Are high-IQ individuals deficient in common sense? A critical examination of the ‘clever sillies’ hypothesis

Intelligence 38 (2010) 471–480

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Intelligence

Are high-IQ individuals deficient in common sense? A critical examination of the ‘clever sillies’ hypothesis Michael A. Woodley School of Biological Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey, TW200EX, UK

a r t i c l e

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Article history: Received 8 January 2010 Received in revised form 1 June 2010 Accepted 2 June 2010 Available online 3 August 2010

Keywords: ‘Clever sillies’ Dominance/counter-dominance Competitive altruism General intelligence Political attitudes Social intelligence

a b s t r a c t A controversial hypothesis [Charlton (2009). Clever sillies: Why high-IQ people tend to be deficient in common sense. Medical Hypotheses, 73, 867–870] has recently been proposed to account for why individuals of high-IQ and high social status tend to hold counter-intuitive views on social phenomena. It is claimed that these ‘clever sillies’ use their high general intelligence and Openness to Experience to overanalyze social problems for which socially intelligent/common sense responses would seemingly be more appropriate. The first three sections of this review will consider i) the relationship between general and social intelligence; ii) the role of situational effects on the direction of the correlation between IQ and political attitudes; iii) the behavioral ecology of competitive altruism. While there is no hard evidence for Charlton's hypothesis, sophisticated although ultimately non-rational subjective analyses of social phenomena (i.e. ones that are disconfirmed by data, or reject empiricism) do seem to be favored by individuals in certain high-IQ knowledge work sectors. It is suggested that these function as costly signals of altruism, and that their popularity can best be understood in light of the theory that social attitudes are fundamentally influenced by perceptions of dominance and counter-dominance, with the latter playing an especially significant role in influencing the values systems of contemporary societies where the degree of conspicuous inequality is significantly evolutionarily novel. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Contents 1. 2.

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4. 5.

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How general is general intelligence? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1. Evolutionary psychology and general intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2. Social intelligence and general intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3. Significant questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Are smarter people necessarily predisposed towards particular political and social attitudes? 3.1. Construct validity issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2. Situational effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What is ‘political correctness’? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1. Competitive altruism, costly signaling and transitional values . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1. ‘Clever silliness’ as an inappropriate use of counter-dominance instincts . . . . . . . 5.2. Proposed directions for future research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

E-mail address: [email protected]. 0160-2896/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2010.06.002

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Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1. Introduction In a recent Medical Hypotheses editorial, Bruce G. Charlton (2009) has proposed an intriguing albeit controversial hypothesis to account for why those with high general intelligence tend also to hold views on social phenomena that are best regarded as being ‘silly’, such as certain professionals who, despite exhibiting tremendous degrees of technical knowledge relevant to their domains of expertise, permit politics (typically of the egalitarian or leftist variety) to inform their understanding of social problems. Charlton considers manifestations of this behavior ‘silly’ in the sense that not only does it lead to counter-intuitive and ‘uncommon’ thinking on social phenomena, but that it is biologically maladaptive also as in the long run it is claimed to have a dysgenic impact on societies. ‘Clever sillies’, as Charlton terms individuals exhibiting these behaviors, are predisposed by virtue of a combination of high general intelligence and the personality factor Openness to Experience towards overanalyzing social problems for which an instinctual and spontaneous response pattern might be more adaptive. Their apparent lack of common sense or social intelligence, which Charlton defines as the ability “to behave adaptively in dealing with…basic human situations” such as “understanding, predicting and manipulating the behaviors of other human beings” (p. 868), is an issue made exponentially more problematic by the apparent evolutionary novelty of the modern cognitively stratified world, where spontaneous solutions to social problems will be completely disregarded in favor of more context appropriate albeit evolutionarily inappropriate analytical ones. Charlton's hypothesis is predicated upon three principle lines of reasoning: firstly, that general intelligence permits the solving of evolutionarily novel abstract problems, and that there are independent mechanisms within the brain which by contrast permit the solving of evolutionarily familiar social problems. Secondly, that those with high IQ's are predisposed towards ‘enlightened’ and ‘progressive’ (leftist) political attitudes by virtue of the fact that IQ is positively correlated with Openness to Experience, which Charlton regards “as the result of deploying abstract analysis for social problems to yield unstable and unpredictable results, when innate social intelligence would tend to yield predictable and stable results” (p. 868). Thirdly, that the cognitive stratification of modern societies restricts communication between individuals on the basis of IQ and that this amplifies random ‘silliness’ and “generates opinions and behaviors among the highest IQ people which are not just lacking in common sense but (are) perversely wrong” such as “the phenomenon of ‘political correctness’ (PC); whereby false and foolish ideas have come to dominate, and moralistically be enforced upon, the ruling elites of whole nations” (p. 867). Charlton's hypothesis is impressive in its scope, however despite its ingenuity and undeniable novelty it

