Higher levels of childhood intelligence predict increased support for economic conservatism in adulthood; this link was partially mediated by educational attainment & achieved social class/income

Higher levels of childhood intelligence predict increased support for economic conservatism in adulthood. Gary J.Lewis, Timothy C.Bates. Intelligence, Volume 70, September–October 2018, Pages 36-41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2018.07.006

Highlights
•    Higher intelligence is associated with lower levels of social conservatism.
•    Does intelligence also predict economically conservative attitudes?
•    We addressed this question using two large, longitudinal UK based cohorts.
•    Childhood intelligence positively predicted economic conservatism in adulthood.
•    This link was partially mediated by educational attainment and achieved social class/income.

Abstract: A number of studies have reported that higher intelligence is associated with socially liberal attitudes. Less clear, however, is whether this link extends to economic attitudes, although there are indications that higher intelligence is associated with economically conservative attitudes. Here in two large, longitudinal UK cohorts (each N > 7100) we assessed whether childhood intelligence predicted adulthood economic attitudes. In both cohorts we saw that higher levels of childhood (age 10–11) intelligence were related to higher levels of economic conservatism in adulthood (age 30–33). These effects were robust to the inclusion of potential confounders (sex, parental social class, childhood conduct problems). Moreover, this pathway was at least partially mediated by educational attainment and achieved social class/income. These findings confirm the importance of intelligence as an important phenotype for understanding the origins of economic attitudes. Implications for self-interest and rational-interest theories are discussed.