I wouldn’t boast about voting Labour. It says too much.
This is my column in The Malta Independent on Sunday, today.
There is something I have long suspected, and now I find it confirmed by a research study into prejudice, racist views and right-wing hang-ups. People who think that way are less intelligent than those who don’t .
You can say that this much would be obvious, that a hatred for and fear of African people is not based on intelligent assessment and cannot possibly be the result of intelligent thought. But it is not necessarily obvious.
Some people who like to pass themselves off as the proud possessors of a high IQ – there are a couple in our parliament, one of whom is newly independent – hold precisely such prejudiced views and yet come across as sharp thinkers in other ways.
But of course, when you assess their behaviour and their decisions, instead of listening to the seemingly smart way they speak, you realise that their catastrophic personal choices, for they are indeed catastrophic in one or two cases we have heard too much about already, are the result of deficient intelligence.
The research study, which is an analysis of more than 15,000 people, shows that children with low intelligence grow up to be prejudiced and hold racist and homophobic views, and that right-wing views make the less intelligent feel safe. So it is not only mere perception that leads us to think that the people who crowd racist sites and racist groups – at least in Malta – are basically pretty stupid. It is fact. They actually are pretty stupid.
The study, carried out by academics at Brock University in Ontario, Canada, has analysed extensive British research which compares childhood intelligence in more than 15,000 people with their political views in adulthood.
It used information from two UK studies from 1958 and 1970, in which several thousand children were assessed for intelligence at age 10 and 11, and then asked political questions aged 33. The 1958 National Child Development involved 4,267 men and 4,537 women born in 1958. The British Cohort Study involved 3,412 men and 3,658 women born in 1970.
The paper has now been published in Psychological Science. The authors say that the children who were not particularly bright grew up to gravitate towards right-wing views because these make them feel safer.
Now here’s the crucial point. Education has absolutely nothing to do with it, which is why people who go on to study for first, second and even third degrees at university will still have prejudiced, homophobic and racist views. The key factor is innate intelligence, and we are dealing here with a situation in which even those who are not bright can graduate from university while many who never made it past secondary school have scintillating minds.
Another important point is that social status and social background play no part in shaping prejudice, which is why you can have individuals from the oldest families in Malta sharing the exact same prejudices ast those of a street-sweeper.
The research paper claims that right-wing ideology in general forms a pathway for those with low reasoning ability to develop a dislike for and prejudice against those who are different, such as different races or sexualities.
“Cognitive abilities are critical in forming impressions of other people and in being open-minded,” the researchers said. “Individuals with lower cognitive abilities may gravitate towards more socially conservative right-wing ideologies that maintain the status quo. It provides a sense of order.’”
The children used in those 1958 and 1970 studies have been asked, as adults, for their reactions to statements like ‘I wouldn’t mind working with people from other races’ and ‘I wouldn’t mind if a family of a different race moved next door.’ These statements have been used in opinion polls in Malta in recent years, and the results were to be expected.
Perhaps we can extrapolate from this that low intelligence and poor reasoning skills are widespread in Malta, which should come as no surprise and also help us understand why education seems to have very little effect on changing prejudices.
The results were compared to a similar study carried out in the United States in 1986, which tested prejudice against homosexuals. On this basis too, the authors strengthened their claim of a strong correlation between low intelligence and right-wing views. They write that right-wing politics are part of a “complex relationship that leads people to become prejudiced” and that “conservative ideology represents a critical pathway through which childhood intelligence predicts racism in adulthood”.
The research paper says: “In psychological terms, the relation between intelligence and prejudice may stem from the propensity of individuals with lower cognitive ability to endorse more right wing conservative ideologies because such ideologies offer a psychological sense of stability and order.”
There is an important qualifier, which should not be ignored: the authors make it plain that logic must be deployed in this assessment, which means that not all socially conservative people are prejudiced, and that not all prejudiced persons are conservative.
It just means that people of low intelligence are more likely to have racist, xenophobic, fearful and closed-minded views, and these views are more likely to attract them to right-wing politics.
And now you probably know what I am going to say next.
It seems that my oft-repeated view that it is mainly low intelligence and poor thinking skills which attract people to the Malta Labour Party is probably pretty accurate. In Malta, the parties’ political philosophies are topsy-turvy. It is the contemporary Nationalist Party which is to the left, and the contemporary Labour Party which is to the right.
What was it that I wrote some months ago, which got a deluge of complaints? That not all people who vote Labour are unintelligent, obviously, but if you vote Labour you’re more likely to be unintelligent. Now I have an extensive research study to back me up. Cheers.
