Are attitudes changing on IQ and race?

1977-2006

2006

1996

There's a great debate going on over at the American Scene over Jim Manzi's National Review cover article that cautions conservatives about embracing genetic research and evolutionary explanations of behavior.

As usual, I like to bring data into debates where possible. Manzi claims that genetic explanations are now winning the debate, and he cites all the gene studies we see reported in mainstream periodicals like Time and Newsweek.

And while it does seem to me that we are seeing more attention paid to the role of biology, I fail to see much progress in any "dangerous" areas like gender and poverty, and no progress with the real dynamite: race.

I'm not sure if Manzi is implying that Bell Curve thinking is becoming more popular, but I strongly suspect it is not. In fact, I doubt we've hit the bottom yet. Let's look at the data.

The General Social Survey asked more than 20,000 people between 1977 and 2006 if they think that blacks are poorer because they have less inborn ability to learn. The top graph above show a steady decline in those who agree with the statement between the years 1977 and 2006. The last two survey years--2004 and 2006--had the lowest percent agreeing in the history of this question--9. The Bell Curve and other related research have had zero detectable impact.

But the elites always take the lead in public opinion, right? The second graph displays acceptance of an inborn inability by educational degree. Only 2.8% of Americans with graduate degrees agree with the genetic idea, while 20.2% of high school dropouts do.

Have the highly educated at least improved in the least decade? The bottom charts shows the pattern for 1996. Only 3.2% of those with advanced degrees agreed, so there has been no change among this group.

Steve Sailer is right that trends in attitudes do not follow the research, and things will probably get much worse before they get better.

Cutural decline among women

I often think that the country is in cultural decline, but it could be that Old Man Syndrome is setting in. I mean, haven't old people always bitched about how everything is going to hell?

Well I found some evidence that Grandpa might not be totally senile. The General Social Survey has asked people from 1991 to 2006 if they had ever cheated on their spouse. (I limited the analysis to those who have ever been married).

The graph shown above displays the trend for women. I focus on them since the trend is sharper: from 1991-2006, the percent of men who have cheated has only gone up a couple points. For women, the percent rose from 10.6% in 1991 (N = 616) to 17.5% in 2006 (N = 1,038). That's a 65% increase in a historically short period of time.

Another way of looking at it is in terms of convergence: in 1991, there was a gap 10.6 points between men and women; by 2006, the gap was down to 5.6 points. So, women are rapidly becoming as bad as men.

You know, come to think of it, this is consistent with other things I'm observing. You read reports like the following: the gender gap in prison inmates has narrowed; girls plan attacks on other girls and tape the assault in order to put it on YouTube; women are becoming plumbers in large numbers.

I get so pissed when I see all of the Girls Gone Wild ads on channels that young kids watch.

When I teach 8 am classes, my nearsightedness makes it difficult to differentiate the girls from the boys. The girls show up in sweats or gym shorts, and make zero effort to look good. A girl in a class just the other day said that if a woman hits a man, the man has the right to treat as her if she were a man and beat her silly if he can. They should duke it out, chivalry be damned. I see all the Gladiator women on TV and wonder, "What the hell is going on?"

And I blame feminists, in part, for this mutant society I observe all around me. There is a theory which sums it up very nicely. If society encourages women to move into the social roles traditionally held by men, well big frickin' surprise, they become like men, and not in just the good ways. They become more aggressive, more deviant, and more criminal. I ain't that crazy about the way men are, but when you see it on a woman, it's like ten times worse. I'm troubled when I see two guys fighting, but when I see some muscle-bound chick hovering over the victim, all tattoos and trash talk, I feel like becoming a revolutionary.

Gay marriage and infidelity: People against gay marriage often make the argument that homosexuals have a real problem with fidelity, and admitting them to the club would not be good for children or the institution of marriage in general. I don't find this to be a particularly compelling argument since heteros have nothing to brag about on this score, but one contribution I can make is too see if there is any relevant, systematic evidence to help decide if the claim is true.

The General Social Survey asked 4,964 people about their sexual orientation and, "What is your opinion about a married person having sexual relations with someone other than the marriage partner?" Here are the percentages who answered that it is always wrong:


Percent thinking that marital infidelity is always wrong

Straight females 80.6
Straight males 75.2
Lesbians 65.4
Gay males 58.4
Bisexual females 48.7
Bisexual males 46.7

Even straight guys do better than all the non-hetero groups.

Based on this evidence, granting homosexuals access to marriage in contemporary America is a little like a NBA basketball team that has been on a losing streak for many years who decides to add some short pudgy white guys to the roster.