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doesn't stand up to scrutiny given what is known about the connections between general intelligence, social intelligence, political and social attitudes and other relevant aspects of human behavioral ecology. Charlton's hypothesis warrants more than a simple critique however, as in exploring the idea of ‘clever sillies’, an opportunity exists to review and synthesize the literature relevant to the issues in such a way that makes new interpretations possible. To that end this review is divided into three sections, each dealing with a key component of Charlton's thesis, and a fourth, in which convergent lines of evidence are used to deduce a possibly more parsimonious explanation of the phenomenon of ‘clever sillies’. 2. How general is general intelligence? The general intelligence factor (g) corresponds to the positive manifold that exists between cognitive test scores (Spearman, 1904, 1927). It occupies the apex (Stratum III), of Carroll's (1993) three stratum hierarchy, with 8–10 narrower group factors, such as visuospatial ability, fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence and working memory occupying Stratum II, and even narrower primary abilities such as absolute pitch and perceptual speed occupying Stratum I. Each stratum accounts for the majority of the variance in the stratum below it, with the abilities becoming more specialized, content specific and sensitive to environmental inputs the further one goes down the hierarchy. While it is not strictly accurate to talk of g and general intelligence as the same entity owing to the fact that g is an individual difference variable (Borsboom & Dolan, 2006), behavioral manifestations of g conform to popular conceptions of general intelligence reducible to the individual level: i.e. as a faculty associated with generic thinking skills such as abstract thinking, reasoning and learning (Arden, Gottfredson, Miller & Pierce, 2009; Gottfredson, 2007). 2.1. Evolutionary psychology and general intelligence A significant debate within evolutionary psychology concerns whether general intelligence is a domain general or domain specific trait. Within evolutionary psychology, the term domain refers to a specific, recurrently encountered factor (i.e. adaptive problem) present in the ancestral environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA — Pleistocene Sub-Saharan Africa) to which a particular feature of the brain (module) is adapted. Advocates of the theory that general intelligence is domain general (i.e. that it evolved to cope with a diverse range of inputs and processes) perceive the trait as an independent, highly generalized and overarching, context-free metarepresentational capacity, which taps a range of subordinate domain general learning mechanisms, which in turn tap an even wider array of domain specific modules. The function of this hierarchy is to permit the

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adaptive solving of underspecified but evolutionarily significant irregularly occurring problems present in the EEA (Chiappe & MacDonald, 2005; Corbalis, 2002; Geary, 2005; Gottfredson, 2007; Over, 2003). Advocates of domain specific theories of general intelligence on the other hand perceive the trait to be in some way directly associated with the brain's modular consortium, although there is disagreement over the exact relationship. Some researchers have argued that general intelligence (sometimes referred to as ‘improvisational’ intelligence) is a ‘fast and frugal’ (Gigerenzer, Todd & The ABC Research Group, 1999) heuristic exaptation (accidentally adaptive trait) stemming from a domain widening bundling of modules, which are individually adapted to solve specific, evolutionarily familiar problems (Cosmides & Tooby, 2002; Fodor, 1983; Plotkin, 2002; Yudkowsky, 2007). The existence of a metarepresentational module, dedicated to handling the outputs of the other modules in such a way that permits adaptive problem solving, has even been proposed (Sperber, 1994). Kanazawa (2004) has developed a theory along these lines, which makes similar predictions to Charlton's hypothesis. His theory holds that general intelligence is a domain specific modular adaptation in its own right that has evolved in response to a specific need to cope with evolutionary novelty in the EEA, and has accidentally come to assume greater contemporary social significance owing to the highly evolutionarily novel nature of modern complex environments. General intelligence in this model is only able to aid in solving evolutionarily novel problems and provides no assistance in the solving of evolutionarily familiar problems (such as cheater detection, face recognition, discriminative parental solicitude, finding mates etc), for which there exist distinct modules. 2.2. Social intelligence and general intelligence Charlton suggests that general intelligence is separate from other forms of evolved cognitive functioning, which comprise what he terms ‘innate social intelligence’ or common sense, except possibly in the case of those with very low IQ's where brain pathologies “would be expected to create a weak and non-causal statistical correlation” (p. 867). Although Charlton does not treat the subject with any depth in his editorial, he has developed a model of social intelligence in earlier works (see e.g. Charlton, 2000, 2002). Here Charlton conceptualizes social intelligence as being composed of two facets, here-and-now tactical social intelligence, which is basic to many taxa and strategic social intelligence, which he suggests is restricted to only a handful of social mammal taxa, and involves the use of internal modeling and evaluation of social interactions. Strategic social intelligence is related to Machiavellian intelligence, a term coined by de Waal to describe the sorts of intelligent behaviors required to seek and successfully acquire power amongst higher primates (de Waal, 1982; Byrne & Whiten, 1989), and incorporates the hypothetical ‘somatic marker mechanism’, which involves internal bodily changes (i.e. emotions) being used to mark perceptions and sensory information originating from the external world (Damasio, 1994). This mechanism is hypothesized to involve working memory, and may form the basis of the theory of mind mechanism (Damasio, 1994; Charlton, 2002).

