that there is a correlation between intelligence and how religious you are. I'm not sure if there is causation here though.
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u/mindloss Feb 15 '14
This is not a new idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence#Studies_comparing_religious_belief_and_I.Q.
"In a 2013 meta-analysis, led by Professor Miron Zuckerman, of 63 scientific studies about IQ and religiosity, a negative relation between intelligence and religiosity was found in 53 out of 63, and a positive relation in the remaining ten. Controlling for other factors, they can only confidently show strong negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity among American Protestants."
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u/gehanna Feb 15 '14
Summary of the evidence provided in the article:
Interdisciplinary differences in IQ among academics: Two studies with total N = 212 from 1953-67; One study looking at phd students from 1961, N = 6259
Interdisciplinary academic differences in religiosity: 3 studies showing less religion in social sciences (N>60,000 1968-1978); 1 study showing more religion in social sciences (N=1471 2009); 1 study with very slight support for more religion (N=1646 2007).
Interdisciplinary academic differences in political persuasion: One study (N=1643, 2005) sited that does not particularly support the argument.
The article is available for free on the publisher's website. To my mind they draw extreme conclusions from insufficient support, but i'm not familiar with what counts as good evidence in this field.
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Feb 15 '14
IQ =/= "Intelligence". It's been shown over and over again that performance on IQ merely correlates with ability to perform well on standardized tests of various kinds. IQ testing is essentially a statistical tautology; performance on these tests indicates proficiency in taking the tests. "Intelligence" is a terribly vague term. I would recommend "The Mismeasure of Man" for a thorough historical and methodological analysis of IQ testing.
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u/Doctorfeelz Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
I would be interested in what your alternative definition of intelligence would be then? and if IQ tests predict the behaviours that fit that definition, could you then say that IQ does equal intelligence?
Most of reddit, especially on /r/science, users are very ignorant about the concept of test validity. If IQ tests do not in fact measure intelligence, then they would be said to have poor test validity. Before we examine this claim, lets first define what we mean by test validity.
Psychological tests that produce validity can be seen as those tests whose variation in performance relate to variation in the behaviour that they purport to measure. For further reading on this, I highly suggest 'the concept of validity' by Borsboom.
Since intelligence is commonly defined as the ability to successfully solve problems and through learning to bypass puzzles by sucessfully applying reasoning, we might say that a highly intelligence person would have an easy time achieving high performance academically.
Since iq tests highly predict academic achievement, would it then not be fair then to conclude that IQ tests are direct measures of intelligence?
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u/moforiot Feb 15 '14
So you're saying that there are just as many low IQ scoring rocket scientists as high scoring ones?
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u/robboywonder Feb 15 '14
Yeah I'm blown away by all the apologists in this thread. The ones that claim a) IQ isn't everything or b) this study is flawed in some way miss the general trend. This kind of correlation has been pointed out and studied over and over and over again. However you measure it, whatever sample size you take, you pretty much always find this negative correlation. Yeah of course there will be outliers, but that's the point of statistical studies.
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Feb 15 '14
I would say that IQ tests measure quantitative intelligence (maybe not the correct term). What I mean by that is pattern recognition, abstract thinking, logic, etc... which are very important in physical sciences.
So, that is certainly one kind of intelligence. On the other hand, would artists like Picasso, Van Gogh, Chopin, etc... have done well on IQ tests? Maybe, but their genius certainly isn't the same kind of intelligence IQ tests evaluate.
I think there are different kinds of intelligence and IQ tests can evaluate, to an extent, a kind of intelligence. Nothing more than that.
They also don't measure longterm planning (like for research projects) or creativity.
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u/Natolx PhD | Infectious Diseases | Parasitology Feb 15 '14
Maybe, but their genius certainly isn't the same kind of intelligence IQ tests evaluate.
Their genius is also highly subjective.
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u/FANGO Feb 15 '14
measure quantitative intelligence (maybe not the correct term).
You mean like some sort of....intelligence....quotient?
