Found weak support for a positive association of cognitive ability with economic conservatism that is mediated through income

Do Smarter People Have More Conservative Economic Attitudes? Assessing the Relationship Between Cognitive Ability and Economic Ideology. Alexander Jedinger, Axel M. Burger. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, September 22, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211046808

Abstract: Evidence on the association of cognitive ability with economic attitudes is mixed. We conducted a meta-analysis (k = 20, N = 46,426) to examine the relationship between objective measures of cognitive ability and economic ideology and analyzed survey data (N = 3,375) to test theoretical explanations for the association. The meta-analysis provided evidence for a small positive association with a weighted mean effect size of r = .07 (95% CI = [0.02, 0.12]), suggesting that higher cognitive ability is associated with conservative views on economic issues, but effect sizes were extremely heterogeneous. Tests using representative survey data provided support for both a positive association of cognitive ability with economic conservatism that is mediated through income as well as for a negative association that is mediated through a higher need for certainty. Hence, multiple causal mechanisms with countervailing effects might explain the low overall association of cognitive ability with economic political attitudes.

Keywords: cognitive ability, intelligence, economic attitudes, economic ideology, meta-analysis

General Discussion

In the present research, we investigated the association of cognitive abilities with economic attitudes by synthesizing the extant empirical evidence in a meta-analysis (Study 1) and by testing hypotheses concerning possible mechanisms underlying this association that follow from different theoretical perspectives (Study 2). Our meta-analysis provided evidence for a small positive association (r = .07) of cognitive abilities with economic conservatism, on average. However, the effect sizes and directions of the associations were very heterogeneous. The strength of the association was moderated by several methodological features of the extant studies: It tended to be more pronounced in studies that used measures of operational rather than symbolic economic ideology (or mixed scales), in studies that used probability samples of the population rather than self-selected samples, and in studies that used Turkish, British, or Scandinavian rather than North-American samples. However, it was not moderated through the type or number of items of the cognitive ability measure that was used.

In the light of the heterogeneity of the size and sign of the association of mental abilities with economic attitudes observed in Study 1, Study 2 aimed at investigating different hypotheses that have been proposed to explain the association. Here, we found support for a mediation of a positive effect of mental abilities on economic conservatism through income. This supports the self-interest hypothesis according to which higher cognitive abilities facilitate higher social status and high-status individuals are less supportive of governmental regulations of markets, and redistributive social policies because they have more to lose from these measures than low-status individuals (Johnston, 2018). We found no support for the economic sophistication hypothesis according to which a positive association of cognitive abilities with economic conservatism is mediated through economic knowledge. However, we found support for a negative effect of cognitive abilities on economic conservatism that is mediated through need for certainty. Importantly, the fact that we found support for two hypotheses proposing countervailing effects of mental abilities on economic political attitudes through different causal mechanism offers an explanation for the weak average association and the heterogeneity of the empirical evidence we observe in Study 1.

Some points concerning our investigation of causal mechanisms in the present research need to be highlighted: First, we used correlational data to test hypotheses about causal mechanisms. The mediation analyses we conducted allow for conclusions about whether the empirical data are compatible with and support specific hypotheses about causal mechanisms. However, these analyses cannot provide strong evidence for causal effects or detect unique causal mechanisms (see Fiedler et al., 2011). Second, the theoretical perspectives and hypotheses we described and tested are far from exhaustive. The central conclusion from the pattern of results of Study 2 is that there is evidence for multiple mechanisms with sometimes countervailing effects. However, other theoretical perspectives and mechanisms than the ones we focused on might also play a role in explaining the association of mental abilities with economic political attitudes.

Third, we derived very abstract hypotheses from the theoretical perspectives we introduced to test them empirically. The formulation and empirical test of abstract hypotheses served the purpose of the current research well. However, each of the theoretical perspectives entails more precise predictions concerning the causal mechanism that links cognitive abilities to economic political attitudes. For example, the epistemic needs hypothesis holds that individuals with high epistemic needs feel attracted to economic conservatism because core elements of economic conservatism are functional for satisfying these needs. While the fact that we find evidence for a negative link between cognitive abilities and economic conservatism that is mediated through epistemic needs supports this view, it is not clear whether a functional fit indeed explains the association of epistemic needs with economic conservatism. In this respect, it has been argued that a functional link between psychological needs and political attitudes exists primarily for sociocultural but not for economic attitudes (e.g., Federico & Malka, 2018; Johnston & Wronski, 2015; Malka & Soto, 2015). From this perspective, in contexts where social and economic conservatism are communicated as a coherent package in the political discourse, individuals with high epistemic needs who are familiar with the discourse and perceive politics as personally relevant tend to endorse economic conservatism to express their identity as conservatives rather than because economic conservatism is particularly suitable to satisfy their needs (for empirical evidence, see Jedinger & Burger, 2019, 2020; Johnston et al., 2017; Malka et al., 2014).

There is much room for future research to test different theoretical assumption on specific causal links between cognitive abilities empirically. A further promising avenue for future research on the link between cognitive abilities and political attitudes lies in focusing on specific combinations of economic and sociocultural attitudes along with corresponding symbolic self-categorizations of individuals. For example, findings by Yilmaz et al. (2020) indicate that self-identified libertarians, who combine economic conservatism with liberal sociocultural views, play a crucial role in driving the association of cognitive style with economic conservatism.

Our findings should also be considered in the light of the fact that the data of the present investigation mainly encompass samples from Western, industrialized, rich, and democratic countries while cultural and national differences may have implications for the intelligence-ideology nexus. Hence, an important avenue for future research is to extend the investigation of the link of cognitive abilities with economic policy preferences to a broader set of cultural contexts.