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Charlton's conception of social intelligence principally concerns cross species differences, rather than individual differences between humans which he suggests are negligible, except in the case of pathology. There exists a comprehensive literature on social intelligence as an individual difference variable between humans, which goes uncommented upon by Charlton however. Indeed a variety of different but related constructs have been posited at different points in time, each purporting to capture some aspect of human social intelligence as a cognitive domain separate from general intelligence. E. L. Throndike (1920) was the first to suggest the existence of a discrete social intelligence domain, which he defined in terms of the capacity to manage other people combined with an ability to act wisely in human relations. Other similar definitions were subsequently proposed (see e.g. Moss & Hunt, 1927; Vernon, 1933), and tests, such as the George Washington Social Intelligence Test, were even devised in an effort to capture social intelligence as an individual difference variable (Hunt, 1928). A major impediment to research in this field occurred in the 1930s when it became apparent that performance on tests of abstract (general) intelligence tended to be highly predictive of measures of social intelligence (R. L. Thorndike, 1936; R. L. Thorndike & Stein, 1937; Woodrow, 1939). For a long while thereafter, interest in social intelligence declined as psychologists shifted to the opinion that social intelligence was in fact little more than a social manifestation of general intelligence (Wechsler, 1939, 1958). The early 80s saw a significant revival of interest in the possibility that social intelligence might constitute a separate domain of human cognition. This decade saw the publication of Gardner's Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences, in which he proposed the existence of an interpersonal intelligence encompassing an individual's ability to notice and draw distinctions between other individuals. Interpersonal intelligence is one of seven multiple intelligences defined by Gardner through his interpretations of various convergent lines of evidence (although not through the use of psychometric scale construction) (Gardner, 1983, 1993). Sternberg's triarchic theory, which emerged at around the same time, also contains a discrete social intelligence analogue in the form of practical intelligence, which encompasses the ability to solve problems in an everyday context (Sternberg, 1984, 1985, 1988). 2.3. Significant questions There are two significant and related questions concerning social intelligence as it pertains to humans, which need to be addressed. Firstly is there a cognitive component to the constructs termed ‘social intelligence’? Evolutionary psychological models of social intelligence would seem to suggest that there is no cognitive component to socially intelligent action, and that such actions are first and foremost a consequence of the operation of evolutionary programs (modules) which work to provide rapid responses to evolutionarily familiar social problems, such as cheater detection (Kanazawa, 2004; Stanovich & West, 1998, 2000). Some evolutionary psychologists refer to these modules as ‘dedicated intelligences’, in order to distinguish them from ‘improvisational’ or general intelligence (Cosmides & Tooby,

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2002). It is doubtful whether such hypothesized dedicated or social intelligences really deserve the label ‘intelligence’ however as there is no abstract component to their operation, they do not function to solve novel problems but have instead been adaptively refined through the need to cope with recurrent problems. If there is any discriminant validity to these ‘dedicated intelligences’ then they should properly be described as ‘social instincts’ rather than as intelligences. Social intelligence models of personality are explicitly cognitive however as they typically perceive social behavior to be intelligent in that it is mediated by cognitive processes — such as perception, memory, reasoning and problem solving. Social intelligence theorists who perceive personality in these terms regard public manifestations of personality to be as much a product of individual differences in social knowledge as instincts or conditioning (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987, 1989; Cantor & Fleeson, 1994; Cantor & Harlow, 1994; Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1989). In this sense social intelligence has been explicitly linked with gc, which in the social domain encompasses the entirety of an individual's social knowledge (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987). The belief that there is a cognitive component to social intelligence, and therefore that it is a ‘true’ intelligence seems to be at least plausible. However, from this the second major question arises, namely to what extent are the social and abstract intelligences truly orthogonal? A number of studies have reported null or negative correlations between measures of abstract and social intelligence (such as contract selection tasks and other social performance measures) (e.g. Fredrickson, Carlson & Ward, 1984; Lowman & Leeman, 1988; Marlowe, 1986; Stanovich & West, 1998, 2000, for a more detailed overview see: Kihlstrom & Cantor, 2000), however a sizable number have also found that performance in a variety of social domains is strongly predicted by measures of abstract intelligence (e.g. Achter, Lubinski & Benbow, 1996; Girotto & Tentori, 2008; Gottfredson, 2002, 2003a, b; Jones & Day, 1997; Keating, 1978; R. L. Thorndike, 1936; R. L. Thorndike & Stein, 1937; Stricker & Rock, 1990; Webb, Lubinski & Benbow, 2002; Woodrow, 1939). Of particular interest is the study of Girotto and Tentori (2008), which set out to explicitly test Kanazawa's unimodular theory of general intelligence (which as was mentioned previously makes similar predictions to Charlton's hypothesis). The theory necessitates that abstract reasoning and social competency be orthogonal domains (and thus distinctly modular), however the researchers found that amongst a mixed sex sample of 65 students, performance on an abstract reasoning based selection task was strongly predictive of performance on a social reasoning based selection task. All of the participants who solved the abstract version of the selection task went on to solve the social contract version; this is in contrast to a minority of the sample (28%) who failed to solve the abstract version, but went on to solve the social contract version (Girotto & Tentori, 2008). Although not absolutely conclusive, the theory first proposed by Wechsler (1939), namely that many manifestations of social intelligence are largely abstract or general intelligence applied to social situations is certainly parsimonious given what is known of the neuroanatomy of the brain's intelligence centers, where studies have revealed high levels of networking coupled with delocalization, which in turn suggests that g is significantly involved in tapping a considerable array of