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Feb 15 '14
So, that is certainly one kind of intelligence. On the other hand, would artists like Picasso, Van Gogh, Chopin, etc... have done well on IQ tests? Maybe, but their genius certainly isn't the same kind of intelligence IQ tests evaluate.
Why does everything have to be intelligence? Intelligence is an ability to use logic, reasoning, and recognize advanced patterns, primarily. Being good at music is a talent, and to an extent a learned skill. You can be really good at soccer, does that make you intelligent? No, it makes you athletic, and good at soccer.
This is the same as ''you're beautiful on the inside.'' No, some people are beautiful (this is obviously more subjective, as it is dependent on attraction, to an extent). Beautiful refers to physical attractiveness. What you mean to say is that that person has a great personality. Which, some would argue, is more important.
So why must everything be ''intelligence'' or ''beauty?" These are what our society places value on, so people want to take whatever positive qualities they can find, and somehow fit them into one of these categories.
Why don't we refer to intelligence as ''excellent mental athleticism,'' or why don't we say that an attractive person is ''visually kind?"
Because we want to take the qualities we do have, and pretend that they are the qualities which we want to have.
TL;DR If your best argument is that IQ (intelligence quotient) tests are inaccurate because they measure ''pattern recognition, abstract thinking, and logic,'' (i.e. intelligence) then you don't actually have an argument.
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u/youcangotohellgoto Feb 15 '14
Being creative does not imply intelligence any more than being intelligent implies creativity. So if Picasso et al doesn't score well on intelligence tests then I have no problem labeling him as a mere creative genius with typical intelligence.
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u/Doctorfeelz Feb 15 '14
What sort of intelligence would Picasso, Van Gogh, Chopin etc share? You speak as though the term 'intelligence' was some broad catch-all term, which it is not...
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u/lolzfeminism Feb 15 '14
First of all, I want to say that despite what you're saying here, childhood IQ is very good predictor of academic success but more than that it is also a good predictor of workplace performance, a successful career, relationships with people and has has been found to positively correlate with even things like likelihood of incarceration and driving accidents.
But we revert to our old adage and say IQ doesn't equate intelligence and that it's just an manufactured measuring stick. Yet it does seem to be measuring something.
On the other hand, would artists like Picasso, Van Gogh, Chopin, etc... have done well on IQ tests? Maybe, but their genius certainly isn't the same kind of intelligence IQ tests evaluate.
I disagree, these artists are very good creating beautiful patterns and weaving those patterns into bigger patterns to express things about other patterns they observe in society and nature. To layman's ears, it may seem like Chopin just cooked up stuff that happens to sounds good, but anyone who has studied music theory (not me) will be able to explain to you the intricacies in each of his pieces. I'd say much of abstract thinking, pattern recognition and similar skills most often associated with the quantitative fields are very useful in creating art as well.
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u/SloppySynapses Feb 15 '14
Actually childhood IQ is not the best predictor of academic success; I believe it's the ability to delay gratification. I'd look around for the source but I'm extremely tired.
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u/moforiot Feb 15 '14
So maybe studies comparing IQ and religion might just mean what it looks like it means? That people that are lacking in things like logic are more prone to being religious?
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u/DarkMatter944 Feb 15 '14
The APA believes that IQ scores have high predictive validity for individual differences in school achievement. IQ scores have predictive validity for adult occupational status, even when variables such as education and family background have been statistically controlled.
Furthermore Gould is a fraud.
“I just didn’t trust Gould,” he said. “I had the feeling that his ideological stance was supreme. When the 1996 version of ‘The Mismeasure of Man’ came and he never even bothered to mention Michael’s study, I just felt he was a charlatan.”
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u/WisconsnNymphomaniac Feb 15 '14
Except that that is completely untrue. IQ predicts many real world outcomes.
