Something we’ve known to be true for quite a while has now been vindicated in two studies
published recently. The first was published in Psychological Science and indicated that children
who score lower on intelligence tests are more likely to exhibit conservative social and political
views as adults. The second, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, indicated
that, “when under time pressure or otherwise cognitively impaired, people are more likely to
express conservative views.”
This makes perfect sense when given a few moments of thought (plenty of conservative denial
can be expected, then), because conservatism is intellectually easy to handle. “Conservatism”
by definition means holding to the way things were–and not changing anything is pretty easy.
Actually giving social and political concerns some thought can be difficult for those who don’t like
to think. It was suggested by the authors of the first mentioned study that this may be because,
“conservative ideologies stress ‘structure and order’ that make it easier to understand a complicated world.”
The second study was conducted by asking social and political questions to people in a bar
(under the influence of alcohol) and then in a laboratory, sometimes under a time constraint.
The higher the alcohol percentage (as shown by a Breathalyzer), the more conservative their
views tended to be. The researchers also offered the following opinion:
And when care, consideration, and cogitation increases, we find that endorsement of political
conservatism decreases. These findings were again limited to conservatism; there were no
comparable or contrastive effects found for political liberalism. There seems to be something
unique about the ideological content of political conservatism and its relation to low-effort thought.
(No big surprises here.)"Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact"
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/01/04/0956797611421206.abstract"Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism"
http://psp.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/03/16/0146167212439213.abstract