subordinate systems (Choi et al., 2008; Colom et al., 2009; Geary, 2005; Gottfredson, 2007, Jensen, 1998; Miller, 2000a, b). These may include ostensibly non-cognitive psychological mechanisms such as Extraversion (Geher, Miller & Murphy, 2007), and modules adapted to solving evolutionarily familiar social problems such as the theory of mind mechanism, which when impaired can give rise to sub optimal manifestations of social intelligence (such as autism spectrum conditions) (Baron-Cohen, 1995). Charlton's strategic social intelligence requires working memory which is highly g loaded (Carroll, 1993), it therefore seems that individual differences in general intelligence should be highly relevant to social intelligence, even as specifically conceptualized by Charlton. 3. Are smarter people necessarily predisposed towards particular political and social attitudes? A number of attempts have been made at defining and measuring conservatism. Representative of current thinking in political psychology, Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski and Sulloway (2003) describe the attitudinal core of political conservatism as stressing resistance to change (i.e. ‘progressive’ social policy), the justification of inequality and a dispositionally and situationally mediated need to manage uncertainty and threat. In an earlier study, Wilson (1973) characterized psychological conservatism in a similar way. His dynamic theory holds that conservatism is essentially a motivated response to uncertainty, where sources of uncertainty include threats to social stability such as dissent, novelty and anarchy, threats to in-group cohesion such as foreigners and threats to self such as death. The behavioral responses to these perceived threats are broadly socially negative and include religious dogmatism, ethnocentrism, militarism, authoritarianism, punitiveness and rigid morality amongst others. Wilson further speculated that political conservatism has a partly genetic basis, and that it is associated with anxiety proneness, stimulus aversion, physical unattractiveness and low intelligence. In examining the relationship between IQ and conservatism, Stankov (2009) found a significant negative correlation between the two amongst a sample of 1254 community college students and 1600 foreign students seeking admissions to US universities. His study employed a Conservatism factor constructed from measures of personality, social attitudes and social norms which captured many constructs included in the nomological network of both Jose and co-worker's and Wilson's definitions of conservatism. Authoritarian personality is believed by many psychologists to be a significant component of both psychological and political conservatism, and it has even been argued that these are essentially isomorphic (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson & Sanford, 1950). As with conservatism, there exists a literature indicating negative correlations between IQ and measures of authoritarian personality such as the California F (pre-fascist personality) scale, the Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale and scales measuring related constructs (McCourt, Bouchard, Lykken, Tellegen & Keyes, 1999; Scarr & Weinberg, 1981). Similarly, a number of studies have reported positive correlations between IQ and leftist attitudes. A study by Pesta, McDaniel and Bertsch (2010) found positive associations between IQ and a U.S. State level index of well-being, which contained indicators of conservatism/

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left-wing liberalism, where it was found that more liberal States generally exhibit higher levels of well-being. Studies by Kanazawa have also identified positive correlations between IQ and left-wing liberalism at both the U.S. population (Kanazawa, 2010), and cross-cultural levels (Kanazawa, 2009). A study by Deary, Batty and Gale (2008) found significant positive correlations between IQ and left-wing liberal and antitraditional/anti-authoritarian social attitudes amongst a representative sample (N = 7070) of the British population born in 1970. Charlton cites this study in support of his claim that “in some populations there is… a positive correlation with ‘enlightened’ or progressive values of a broadly socialist and libertarian type” (p. 868). 3.1. Construct validity issues It has been observed that some of the measures used in these kinds of studies exhibit questionable validity. In his work on conservatism and authoritarian personality, Ray (1974) has noted that conservatism (which is conventionally defined as resistance to change) is a highly abused term in the political psychology literature as it is almost universally regarded as isomorphic with respect to political rightism (Altemeyer, 1981; Ray, 1991). However, there is no evidence that rightists (whom Ray (1991), defines as those who tend to favor individualistic methods of maximizing human welfare, such as limited government) are in all instances opposed to change. In contemporary social democracies for example, rightists (who it must be noted frequently self-identify as conservatives) tend to actively seek to reform statecraft through limiting government power. Some strains of libertarianism even advocate radical measures such as abolishing government altogether favoring anarcho-capitalism instead. By contrast many leftists (defined by Ray (1991) as those who tend to favor collectivistic methods of maximizing human welfare, such as big government) could easily be described as ‘conservative’ in instances when they seek to oppose reform that would limit state power (such as the hard-liners who resisted Gorbachev's reforms in the USSR). As both rightists and leftists can be both conservative (resist change) and radical (embrace change) on many issues, ‘conservatism’ as traditionally construed in the political psychology literature would appear therefore to be a somewhat ambiguous construct when used to distinguish leftist attitudes from those of rightists (Ray, 1991). Authoritarian personality is another problematic construct for political psychologists as for the most part their attempts to measure it objectively have failed. The classic measure of authoritarian personality, the California F-scale, entirely lacks construct validity (Altemeyer, 1981; Christie & Jahoda, 1954; Ray, 1976). The Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale has similarly been demonstrated to exhibit defective validity (Ray, 1985, 1987, 1991). As with conservatism, authoritarian personality is often considered a key component in rightist political ideologies even though the most authoritarian regimes (i.e. those that practiced communism, fascism or their ideological derivates) can reasonably be described as extremely leftist in orientation, in that these regimes employed expansive and unrestricted state power (collectivism) as a means of facilitating radical social change (Ray, 1986; von Hayek, 1944; von Mises, 1949). Another problem with the idea of