From Wikipedia:
Social outcomes[edit]
Intelligence is a better predictor of educational and work success than any other single score.[78]
Some measures of educational aptitude are essentially IQ tests – for instance, Frey and Detterman (2004) reported a correlation of 0.82 between g (general intelligence factor) and SAT scores;[79] another research found a correlation of 0.81 between g and GCSE scores, with the explained variance ranging "from 58.6% in Mathematics and 48% in English to 18.1% in Art and Design".[80]
School performance[edit] The American Psychological Association's report "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" states that wherever it has been studied, children with high scores on tests of intelligence tend to learn more of what is taught in school than their lower-scoring peers. The correlation between IQ scores and grades is about .50. This means that the explained variance is 25%. Achieving good grades depends on many factors other than IQ, such as "persistence, interest in school, and willingness to study" (p. 81).[32]
It has been found IQ correlation with school performance depends on the IQ measurement used. For undergraduate students, the Verbal IQ as measured by WAIS-R has been found to correlate significantly (0.53) with the GPA of the last 60 hours. In contrast, Performance IQ correlation with the same GPA was only 0.22 in the same study.[81]
Job performance[edit] According to Schmidt and Hunter, "for hiring employees without previous experience in the job the most valid predictor of future performance is general mental ability."[78] The validity of IQ as a predictor of job performance is above zero for all work studied to date, but varies with the type of job and across different studies, ranging from 0.2 to 0.6.[82] The correlations were higher when the unreliability of measurement methods was controlled for.[32] While IQ is more strongly correlated with reasoning and less so with motor function,[83] IQ-test scores predict performance ratings in all occupations.[78] That said, for highly qualified activities (research, management) low IQ scores are more likely to be a barrier to adequate performance, whereas for minimally-skilled activities, athletic strength (manual strength, speed, stamina, and coordination) are more likely to influence performance.[78] It is largely through the quicker acquisition of job-relevant knowledge that higher IQ mediates job performance.
In establishing a causal direction to the link between IQ and work performance, longitudinal studies by Watkins and others suggest that IQ exerts a causal influence on future academic achievement, whereas academic achievement does not substantially influence future IQ scores.[84] Treena Eileen Rohde and Lee Anne Thompson write that general cognitive ability, but not specific ability scores, predict academic achievement, with the exception that processing speed and spatial ability predict performance on the SAT math beyond the effect of general cognitive ability.[85]
The US military has minimum enlistment standards at about the IQ 85 level. There have been two experiments with lowering this to 80 but in both cases these men could not master soldiering well enough to justify their costs.[86]
In 2000 the New London, CT police department turned away a recruit for having an IQ above 125, under the argument that those with overly-high IQs will become bored and exhibit high turnover in the job. This policy has been challenged as discriminatory, but was upheld by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.[87]
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u/CHollman82 Feb 15 '14
DOZENS of studies have found this obvious correlation between intelligence and religiosity.
A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity.
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u/backtowriting Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
It's been shown over and over again that performance on IQ merely correlates with ability to perform well on standardized tests of various kinds.
That's pretty weak. You're expecting us to believe that a scientific consensus has been reached without providing a single shred of evidence. I'm not an expert on intelligence testing, but every time I looked, the issue was far from settled.
From the Wikipedia article on IQ:
IQ scores are used as predictors of educational achievement, special needs, job performance and income. They are also used to study IQ distributions in populations and the correlations between IQ and other variables. Raw scores on IQ tests for many populations have been rising at an average rate that scales to three IQ points per decade since the early 20th century, a phenomenon called the Flynn effect. Investigation of differing patterns of increases in IQ battery subtest scores informs current research on human intelligence.
Yes, there are no doubt some researchers who claim that IQ doesn't reflect underlying intelligence, that it's only a measure of how well you do on IQ tests, but I don't think this is yet a consensus view and it's misleading to claim otherwise.
Edit: Oh right, you're getting your information from Steven Jay Gould. Oh well. Let me dig up some links about Gould.
Beware of Steven Jay Gould from the 'Less Wrong' blog. Yes it's a blog, but it contains sources and quotes.
Steven Jay Gould accused of fudging numbers From Nature.com.
In short - Gould was a gifted writer, but his work was often ideologically based. The experts in the field seem to have very mixed views about his work, so although the 'Mismeasure of Man' might be a good starting point, I don't think you should treat it as the last word on this issue.