32 Comments Comment
Reply to Jozef Click here to cancel reply
I have doubts on this study as I do not believe there is necessarily a link between intelligence and ideology.
[Daphne – David, I love it when you pop along. You are so incredible. On the one hand you are utterly tedious in your quite literal adherence to facts and figures, but on the other hand – as in this case – you dismiss research into 15,000 people, and its extensive conclusions, because you have a ‘feeling’. Of course there is a link: just look at the political opinion polls in Malta, for instance, which show clearly and beyond doubt that support for Labour is highest among those in certain groups, all of them associated with poor education and low achievement.]
Traditionally the so called “working classes” which are considered to be less educated usually formed a large part of the left vote. However if left wingers are more intelligent than right wingers, does this mean that, say in the UK, Labour party voters are more intelligent than Conservative party voters?
[Daphne – No, it doesn’t mean that at all. We are speaking here of particular views to do with – say – capital punishment, racism, homophobia, misogyny and similar – and not economic conservatism or general political philosophies. Both the Conservative and Labour parties in Britain are very broad churches – in fact, most of Margaret Thatcher’s support originally came from the working-class. In Malta, the parties are not such broad churches, and the problems we have actually seen occurring live with people like Jeffrey, Jesmond and Johnny are the manifestation – beyond personal differences – of their right-wing, authoritarian views and personalities in direct conflict with the rest. The Nationalist Party has moved to the left, leading to internal conflict not necessarily over policy, but personality. People with far-right views – on immigrants, for instance – tend to have bullying and aggressive personalities and to believe that they are always right. The Labour Party, which since Mintoff has been authoritarian left and not European left, also attracts people who like things to be ‘fixed’ and who are terrified of change – vide the party’s stance on EU membership. It has over the last few years moved very much to the right, but in a bad way, with illiberal views on immigration, freedom of expression and individual liberty.]
The same can be said for Berlusconi who lost Casini and his christian democrat centre, never to regain him again.
Casini was adamant that as long as Berlusconi accepts the Lega, closest thing to Labour’s current configuration, he would never form part of the coalition.
The salient point was the xenophobic stance taken by the Lega.
Fini, who had successfully moved the far right Fiamma Tricolore to the centre right, losing all the extreme nostalgics along the way, did the same. He pointed to the Lega’s populist demands, hogging the process determining improvements to the federal system.
Berlusconi, who has just stated he intends to run for office again, his only ally being the Lega, stated in no uncertain terms there’s a vacuum in the lower income, early school leaving electorate. He referred to the central and southern parts of Italy where the Lega doesn’t have support for obvious reasons.
On the other hand, Beppe Grillo, whose blog has created a network bypassing the political establishment, taking viewers away from TV, and whose ‘following’ has grown to 15% in the space of a couple of years, a nightmare for every party strategist, boasts the highest concentration of professionals, academics and students.
His concept is extremely simple; the net and its literacy are THE platform for solutions and policies. Critics denounce him as being incapable of governing at more than local level.
The answer is as simple, resolving the local level would affect the hierarchical process ground up, if the nation is truly European.
Are you trying to be philosopical now!? So Labourites are stupid huh and you’re the bright one? The one who gets A’s in English maybe? LOL
But so out-of-touch with the present and devoid of arguments as to be pathetic…
[Daphne – Read my piece again, especially the closing paragraphs, and try not to prove the truth of it by showing that you have failed to grasp its meaning, despite its being written in relatively simple language which encapsulates fairly simple concepts. ‘Gets As in English’ – no, those days are gone. I’ve long left school.]
As in English is the benchmark for being `highly educated` now? Rocket science is based on As in English now?
Your comment just confirms Daphne’s article.
[Daphne – That’s because they think it’s all I’m good at. They don’t even know that back in my day, which means before MATSEC, Oxford Os and As in English language and literature were in themselves assessments of intelligence. And that was part of the problem.]
Gordon, the article and the studies on which it is based, have little if anything to do with philosophy.
And how was intelligence measured in the study subjects?
[Daphne – There were IQ tests even in those days. Anzi, in those days it was allowed. I remember we were tested at primary school in the 1970s. It wouldn’t be permitted now.]
Are you saying that IQ tests are banned at primary schools now?
[Daphne – I have no idea, but IQ tests don’t really square with current attitudes towards streaming and equality and data protection and privacy, do they.]