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authoritarian personality is the broad failure of political psychologists to differentiate between what Rudin (1961) has termed rational authoritarianism and irrational authoritarianism. Rational authoritarianism is that which aims to maximize the welfare of people, e.g. laws preventing murder and theft, or the teacher–pupil relationship, acquiescence to which is a necessary condition for the maintenance and functioning of healthy societies. Irrational authoritarianism by contrast is that which makes unreasonable demands of people, e.g. obeying the whims of a dictator or cult leader, submission to which typically only advantages the authoritarian making the rules. Political psychologists have in the past, described anti-authoritarian personalities as being healthy in contrast to authoritarian ones, which are deemed pathological (Adorno et al., 1950). A study by Martin and Ray (1972) however found a significant negative correlation between agreement with anti-rational authoritarian items and IQ and a positive correlation with Neuroticism amongst a fully demographically representative Australian sample (N = 460). The anti-rational authoritarian items were all of a broadly leftist/egalitarian orientation and included such statements as: “The best school system is one that is democratic and treats all the pupils exactly alike” and: “Most so-called “juvenile delinquency” is really just “youthful exuberance” and should not be punished”. It is interesting to note that thus far, this contradictory finding has largely gone uncommented upon in the literature on political orientation and IQ. It is worth noting also that there are parallels between irrational authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism, which is known to correlate negatively with IQ (Bertsch & Pesta, 2009). 3.2. Situational effects In contrasting studies such as those of Martin and Ray (1972) and Deary et al. (2008), which appear to have arrived at completely opposing conclusions concerning the direction of the correlation between agreement with leftist political attitudes and IQ, it is worth considering a possible role for situational effects. Despite the fact that the genetic variance in political and social attitudes is partly heritable (Alford, Funk & Hibbing, 2005; Fowler, Baker & Dawes, 2008), and at some level individuals therefore have an implicit political orientation, such predisposition can be overridden through effortful control based on context dependent explicit appraisal (MacDonald, 2008, 2009). The reason why intelligent people in contemporary Western societies tend more strongly towards leftist political and social attitudes is likely therefore due to a combination of their heightened sensitivity to the contemporary liberal post-materialist values system operating in their cultural environments, and their enhanced ability to perceive the benefits associated with explicating the values and attitudes that best resonate with the normative superstructure of their cultures. If this cultural-mediation hypothesis is valid, then it should be the case that cognitive ability will tend to positively correlate with conservative and traditionalist values in cultural environments that are broadly characterized by such values. Indeed there is a study that provides some evidence for this, namely that of Katz (1990), which found positive correlations between aspects of cognitive ability,

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such as performance IQ, and conservative traditionalism (measured using the social–religious–political and Wilson– Patterson Conservatism scales) amongst a sample of 100 white South African students. In an earlier study, Katz (1988) reported that Afrikaans speaking white South Africans (the dominant political group at the time) were considerably more conservative and traditionalistic than English speakers. This finding may also shed light on the Martin and Ray study, as perhaps like Katz's South African sample, their sample were socialized into a more traditionalistic conservative environment. The study of Kemmelmeier (2008) is also worth noting, as it found a number of associations between IQ and political attitudes that seem to contradict conventional thinking on this issue. For example amongst a sample of students at a selective US university (N = 7279), some dimensions of conservatism (assessed using self-description and a measure of conservative attitudes) in particular anti-regulation attitudes, are linked with higher verbal ability, whereas others such as socially conservative gender roles, are linked with lower verbal ability. The study also found that conservatism was correlated with higher average ability at the U.S. State level in States with low political involvement. There exist positive correlations between Openness to Experience and leftist attitudes (Rentfrow, Gosling & Potter, 2008; Rentfrow, Jost, Gosling & Potter, 2009) and IQ (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997), however if Openness to Experience is the key personality dimension predisposing those with high IQs towards embracing leftist liberal political attitudes, why does it appear to be the case that amongst samples exposed to environments that political psychologists might characterize as ‘closed minded’ (i.e. conservative and traditionalistic), embracing those values is a function of cognitive ability (Katz, 1990)? One possibility is that novelty seeking stemming from Openness to Experience is not the key variable mediating this relationship. Conscientiousness is the personality dimension primarily associated with individual differences in effortful control (MacDonald, 2008), therefore contrary to Charlton's hypothesis, Conscientiousness rather than Openness to Experience, may better explain the apparent role played by culturally constructed norms and cost/benefit payoff schedules in encouraging the socially adaptive selection of political and social attitudes amongst those with high IQs. 4. What is ‘political correctness’? In contemporary discourse, the term ‘political correctness’ is used typically by critics of the concept to describe behavior, ideas, language and policies whose objective is to minimize both perceived and actual offence to individuals in a range of contexts (e.g. age, disability, gender, race, sexual orientation etc) (Perry, 1992). The usage of the term ‘political correctness’ (the term shall be used here in the absence of a more suitable one) has also been expanded to include attempts at increasing social empathy in other contexts, such as animal rights and environmentalism (see e.g. Horner, 2007). The tendency to hold views that could be termed ‘politically correct’ appears to have formed part of a stereotype associated with Caucasians of primarily European descent who have internalized leftist political attitudes. This apparent association is even a source of popular satire, a notable