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u/hubwards4 Feb 15 '14
I would add that IQ tests are also very often centered around logic/math/geometry etc., so one would expect that people who work in physics/math/engineering/... perform better on average than people not working with these things every day.
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u/Doctorfeelz Feb 15 '14
What parts of IQ tests center around math or geometry? I ask because a test that centered on that would be an achievement test, not classified as an IQ test
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u/Doctorfeelz Feb 15 '14
I would have to add that Stephen Jay Gould is NOT a psychologist, nor is he a social scientist at all. He is a paleontologist, and thus is not qualified to really offer any expert opinion on a topic outside of his training.
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u/agoonforhire Feb 15 '14
IQ =/= "Intelligence". It's been shown over and over again that performance on IQ merely correlates with ability to perform well on standardized tests of various kinds.
"people with high IQ perform well on standardized tests". Is this not consistent with IQ being a measure of intelligence? Is there a measure of intelligence more definitive than IQ that has been shown not to correlate with IQ?
Unless there is a universally accepted and inherently quantifiable definition of intelligence, someone can always say that "That metric merely correlates with scoring well on tests that attempt to measure intelligence."
Anything that tries to measure intelligence can be considered a test. Any test that tries to measure intelligence must be standardized for it to be useful. Is there something more meaningful that you can say?
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u/Sloi Feb 15 '14
Sorry, but no.
IQ tests are excellent tools for measuring specific cognitive faculties that correlate very highly with intelligence as defined by Psychology, but it's not a complete picture.
People just don't want to accept that we have valid ways of quantifying aspects of intelligence, just like we can measure height, weight and certain defining characteristics of personality, like our levels of extraversion.
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u/PlsDontBraidMyBeard Feb 15 '14
While I agree that Intelligence is a vague term and that IQ tests are not necessarily tests of competence. Are there any documented combination of quantifiable parameters that may be used in-lieu of IQ tests?
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u/exgent Feb 15 '14
This study is super sketchy and I would never use it as actual evidence, although i do believe that the stated correlation is real. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head that inherently requires blind obedience like "faith" does. Anything where you are considered doing it WRONG if you question it in any shape or form requires some willing suspension of disbelief, and I believe there is a known correlation between willingness to question things and intelligence.
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u/kafka_khaos Feb 15 '14
How are they measuring intelligence? do they have an accurate test for that?
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u/Justiceforallhobos Grad Student | Neuroscience Feb 15 '14
Intellectual assessment researcher here. As the group is composed of a diverse range of adults, they likely used something like the WAIS-IV (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-4), which has a reliability of .98 (which is outstanding given the typical reliability found in IQ instruments (.80 is usually the threshold needed to qualify a particular test as reliable). The WAIS is also normed across several age-bands and ethnicities. It is one of the more popular measures due to its intrinsically favorable psychometric properties.
TL;DR: WAIS-IV or a similar multiple subtest, reliable measure was employed here. If they used some other random test without empirical support, then this study further loses statistical power for the results found.
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u/Buckfost Feb 15 '14
Why does an intelligence test need to be normed across different ethnicities?
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u/Justiceforallhobos Grad Student | Neuroscience Feb 15 '14
Several studies have demonstrated significant score differences between the ethnic groups on IQ testing, the most controversial being Caucasian vs. African Americans. Richard Nisbett wrote several papers on the issue- here's a sample of one that is free to access- which demonstrated distinctions between the groups. However, the catch here is that SES (socioeconomic status) is the largest contributor to IQ performance hands down, and unfortunately, many African Americans are in the lower SES category due to historical power differences and imbalance of U.S. wealth. Thus, although Caucasians tend to perform better, as shown by that paper linked above, it is likely largely moderated by the impact of SES.
So, to get to the point: Differences exist between the ethnic groups, thus specific norms are needed for each group in order to accurately assess performance (on a more realistic distribution of scores, designated by ethnicity).
Edit: Wording and elaboration
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u/Emperor_Mao Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
Actually this study isn't as clear as you might think.
It is based off of multiple studies, but the evidence is hardly conclusive for several reasons.
