A New Study Identifies How Intelligence Affects Prejudice (Hint: It Doesn’t Lower It)
Think that you are beyond prejudice? Think again. A new study shows that as people become more intelligent they don’t become any less prejudiced, they only change who they are prejudiced towards, with the usual direction going towards those who we see as different from ourselves.
In order to study a wide range of biases, and to avoid confusion, the researchers defined prejudice as “‘a negative evaluation of a group or of an individual on the basis of group membership” for the purposes of this study.
The study took 5,914 individuals and tested them for their “cognitive ability”, determined by their score on the Wordsum test of verbal ability. The subjects were asked of their opinions of certain groups of people such as Christians, Hispanics, or the poor. Those answers were later converted to a zero to 100 scale, with 100 being the most negatively viewed.
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