example of which is the book Stuff white people like: The definitive guide to the unique tastes of millions (Lander, 2008), which lampoons white, middle-class leftists for engaging in seemingly socially altruistic behaviors only to improve their social status relative to others of the same background with whom they primarily compete. There exists a literature on costly signaling theory (Miller, 2000b; Zahavi, 1975) and competitive altruism (Roberts, 1998; Van Vugt, Roberts & Hardy, 2007), which suggests that there is some truth to aspects of this stereotype. These theories posit that the tendency for individuals to be ‘blatantly benevolent’ (i.e. to prove to others that they can ‘afford’ to be altruistic) facilitates the building and maintenance of costly pro-social reputations. Consumer habits have been studied in this context by Griskevicius, Tybur and Van den Bergh (2010) who found that amongst a sample of 168 students, those who were conspicuous in their purchase of environmentally friendly products were more willing to incur the negative costs of owning a product of lower quality, as voluntary selfsacrifice and the ability to incur costs confers social status. Thus far no study has attempted to determine whether European Caucasians are differentially predisposed to these behaviors, as the stereotype would imply, however there is good reason to suspect that they are not. Costly signaling and competitive altruism as a means of pro-social reputation building seems to be a human universal associated with many different cultural practices (see e.g. Wilson, 2008). Furthermore kindness in general has also been found to be the trait most desired in a prospective partner, by both males and females in a study of 16,000 people from 37 different countries (Buss, 2003). It does appear that ‘political correctness’ might be a manifestation of ‘blatant benevolence’ idiosyncratic to contemporary Western societies however. 4.1. Competitive altruism, costly signaling and transitional values For a long while, philanthropy was the primary outcome of competitive altruism amongst the affluent in Western societies, where individuals engaged in costly signaling through the charitable donation of goods to causes deemed socially worthy, such as to universities, libraries, conservation or the provision of welfare for the poor. However, relatively recently elite competitive altruism has come to be strongly associated with ‘political correctness’. The 1960s and 70s represent the pivotal moment in this case, as it was during these decades that the Western normative center of gravity underwent a profound shift, the signal of which can be detected in the extensive survey data documenting the transition from materialist values (which emphasize physical and economic security) to post-materialist values (which emphasize self-expression, autonomy and equality) (Inglehart, 1977, 1990, 1997; Inglehart & Norris, 2003). Inglehart (1977) has argued that this transition was connected to rising levels of prosperity which freed individuals from basic selfinterested concern for physical and economic security while simultaneously encouraging them to embrace higher order non-economic concerns such as social justice, greater participation in political decision making, humanism and environmentalism. In the 60s post-materialist values were manifest in the counterculture, in which well-educated