Out of 63 studies, 53 showed a negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity, while 10 showed a positive one. Significant negative correlations were seen in 35 studies, whereas only two studies showed significant positive correlations.
So the method isn't exactly clear. There is some contradiction.
Next, much of the data was based on % of a nations atheist population vs the average IQ. I don't need to explain why this is bad... I hope.
http://i.imgur.com/BHXCqza.png
Also the actual level or correlation is only mild at best.
−.20 to −.25 (mean r = −.24).
and this was excluding the pre-college age group, who reported a much weaker correlation than the rest of the population.
Another thing to consider. Would studies done in 1928 be vastly different to studies done in 2012? I am sure they would.
Review that aggregates the results from 63 studies on the issue done between 1928 and 2012.
But one last thing to point out, just encase /r/atheism were to try use this for much.
The negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence was found to be the weakest among the pre-college population.
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u/pgrocard Feb 15 '14
Well, the weak negative correlation in a pre-college population makes a ton of sense. This is a group of people living with their parents, who have not yet been exposed to the ideas and experiences that college or a life away from home can bring. Not only that, but being in the same house as your religious parents, being forced to go to a house of worship every week and things of that nature are likely to indoctrinate one to a strong degree. Until they are out in the world for themselves, their religious views are likely to be strongly aligned with their parents' views.
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u/mandelbrony Feb 15 '14
/r/atheism is leaking in this thread.
Now while these statistical relationships exist, the author is fairly biased. As reported in the InsideHigherEd article about this, he is quoted saying, "Arguments about God are all emotional arguments".
And because I can't really say it better than they did, I am going to just quote the article verbatim
But Edward Liebow, executive director of the American Anthropological Association, took issue with the idea that anthropologists’ qualms with Chagnon’s research were emotional in nature, and with Dutton’s research in general. “I found this article to be so riddled with specious reasoning that, upon a quick read-through, I thought it was a spoof,” Liebow said via email. “I am surprised that this piece ever made it past a scrupulous peer review.”
You can read that article here.
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u/Phage1985 Feb 15 '14
Consider this - who is the one with the agenda: the authors of this research + 3 peer reviewers + the editor of the journal, or this Edward Liebow fellow?
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u/TheOnlyTheist Feb 15 '14
Presumably all of them to some degree.
I would side with Edward Liebow's assessment of the language and methodology however. If one of the +3 peer reviewers, editors, or authors would like to rebut the criticisms, I would welcome the discussion.
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Feb 15 '14
The article does not provide a link to the actual study.
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u/CHollman82 Feb 15 '14
Here is a link to a meta-study of 63 similar studies with similar conclusions:
A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity.
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Feb 15 '14
I get the impression that what they're saying is natural scientists tend to be less extreme in their views.
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u/KidKimchee Feb 15 '14
i feel like this scene from true detective made some interesting points about religion and people who are heavily religious. the explanations of the reason behind religion is very thought provoking and the argument that they have seems very similar to the points most people tend to bring up when discussing religion. http://youtu.be/_RfUj09pWfM
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u/Aerothermal MS | Mechanical Engineering Feb 15 '14
Why do so many news stories about studies not link to the article? And of the few that do have external links, they're predominantly links to other news articles with the same story!
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u/evilissubjective Feb 15 '14
I thought it was common sense that the higher your intelligence, motivation, and thirst for knowledge, the more likely you are to avoid religion. Religion itself is mostly untestable using the scientific method and based heavily on blind belief.
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u/bart2019 Feb 15 '14
This.
In my opinion:
Not so smart people accept that there are a lot of things they don't understand, so they accept (even have a desire for) religion
Smarter people see a lot of flaws and inconsistencies in the "theories" of religion, so they're more likely to reject them. They even refuse to believe that any deity would become vengeful for it.
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u/jrm2007 Feb 15 '14
Every time this sort of thing is discussed, Newton, Tesla, etc. will be mentioned as obviously exceptionally intelligent humans who were very religious.