Once upon a long time ago, and under a previous administration, I was instructed by the Institute of Tourism Studies to use standardized tests for verbal and numerical abilities as a component in their evaluations for prospective candidates.
I had British psychological certification to administer such tests, which are similar to intelligence tests.
After two or three years of using these tests as part of a constructive admissions profile, the Board of Trustees ended their use. I assume they held skepticism for their benefits, against what is a fairly normal and natural criterion in the United States and in Britain, where such testing originates.
Malta (or administrators in education), it seems, would prefer to use more subjective criteria for decision-making for admissions than objective tests of natural cognitive abilities in educational settings.
Since I am a founding member of the APS, their journal Psychological Science is on my desk. The full article may be found at this link: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/23/2/187.short
Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri (2012), Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact.
The principal results of the study are two:
(1) of the total predictive effect of childhood cognitive ability on adult racism, between 92% and 100% was indirect, mediated via conservative ideology;
(2) controlling for level of education, prejudice against homosexuals, and right-wing authoritarianism in adulthood, are mediated by general intelligence in childhood, and conservative ideology is a critical pathway through which childhood intelligence predicts racism in adulthood.
Yes, it would seem to me that the Partit Laburista, as a right-Wing political party/movement, would have a natural appeal for social conservatism (submission to authority) and antihomosexual prejudice and racism, which is strongly mediated by right-wing authoritarianism, and all of its attending political dangers.
So much for the PL as a likely (or natural) conglamoration of moderates and progressives.
By ideology and political practice, the Nationalist Party is demonstrably left-wing, and in Malta the more likely true social and economic progressive party; and according to the study, their supporters and adherants would more likely have greater abstract reasoning skills.
[The full article may be found at this link: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/23/2/187.short%5D
Full or short?
Dear Daphne. I took your advice and must have been one of the earliest to buy The Malta Independent. Unfortunately, even though very well written as always, it just put me off my breakfast and had to delay my Sunday outing on the boat.
I always treat the results of surveys with a pinch of salt. The results are very debatable and persons with different views usually give them different interpretation.
When you come to connecting the results with the situation in Malta, you start on the wrong assumptions. On what grounds do you reach the conclusion that the P.L is a far right party?
[Daphne – Where do I begin, Silvio? Let’s just say that if your man Benito Mussolini were around today and living in Malta, Joseph Muscat would have asked him to be a star candidate. What do you think Manuel Mallia’s real political inclinations are?]
I, and all true Nationalists (not of course the ones that drifted from other parties which are now extinct) were always brought up to believe that the P.N. was built on rightest principles, a quick look in the past history of the party will confirm this.
[Daphne – Well, you know, those days are long gone, and if they hadn’t gone, Malta would be in the gutter and the Nationalist Party would not have survived, because it was brought to power, and has been brought to power repeatedly, by people who, like my family, ‘drifted from other parties which are now extinct’.]
The fact that the P.N. is now moving to the left is only because that’s where the majority of the voters are, and it is always better to fish where there is the most fish.
[Daphne – No, Silvio, it’s because times have changed.]
You even go so far as to associate racism with P.L. supporters.
[Daphne – No, I associate it, as does the study, with right-wing thinking. You in fact manifest many of these traits and as a result, you end up showing reluctant support for Labour and make it quite plain that you are torn between your historical links to the Nationalist Party and your present empathy with the attitudes of the Labour Party and its camp-followers, like J Dalli BA (a name I wouldn’t have known about hadn’t he told the world about it yesterday).]
May I suggest that in the next survey on racism you should put this question to parents (preferably from Sliema and P.N supporters) and report their reaction. It is only than that you can confirm that’s only P.L.supporters are racist.
” Daddy come meet my new boyfriend he is Abdullah Al Sufi ( Oh daddy just saying his name makes me have dirty thoughts )and he comes from one of those places south of the Sahhara.
“Oh please mummy don’t cry, Daddy forget the Elect bill and put on the lights so mummy can see him better”
Fortunately this story (I swear it’s true) ended on a good note. Abdullah is now living in Mali with his other two wives and three or four children,while the girl is happily reunited with her parents awaiting Abdullah’s baby, and most of their Sliema friends have accepted the story that this innocent girl was raped on her way to the prayer group meeting.
[Daphne – Yawn. At least she didn’t introduce them to a heroin addict from a good Sliema family, as so many of my contemporaries did, Silvio. Or worse, a cocaine trafficker with brothels in South America, also from an ostensibly good Sliema family and with an important father. But let’s not go there, shall we. Or a Maltese married man in his 40s three-timing his wife with two 19-year-old girls of my acquaintance back in the early 1980s. I’m sure their parents would have been thrilled to be introduced to him. Hallini, trid.]