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middle-class youth protested against perceived systemic sources of inequality and obstacles to self-actualization such as capitalism (de Koster, van der Waal, Achterberg & Houtman, 2008; Fortune, 1969; Roszak, 1969; Zijderveld, 1970). Even though many aspects of the 60s counterculture eventually floundered (such as the ‘free love’ movement), Inglehart (1997) has argued that the normative superstructure that it engendered has spread throughout the West as a result of a post-materialist ‘silent revolution’. A significant component of this ‘silent revolution’ was the rise of what some sociologists came to term the ‘New Class’, whose members largely eschewed business in the 60s and 70s and instead forged for themselves more ‘socially conscious’ career paths in knowledge work domains such as education, academia, journalism, administration and the public sector (Kristol, 1972, 1975; Brint, 1984). Like the philanthropists of previous generations, members of this post-materialist elite New Class engaged in conspicuous and competitive altruism. However, unlike materialist philanthropists, who basically exchanged resources for reputation, members of the New Class traded in a more abstract moral currency characterized by explicitly egalitarian ideas concerning the causes of inequality coupled with support for egalitarian economic and social policy. In as much as these quintessentially ‘politically correct’ ideas and policies could be said to represent an attempt to socially handicap the demographics from which members of the New Class were/are predominately drawn (i.e. male, middle-class, white etc), their promotion by members of the New Class thusly constitutes costly signaling. What then of Charlton's claim that “modern elite behavior is objectively maladaptive in a strictly biological sense” (p. 870)? Is it possible that this postmaterialist costly signaling may have had a dysgenic legacy? Some researchers have argued that dysgenic trends (such as historically low levels of fertility amongst high-IQ individuals) resulting from a combination of many potential factors, may in the long run have a deleterious impact on human capital (see e.g. Lynn, 1996; Vining, 1995), however it must be noted that historically, genotypic declines in IQ amongst Western societies (between .75 and .9 of a point per generation) have been significantly offset by phenotypic gains (about 3 points per decade) associated with the Flynn Effect (Flynn, 1987; Lynn & Van Court, 2004; Meisenberg, 2010). It is therefore not at all clear from the data that ‘politically correct’ behavior has the potential to engender the “genetic self-annihilation of the IQ elite” (p. 870), as Charlton suggests. 5. Discussion In an earlier paper, Charlton (1997) has argued that rightism/leftism may at its most fundamental level represent behavioral manifestations of dominance and counter-dominance instincts, with H. sapiens having acquired both at different points in its phylogeny. Dominance instincts, which Charlton associates with rightist attitudes, would appear to be the more evolutionarily basic of the two having arisen first in a non-human common ancestor. Dominance operates on the basis that Barkow's (1992) triad of social instincts (status seeking, mutual reciprocity and nepotism) permits economic stratification, with high-status individuals coming to acquire

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the largest fraction of resources. Counter-dominance instincts, which Charlton associates with leftist attitudes, would have emerged amongst ancestral humans in the EEA, and are characteristic of small scale, egalitarian hunter– gatherer societies, possessing immediate-return economies lacking both economic hierarchies and surpluses (Charlton, 1996; Charlton, 1997; Diamond, 1992; Erdal & Whiten, 1994; Gellner, 1988; Woodburn, 1982). Charlton has further argued that aspects of Western modernity, such as increased affluence coupled with conspicuous inequality are evolutionarily novel in such a way that tends to reactively trigger egalitarian counter-dominant instincts. An implication of this hypothesis is that ‘reactive’ egalitarianism may have been potentiated amongst Western societies experiencing significantly evolutionarily novel levels of economic growth in the post-war period, which may therefore have been at the behavioral root of the counter-dominant radicalism of the 60s and 70s. This represents a potential evolutionary psychological explanation for Inglehart's (1997) post-materialist ‘silent revolution’. 5.1. ‘Clever silliness’ as an inappropriate use of counterdominance instincts Meisenberg (2007) has suggested that the use of individual differences scales (in particular IQ) in the study of social phenomena is especially evocative of the way in which the human brain uses a linear hierarchy in order to rank individuals by social dominance. This conflation has led to a long-term general mistrust over the use of these scales (Meisenberg, 2007). The widespread rejection of the validity of these scales and the general proscription of the use of biological indicators in the study of social phenomena can therefore be seen as the logically counter-dominant response to the perception that psychologists of an adaptationist (or hereditarian) orientation are simply trying to reinforce hierarchy and justify inequality — the so-called ‘adaptationists-as-right-wing-conspirators’ hypothesis, which has only has recently been falsified (Tybur, Miller & Gangstead, 2007). This tendency towards ‘reactive’ egalitarianism as manifest amongst high-IQ New Class knowledge workers is arguably most strongly evidenced in the case of the social sciences, where over the last several decades, an explicitly biophobic perspectivism has come to dominate, characterized by ambiguity, subjectivity and relativism, which has largely replaced more objective modes of enquiry, such as empiricism and skepticism — concepts that are frequently dismissed using counter-dominant language, such as the idea that there should be no privileged knowledge or way of knowing and that such concepts are hegemonizing (Gross & Levitt, 1994; Meisenberg, 2007; Thiele, 2005; Thornton, 1999). It is not for lack of social intelligence that these seemingly ‘clever silly’ social scientists hold such nonrational views on social phenomena (in the sense that they are unsubstantiated by data or reject empiricism). The need to be effectively competitively altruistic in interpreting social phenomena (especially since the 60s and 70s) presented these individuals with a particularly taxing set of cognitive problems in need of solving. In as much as these problems are ‘social’ rather than purely abstract, and in as much as these individuals will channel their general intelligence into