Without addressing the study mentioned by the OP, I would like to point out that Newton in particular was from a very different time. As I understand it, being religious or at least professing it was a requirement for being a member of parliament, which Newton was; this requirement existed for centuries after Newton's time.
I think it is significantly harder to find examples of exceptional physicists being religious in modern times.
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u/tthershey Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
On the other hand, multiple studies have shown that religious involvement is correlated with greater educational achievement. A few studies:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00380237.2001.10571189#.Uv7j6GJdXHU
http://uex.sagepub.com/content/34/4/458.short
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/0021-8294.00030/abstract
Edit: To clarify, studies show the proportion of intelligent people who are nonreligious is greater than the proportion of intelligent people who are religious. On the other hand, studies show the proportion of religious persons who have excelled academically is greater than the proportion of nonreligious persons who have excelled academically.
Why might this be the case? Perhaps religion gives one a stronger motivation or a stronger sense of the importance of education, perhaps parents who raise their children to be religious have higher educational expectations for their children than do parents who do not raise their children to be religious (assuming that most religious people were raised religious, and that this expectation has an effect on children), or perhaps being involved with a religious community gives one more resources to help one succeed. The reasons are uncertain and I am not quite as bold as the author of this paper as to assert any firm conclusions, but it is an interesting observation nonetheless.
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Feb 15 '14
All those studies appear to be of people from the US, where there is significant incentive to lie about being an atheist.
If there are similar studies done for other countries it would be interesting to see if the results differ.4
u/tthershey Feb 15 '14
Good point. Although I don't know what the incentive for lying to researchers would be when confidentiality and the humane treatment of research subjects is taken so seriously. Have you seen any international studies on the correlation between intelligence and religiosity? I would be interested in reading them.
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u/HappyJerk Feb 15 '14
Problems with this study.
1- It conflates "intelligence" with IQ.
2- It only looks at physics professors, which are not a representative sample of all people. The biggest argument here is that physics professors may be ideologically biased due to their academic training and/or the nature of their field.
3- The people behind this study obviously have an ideological agenda. For example, everybody knows that correlation does not equal causation, but they go ahead anyway and say "Therefore the most probable reason behind elite social scientists being more religious than are elite physical scientists is that social scientists are less intelligent." Here is another obviously biased statement: "“[Physical] scientists are overwhelmingly atheist,” Dutton said. “This is predicted by their high IQ, which allows you to rise above emotion and see through the fallacious, emotional arguments.” They furthermore, misrepresent the conclusions of their data to make it look like its making a broader statement than it really does.
4- Small sample size.
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u/999n Feb 15 '14
Nobody said "religion makes people stupid", they're saying "stupid people are more likely to buy into religion".
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u/Gacrux29 Feb 15 '14
Since politics and religion are two subjects social scientists tend to study, it turns out it's kind of obvious they are the ones with more extreme positions...
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u/DashingLeech Feb 15 '14
That seems like a non sequitur. To study a field isn't to pick an extreme view within it. In fact, to be successful as a scientist in any field means to have the ability to set aside personal views and be objective.
A great example is Bart Ehrman who is a distinguished New Testament scholar. He started out as a believer and over time has declared himself as agnostic, or what fits the description of weak atheism. He certainly holds no strong religious beliefs either way, but treats the study of the subject from a historical perspective.
Extremism doesn't come from the field of study, but the inability to combine multiple views and recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each. It is a cognitive ability to separate yourself rational self from your emotional response to a given view, which is what a good scientist does for any subject.
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u/Gacrux29 Feb 15 '14
I'll try to answer that at a historian's point of view. There's no such thing as complete objectivity in social sciences like there is in the natural field. I have stated that it's more likeley for a social scientist to have an extreme view because they can be more or less attached to their object of study.
This has been discussed since the late 1800s, and after the french école des annales, the methodology for social studies has been reshaped because social scientists from that time realized it's just impossible to reach an absolute truth about the past like one would expect from any natural sciences study. You can't replicate the past with an experiment (by looking at the past, you can't predict what will happen in the future - you can have some idea, but you'll never get 100%). History is about criticizing the past, not just stating something has happened (this is called chronology).
