According to a recent study, individuals who possess higher levels of cognitive ability tend to be more supportive of individual freedoms and less concerned with being “woke.”
Led by Louise Drieghe, a team of researchers conducted a survey of 300 adults residing in North America to investigate this phenomenon. The researchers utilized the Mechanical Turk platform to conduct the survey and administered the Ammons Quick Test to assess participants’ cognitive abilities.
The Ammons Quick Test measures cognitive ability by asking participants to correctly match words to their corresponding images. The researchers hypothesized that individuals with higher cognitive abilities would exhibit a greater level of support for individual freedoms and less concern about the “woke” movement.
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The results of the study supported the researchers’ hypothesis. Participants who performed better on the Ammons Quick Test showed a greater level of support for individual freedoms and were less concerned with being “woke.” In contrast, individuals who performed poorly on the test tended to exhibit the opposite tendencies.
The researchers also assessed participants’ support for free speech and concern for political correctness, according to the Daily Sceptic.
To measure the former, they constructed a 9-item scale, comprising items such as “Every individual has the unalienable right to express their thoughts freely,” and “Censorship of speech leaves little room for debate and diverse points of view”.
To measure the latter, they used a 7-item scale developed by two other researchers.
It includes items such as “I try to educate people around me about the political meaning of their words” and “I get mad when I hear someone use politically incorrect language.”
The researchers’ key finding is shown in the first column of the table below.
The values are correlation coefficients – a way of quantifying how strongly related two variables are.
The findings of this study suggest that cognitive ability plays a role in shaping individuals’ political attitudes and beliefs. While more research is needed to fully understand the relationship between cognitive ability and political ideology, these results highlight the importance of considering cognitive ability when examining political attitudes and behaviors.
