View source for Libertarians are the political group with the highest IQ, yet they are underrepresented in the social sciences other than economics

<!-- you can have any number of categories here -->
[[Category:LRonPaul2012 (pseudonym)]]
[[Category:We libertarians are more intelligent.]]
[[Category:Create Fake Intellectual Authority]]
<!-- 1 URL must be followed by >= 0 Other URL and Old URL and 1 End URL.-->
{{URL | url = https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughLibertarianSpam/comments/3mm6wp/libertarians_are_the_political_group_with_the/}}
<!-- {{Other URL | url = }} -->
<!-- {{Old URL | url = }} -->
{{End URL}}
{{DES | des = Criticisms of "Political diversity will improve social psychological science."  | show=}}
<!-- insert wiki page text here -->
<!-- DPL has problems with categories that have a single quote in them.  Use these explicit workarounds. -->
<!-- otherwise, we would use {{Links}} and {{Quotes}}  -->
{{List|title=Libertarians are the political group with the highest IQ, yet they are underrepresented in the social sciences other than economics|links=true}}
{{Quotations|title=Libertarians are the political group with the highest IQ, yet they are underrepresented in the social sciences other than economics|quotes=true}}

{{Text |
/r/Libertarian is currently circle jerking over the following article:
"Are conservatives simply less intelligent than liberals, and less able to obtain PhDs and faculty positions? The evidence does not support this view… published studies are mixed. Part of the complexity is that… Social conservatism correlates with lower cognitive ability test scores, but economic conservatism correlates with higher scores (Iyer, Koleva, Graham, Ditto, & Haidt, 2012; Kemmelmeier 2008). Libertarians are the political group with the highest IQ, yet they are underrepresented in the social sciences other than economics.
Interesting. I have a very low opinion on the merit of IQ tests in general, but I'm curious on what the methodology of the original article really was.
1. Article assumes that libertarians are more likely to use "reason" because "reason" is the name of one of their publications.
"Libertarians will rely upon emotion less – and reason more – than will either liberals or conservatives. This expectation is based upon previous research on the affective origins of moral judgment [8], as well as libertarians' own self-characterizations. For example, one of the main libertarian magazines is called, simply, Reason."
In other news, Scientology is strongly grounded in science, because it's right there in the name.
2. Original article relies on self-reported non-random online personality quiz for data points.
"The analyses presented are based on data from 157,804 participants (45.6% female, median age = 34) who visited YourMorals.org and participated in one or more studies between June 2007 and January 2011"
This is basically the equivalent of citing an online personality quiz of "Which Hogwarts House do you belong to?"
3. Libertarians base reasoning skills on a self-reported personality quiz originally designed to measure autism.
In short, empathizing is about understanding the social world whereas systemizing is about understanding the world of inanimate objects and nature. We selected 20 items from the full 40-item empathizer scale, and 20 items from the full 75-item systemizer scale to create a single survey that could be completed in less than 10 minutes. Cronbach's alphas for these measures were .80 (systemizer) and .84 (empathizer). The measure was completed by 8,870 participants (4,532 men, 6,525 liberals, 877 conservatives, and 637 libertarians).
Here's an example of a standard empathizer/systemizer quiz. It's a series of questions like "People often tell me that I am very unpredictable," or "If I were buying a stereo, I would want to know about its precise technical features," and the participant writes down whether they agree or disagree with it. In other words, the only thing the quiz really measures is how you perceive yourself.
From the website: "The theory developed out of Baron-Cohen's work with autism where he hypothesized that the autism spectrum is an expression of extreme systemizing, he also adapted it into the extreme male brain theory of autism."
Remember the Hogwarts analogy I made earlier? Imagine if the data taker assumed that Slytherin was the smartest school because they're the most ruthless, and concluded that libertarians were the smartest students because they all land in Slytherin.
4. Article never actually mentions IQ anywhere
Libertarians have a unique moral-psychological profile, endorsing the principle of liberty as an end and devaluing many of the moral concerns typically endorsed by liberals or conservatives. Although causal conclusions remain beyond our current reach, our findings indicate a robust relationship between libertarian morality, a dispositional lack of emotionality, and a preference for weaker, less-binding social relationships.
That's from the summary.
Apparently in libertarian land, "preference for weaker, less-binding social relationships" is code for "has a much higher IQ."
Every time libertarians talk about how they have higher IQs, what they really mean is "We're a lot more likely to be total assholes, which we assume is the exact same thing."

}}