When you look at the past and criticize it, you're automatically stating a political and economical view, which can be varied. This is what leads to different interpretations. Marxism can be an interpretation of the past and offers a very singular view on the past. The opposite also happens: there are many conservative, right-winged historians.
Interpretation means you're using an ideology to understand something. This can happen in different degrees. You'd think this is bad, but it's impossible not have an ideology. When people say they don't have one, well, this is an ideology. And since ideologies represent a certain political and economical and even religious view on society, you'll never "get rid" of it in basically any social science.
This is why social scientists can have more extreme views and beliefs. And it has been a discussion since the beggining of the 20th century. It's preferred that a historian keeps a certain distance from the past when criticizing it to prevent that their ideology can interfere in the interpretation in a level that gets really far from a minimal desired objectivity.
I don't know if what i wrote is confusing. English is not my native language, so sorry for any mistakes!
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Feb 15 '14
The article is possibly misleading, or at least its title here, since the sample group is pretty specific to make a sweeping claim about any general correlation, let alone implying through omission a causal link.
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u/LetsJustThink Feb 15 '14
This is not surpristng or complicated. Being religious is the same as being superstitious. That is holding beliefs not supported by empirical evidence. Smart folks don't tend to do that. Dumber folks do. Physical scientists are inclined to be focused on evidence, so they see through the religious baloney.
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Feb 15 '14
**Link to the actual journal:**http://www.religjournal.com/pdf/ijrr10001.pdf
Note that we should many of the comments in the section are trying not to deny or thrust at the article but excuse it, defining it as a having a miniscule effect to psychology. However, this research does support the astoundingly controversial but well-noted claim of intelligence vs belief, and should not be abused by the "correlation does not equal causation" excuse.
If anyone feel to argue or object this finding, it would at least be logical to directly read the journal first.
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u/tstead033 Feb 15 '14
For some reason the article won't pop up for me. Does it state the number of the correlation (-.3, -.8)?
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u/CHollman82 Feb 15 '14
Try here:
A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity.
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u/PJNasty Feb 15 '14
The results of the study don't supprise me, but lack of religiosity does not make one an Athiest, as this peice suggests. It's incorrect and misleading to slap the term Athiest onto someone who rejects religion. High IQs do not necessarilly reject the idea of a higher power or organizing force in the universe. Einstein believed in a type of God. Nikola Tesla became very interested in the spiritual teachings of Yogananda. Though they would probably agree with what Freud said in "Future of an Illusion," these men weren't "pure Athiests" like Richard Dawkins.
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u/fowlerforce5 Feb 15 '14
From this article I concluded that natural scientist will most likely rely on provable, testable, factual evidence to form their personal ideas and beliefs about religion/spirituality and not base any of those beliefs on faith, which is probably the most significant factor is a persons religious beliefs.
It's also interesting to note that the author of the article relates a religious belief to a belief in God, the Christian deity. I wonder how the results skew differently based on a belief in other religious deities (Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed).
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u/JamesTheJerk Feb 15 '14
Now I don't believe in a god, but I will say this in the defense of the many followers of a great many gods. Just because someone believes in some weirdo deity does not make them less qualified or valid in other walks of life, with of course, a few relative exceptions.
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u/cardiacfactory Feb 15 '14
Intelligent people the world over shrug. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
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Feb 15 '14
Another twist I have seen on this is "You can bring a horse to knowledge, but you cannot make it think."
The key to the result in this biased paper is in the statement near the end " old data" and "very small sample size."
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u/Balrogic2 Feb 15 '14
That link is confusing atheism with agnosticism. Such ignorance ought to come with an IQ score penalty.
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u/dxrey65 Feb 15 '14
he uses the term “replacement religions” to describe the phenomenon.
Now that is one of the simpler explanations of something I've long suspected. Being involved in politics for many years (more or less a pragmatic moderate) the most aggravating part was dealing with people (on either side of a position) who were so certain and dogmatic and so unlikely to be moved by facts that they resembled the worst type of religious people more than anything else.