And believe or not the couple are leading a happy life,Abdullah with his other two wives in Mali while the bride is back with her parents awaiting his baby..
Silvio,
and yet fascists sang for their faccetta nera.
So our dear racist bigot silvio swears his little racist story is true, does he. He’s not only a proven racist. He’s also a liar.
Go back to viva malta, where other people with low IQ will actually chuckle or laugh at your racist fiction.
It is true that the people who vote for the Malta Labour Party are mainly not particularly bright, but I don’t think this study relates, as to the best of my knowledge the Labour Party has not demonstrated any racist, homophobic or xenophobic views and I thought that they were supposed to be leaning towards the left wing, as the other Labour parties in other countries. I also thought that the Nationalists are leaning towards the right wing, and conservative.
[Daphne – How about you do some reading, listening and observing, Stephen, instead of just going on what you thought? If this carries on, I’m going to wonder why you don’t vote Labour purely on the basis that it’s told you it’s amazing.]
You’re right, I’ll get back to you in a few years.
Not much of a source for what I said above, but the Wikipedia article for the Labour Party says that it is centre-left and the Wikipedia article for the Nationalist Party says that it is centre-right, which is what we were told at school.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malta_Labour_Party
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalist_Party_(Malta)
[Daphne – Stephen, when assessing where a political party stands in the political spectrum, you look at its policies and attitudes and not at Wikipedia or what you were taught at school. We are grown-ups now. The Nationalist Party’s policies are definitely centre-left on everything except business, where it is conservative with flashes of liberal.]
Mr Borg-Fiteni, just go to any Labour Party Club on a weekday morning, have tea in a glass and talk to the middle-aged men populating them. You will get more than enough proof of the prejudiced, homophobic, racist, right-wing base of the Labour Party.
They’re only left-wing in their dependence on social benefits and trying to live off other people’s earnings and property. Many Labour Clubs are in actual fact requisitioned private properties.
The Nationalists’ focus on education, health, jobs and successful membership of the European Union make the PN moderately left-wing. Of course there are other elements that pull the PN towards the right, but you have to see the general picture that emerges from all elements.
Labour’s 1981-87 debacle including political violence, control of unions, use of labour corps, general disdain of education, dependence on the state, strongman (ie Mintoff) adulation and their anti-EU membership stance in the crunch referendum and elections of 2003 make Labour right-wing.
If you tell any social scientist that in Malta we have a government that keeps harping on jobs, stipends, MCAST, free health care, free medicines, public projects, EU membership and balanced talk about immigration, they will surmise we have a left-wing party in government.
Agreed regarding the PN’s policies, what has to be emphasized, is that this recipe wasn’t concocted in the space of a couple of years by contrived design, it’s the result of over 30 years experience, continuous feedback and an acquired penchant for reciprocal success.
In other words, the PN’s success depends on that of the country. Labour, both due the centralised mentality as well as out of misguided expediency have been pushed to the opposing axiom.
An unknown quantity will determine the individual success of the electorate. Paradox, if there ever was one.
Labour’s incapable of building inroads into the PN’s electorate, if not via the distortion of the basic idea which has worked so well, ‘what the PN ‘gave’ you we’ll double it and a freebie as well.’
Daphne. retreat is associated with cowards, attack is for the bold.
[Daphne – Well, yes, if you’re into Benito Mussolini and don’t have a military background.]
Guess who said these words:
“If I attack ,follow me,
If I retreat, Kill me”
[Daphne – Henri de la Rochejaquelein, though your man Benito Mussolini plagiarised him 150 years later. And you’ve missed a bit out there: “If I fall, avenge me”. Well he lost, didn’t he, and ended up strung up by his feet.]
How cruel. And no, he was not my man I shared him with many others, you might know.
[Daphne – Who was cruel, Mussolini or the ones who strung him up?]
If he were still alive, I would put this question to Churchill; he was one of his admirers.
[Daphne – Oh, indeed.]
I’ve heard more conservative right-leaning things from the Nationalist party than from the Labour party. Eddie Fenech Adami’s thinly (very thinly) veiled homophobia would fit in perfectly with this description, not that I’d consider him to be an unintelligent person myself.