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generating apparently sophisticated solutions to them, they could be said to be highly ‘socially intelligent’. Sophisticated subjective analyses of social phenomena not only function as effective signals of altruistic counter-dominance, but may also serve to indicate high levels of cognitive ability amongst their proponents (Miller, 2000b). This dual signaling may go some way to explaining the tremendous appeal of this analytical paradigm amongst those with high general intelligence. The tendency to ‘subvert’ intelligence into the generation of effective costly signals also makes sense in light of the fact that the human brain has evolved to favor perceptions of altruism over manifestations of raw intelligence (Buss, 2003). In this arrangement, Charlton's ‘clever sillies’ may not be lacking in common sense after all, as evidently their highly ‘socially intelligent’ analyses of social phenomena confer upon the most successful amongst them a high level of social status and prominence (and therefore a theoretically disproportionate access to material and sexual resources). The primary drawback of this arrangement is of course the fact that social phenomena have for the most part been critically underanalyzed, as to be objective concerning the role of biology in this domain (especially as it pertains to individual and group differences) is to appear to be explicitly dominance oriented in a way that confers significant social and by extension sexual penalties in the eyes of those who acquiesce to contemporary post-materialist norms (Miller, 2000b; Pinker, 2002). A recent study by Geher and Gambacorta (2010) would appear to be supportive of this interpretation, at least in as much as it pertains to sex differences. In their study, 268 US adults, varying based on political orientation and academic status, were asked whether a variety of attributes result either from biological evolution or socialization. The attributes included sex differences in human adults, sex differences in children, sex differences in chickens, human universals and group differences between dogs and cats. It was found that amongst the sample, the degree of self-reported liberalism was associated with a belief in the significance of nurture but only for the two human sex difference variables, in addition to which academic status was found to be independently predictive of the belief that sex differences result from nurture in both humans and chickens. Notably, the effect was apparently exacerbated amongst academics with social sciences (women's studies and sociology) backgrounds. Beliefs about group differences between cats and dogs and human universals were in no way related to the independent variables, which indicates that political bias manifested its self only (in the case of this study) with respect to sex differences in behavior as they pertain to humans, and that academic status (which is a proxy to position in a dominance hierarchy) appeared to meaningfully predict the degree to which individuals generally attributed sex differences to nurture, suggesting that higher social status potentiates the need to appear egalitarian. 5.2. Proposed directions for future research The work of Geher and Gambacorta (2010) needs replication using a wider array of participants and variables, such as items that measure the effect of political biases and social status on people's specific attitudes towards the origins of individual and group differences in factors such as IQ and personality. Some interesting new questions can also be

asked. Could it be the case that those who specifically research human intelligence or accept the validity of its findings are more implicitly dominant, as Meisenberg (2007) has suggested? If this is so then intelligence researchers might be expected to score higher on measures of dominance orientation such as Ray's (1988) Directiveness scale, relative to a randomly sampled control group. A related question concerns whether there is any connection between rightism/ leftism defined in terms of individualism/collectivism (Ray, 1991; von Hayek, 1944; von Mises, 1949), and dominance/ counter-dominance. Ray (1983) found no association between directiveness, and party political preference, suggesting that dominance orientation is independent of political orientation. In contrast however, the study of Meloen and de Witte (1998) found that amongst a Dutch sample surveyed about their political party preferences, those favoring the conservative PVV/VLD party, which is pro-capitalist, advocates a small state and is supported predominately by entrepreneurs, exhibited directiveness means that were significantly higher than the means of the sample. This finding could be taken as evidence that individualism is associated with higher levels of dominance, which would indicate that, both Charlton's and Ray et al.'s model of rightism/leftism share some common elements. It goes without saying however that this tentative connection needs to be better researched. Another significant question relevant to intelligence research concerns the cultural-mediation hypothesis and its effects on the direction of the correlation between IQ and political attitudes. Just how general is this trend? In order for the phenomenon to be considered robust it needs to be detectable in a range of populations characterized by differing values systems, furthermore research needs to be conducted into identifying what role (if any) Conscientiousness as an index of individual differences in effortful control, plays in mediating the correlation. Acknowledgements In addition to thanking three reviewers for their time, I would like to thank Geoffrey F. Miller for his most encouraging appraisal of an earlier draft of this manuscript along with Douglas K. Detterman, Jan te Nijenhuis and Gerhard Meisenberg for additional helpful comments, and finally Bruce G. Charlton for an engaging discussion. References Achter, J. A., Lubinski, D., & Benbow, C. P. (1996). Multipotentiality among the intellectually gifted: “It was never there and already it's vanishing”. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 43, 65−76. Ackerman, P. L., & Heggestad, E. D. (1997). Intelligence, personality, and interests: Evidence for overlapping traits. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 219−245. Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper & Row. Alford, J. R., Funk, C. L., & Hibbing, J. R. (2005). Are political orientations genetically transmitted? American Political Science Review, 99, 153−167. Altemeyer, R. A. (1981). Right-wing authoritarianism. Winnipeg: Manitoba Press. Arden, R., Gottfredson, L. S., Miller, G., & Pierce, A. (2009). Intelligence and semen quality are positively correlated. Intelligence, 37, 227−282. Barkow, J. H. (1992). Beneath new culture is old psychology: Gossip and social stratification. In J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind (pp. 627−637). New York: Oxford University Press.

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