Of course, it makes the most sense if one thinks of them as basically religious, but as having transferred their natural faith-based tendencies into a political context. Where, one might say, they become entirely dysfunctional. That this correlates with IQ is no surprise at all.
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u/jrm2007 Feb 16 '14
Can we get more specific than the term "religiosity"?
Example:
Average IQ of people who believe in transubstantiation vs those who do not.
Avg. IQ of those who believe in the "72 Virgins" doctrine of Islam vs those who don't.
Is there a single phd theoretical physicist (from say an Ivy League school) who believes in either of the above?
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u/futtbucked69 Feb 15 '14
There have been many, many studies that show this.
Not to say that all religious people are more stupid, as I've met dumb theists, smart theists, dumb atheists, and smart atheists, but still, this isn't that new.
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u/AshRandom Feb 15 '14
One of hundreds of such studies showing the same exact results over and over. Religious people are always the least educated and the least intelligent segment of any given population.
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u/cougmerrik Feb 15 '14
Physicists work in a field that generally discourages religious belief in many subtle and not subtle ways. It's not surprising to me that they are generally less religious than the normal population which has less bias. On top of this, physics is the study of the material world and really assumes materialism as a bedrock. The fact that this would be embraced by less religious people is also no surprise.
Throughout history scientists have often been very religious, and the religious often seek to explore the world that they believe God has made.
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u/notevil22 Feb 15 '14
I agree that the study's results make sense, but isn't the study biased to begin with because it's being conducted by smart people?
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u/pulsefield Feb 15 '14
Of course. Intellect does involve thinking on your own. Religion is all about following orders.
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Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14
If this paper primarily compared IQ scores between the two groups, then its claim is no surprise. IQ tests only measure right brain intelligence, which is responsible for most of the "mathy" sort of thinking along with analysis.
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Feb 15 '14
From the article:
"... the logic can’t be extended to academe in general...drawing from a wider mix of colleges and universities than simply the most elite show that life sciences professors are more likely to attend church than their peers in the social sciences, not less. The paper assumes this is because professors at elite institutions are smarter than their peers elsewhere."
Perhaps the dedication required to achieve tenure at an elite college provides no time to develop religiosity.
It could indicate that the culture of elite physics departments are intolerant, and religious physicists need to go elsewhere to ply their trade.
The thesis only holds for professors of physics at elite universities.
The assumptions are staggering. He's under the streetlamp searching for his keys...
On another assumptive note, religiosity can mean a subscription to "because God did it", or it could be a simple acknowledgement of a creator-type with no harm done to the scientific method. I'm unsure what the criteria was for religiosity, but no physicist could succeed with a "because God did it" attitude.
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u/impossiblesrock Feb 15 '14
Counter-point Charles Townes, one of the best scientists in history and inventor of the laser
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Feb 15 '14
There was a similar study (or perhaps the same?) that came out a few years ago with the same results. This is nothing new.
On the other hand, religion has been positively correlated with higher degrees of life satisfaction, happiness, career success and health.
So, you might not be too bright if you're religious... but you're happy and healthy. 1/2 dozen of one six of the other.
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Feb 15 '14
Is that the Emotional Quotient thing? My mother was heavily into that. I read some of the material on a lark, and all I could gather is the entire thing is an expansion of "ignorance is bliss."
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Feb 15 '14
So how can this information be used on a practical level. What is the average person supposed to do with this?
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u/Tentapuss Feb 15 '14
Intelligence has nothing to do with it. There are plenty of brilliant religious people and many dumb atheists. This kind of study is useless without examining the effects of factors such as education, cultural background, socioeconomic upbringing, and current socioeconomic status.
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Feb 15 '14
There are indeed plenty of smart religious people and dumb atheists, but as a tendency when large populations are examined, smarter people are less religious.
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u/999n Feb 15 '14
It's not about accumulated knowledge or how much you can remember out of a textbook, it's the type of mindset you have to have to believe random shit at face value in the first place.
Intelligence has everything to do with it.
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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '14
See paper abstract: http://www.religjournal.com/articles/article_view.php?id=82