When it comes to racism, immigration in particular, then yes some of the comments said by Labour politicians are definitely worse. But when it comes to homophobia (Muscat does support civil unions, and its pretty clear that at some point its going to be labour for civil unions or something of the sort, nationalists for preserving traditional marriage, like in the divorce case) and marriage (well, divorce!), the Nationalists party is definitely more conservative.
[Daphne – Look, I’m not going into those tedious old arguments again. The fact is, if you make a specific effort to show that some of your best friends are gay/black/Muslim/women/whatever, then this in itself indicates that you have a problem. The truly prejudice-free are those who just carry on, oblivious to a person’s sexuality, religion, gender or whatever. That is precisely how the Nationalist Party operates, and that is why I am far more comfortable with it than I could ever be with a political party that hives what it clearly thinks of as the weirdly different into a ghetto within the party structure.]
The most conservative right-leaning people I know are the types who say things like “Ma i’d never vote for laaabour jaq, as if, daddy’s said its for hamalli”.
[Daphne – That last statement reveals more about your prejudices than it does about the (almost certainly imaginary) girls you’re talking about. Funny how it’s always girls, isn’t it. They must make you feel really inadequate – if they exist, and if they actually talk to you.]
Lol they certainly exist. Just go to Y4J meetings. There are so many individuals from very conservative religious nationalist backgrounds who are so incredibly prejudiced against all things labour that it makes them sounds ridiculous, and many of them are the same who thought divorce would destroy malta, and so would same-sex marriage.
[Daphne – If they existed, Matthew, I would know them. There has been an extensive parade of girls and boys through my house over the last several years and I have year to hear one speak like that. A dislike for Labour is not prejudice. It is common sense.]
Its simply unfair to act like many conservatives aren’t extremely comfortable within the nationalist party. “The truly prejudice-free are those who just carry on, oblivious to a person’s sexuality, religion, gender or whatever. ” Couldn’t agree more, but thats not the attitude that Nationalists politicians have, they simply refuse to discuss it which is definitely not the same thing.
[Daphne – They refuse to discuss it because it SHOULDN’T BE DISCUSSED. When, 20 years ago and less, politicians and others were forever banging on about “Women” as though we were a separate class of people, it used to enrage me. Sure, there were women who loved it and thought it excellent that they were receiving attention. They just didn’t realise that when you get that sort of attention, it means you’re being treated as a special case, and that undermines what you’re supposed to want: being part of the mainstream.]
I’ve been at Y4J for almost 5 years now and not once have I ever heard such sentiments.
You would like people not to generalise and be free of prejudice and yet you just contradicted yourself with one sweeping statement. Well done.
Dear Daphne, you are so transparent,you don’t hate P.L.because of their beliefs,you hate the people who side with labour, who according to you are all Hamalli and have no intelligence and very low I.Q.
[Daphne – I hate neither, Silvio. Hate is a very strong word, and I don’t feel hatred for anyone or anything. Really. I despise the Labour Party and most of its politicians, yes, but that’s different. As for people who vote Labour, I tend to take them on a case by case basis.]
I’m sure this could be classified as some sort of racism. How about a study on this?
[Daphne – Obviously not, because we’re all Maltese. And prejudice of the nature we are discussing here are to do with innate qualities like gender, colour and sexuality, not choices. We are all responsible for our choices, and should expect to be taken to task for them occasionally. We cannot, however, reasonably expect to be taken to task for the colour of our skin. Even religion is not really a choice, because few people reach the age of 18 and decide to become Catholic or Muslim. Basically, if you weren’t raised in a religion until it becomes part of your life, you wouldn’t choose to have one.]
Empty vessels….
…and they come in strikingly 2 colours.
With all due respect, would you call anyone who agrees with the latter part of your article, and knowing your political bias, intelligent? or extremely gullible?
[Daphne – Probably intelligent, yes, given that the writer is that. You asked for it, darling.]
Some readers must feel elated. Indeed, ignorance is bliss.
Quote:
“…it is mainly low intelligence and poor thinking skills that attract people to the Malta Labour Party”
Quote:
” As for people who vote Labour, I tend to take them on a case by case basis”.
[Daphne – I meant as to whether I like them or not, Silvio.]
I really admire you for the way you always manage to come out of tight corners.
I wouldn’t like to play chess with you.
[Daphne – I don’t know how to play chess and I never play games. I hate them.]
You never play chess.
That must be one of your little white lies.
As a matter of fact you play chess very well, using us as your chess pieces, and very succesfully.
All we need now is for Labour to somehow go after the Catholic vote and we would have a full reversal.