More on family size: In previous posts, I presented evidence that, contrary to the traditional views, kids don't really make people happier. This finding was based on self-reports. Another way of approaching the question is to see what people say the ideal number of children is after they have had the experience of raising kids. The culture encourages parenting, but perhaps the reality is disappointing, which leads people to decide a lower number is ideal.

So, I show below the most popular answer (the modal response) to the question about ideal family size by the number of kids the person actually has (General Social Survey, N = 31,052):

Most popular answer of ideal family size by actual number of children (percent in the modal category given in parentheses):

Has no children
Ideal 2 (54.3%)

Has one child
Ideal 2 (56.5%)

Has two children
Ideal 2 (65.5%)

Has three children
Ideal 3 (26.4%)

Has four children
Ideal 2 (40.7%)

Has five children
Ideal 2 (36.6%)

Has six children
Ideal 2 (34.9%)

Has seven children
Ideal 2 (26.8%)

Has eight or more children
Ideal 4 (26.4%)


First, the experience of having one child does not seem to convince most people that one is enough: they are just as likely as non-parents to give two as the ideal number.

Where we do see a discrepancy between the actual and ideal number of kids is among large families--i.e., those with four or more. Except for the group with eight kids or more, the most popular ideal size is two.

There are probably some parents who didn't personally want so many kids, but had them because of things like not being careful, religious beliefs, or going along with a spouse. Another important explanation might be that parents wanted one boy and one girl, and had more than two trying to accomplish that goal.

Having a large number of kids does not make them choose the same number as the ideal. While it is true that they give 4, 5, 6 or 7 more often as an ideal than those with fewer kids (results not shown) 2 is the most popular choice for them.

So, there is a general tendency to see 2 kids as being most desirable. This might have to do with the desire to have one boy and one girl and suggests that nowadays people have kids for the experience and the meaning associated with it.

Regardless of the actual family size, fewer than 2% of those who had experienced a child decided that having no kids is the way to go (results not shown) so there is little evidence here of regret over having kids.

The only indication of regret I see is the substantial number of parents of large families giving an ideal number that is less than what they have. The second thoughts seem to be over big families, which is not too surprising given that they are a lot of work, they are a big financial drain, and contemporary society won't admire you for it--they look at you like a freak show.

I agree with Michael Corleone that children are your only wealth, but I'm afraid I am in the minority view.

By the way, a reader raised the question of why conservatives want to encourage large families, when this leads to greater urbanism and consequently liberalism. To be precise, large families tend to increase the population (urbanism is a bit different) but my analyses of the World Values Survey found that populous China and India are conservative in important ways. Nevertheless, I would concede some truth to the point, but to make my position clear, when I advocate large families, I am speaking to the kinds of people who read my blog. The U.S. and the world have plenty of people, but what they don't have is enough smart people. America and the developed world, but the developing world even more, would benefit if mean IQs (and other traits) were shifted up.

Liberalism and caring for others

I must be getting soft--I haven't picked on liberals in a long time.

Liberals are the ones who care about people, right? Especially the innocent ones, the children. Except when the other people are your spouse, and the children are your children.

More than 16,000 people were asked their political orientation and if they had ever cheated on their spouses. The percentages are shown in the graphs above.

In the top graph, we see that liberals are allergic to marriage--the more liberal you are, the less likely to have ever jumped to broom. But we can't look here to compare rates of infidelity since it doesn't make sense to give all those never married liberals credit for never having cheated on their spouses.

So, we turn to the lower graph which includes only those who have ever been married. The results: infidelity goes up with one's liberalism. Extremely liberal folks trounce on the hearts of their loved ones at a rate double that of extreme conservatives--27.5% vs. 12.7.

Liberals try to help abstract humanity with your money, while they piss on actual people--i.e., family members.

Oh, and let me anticipate liberal readers: liars on surveys are conservative.

Innumerate pundits: Taki's Mag decided to be nice and let me post again, so I take back all the nasty things I said about them.

Here's a quote from Justin Raimondo's post on race pseudo-science and my comment:

“...but if blacks are so low on the IQ totem pole, then how did the Great Transcender get to where he is, and sound the way he sounds, with half his genetic heritage supposedly dragging him down? The racialists can’t answer that, because it refutes their worldview...”

The innumeracy among our punditry is embarassing and all too common.

By my calculations, there are 1.4 blacks per 1,000 with an IQ of 130 or above, assuming a mean of 85.

For those who are half black/half white, assuming a mean of 92.5, there would be 6 people in 1,000 with IQs 130 or over.

More on gay marriage: I don't have much time to be drawn into debates (in fact, I'm on the road as we speak) but at times the goading of readers makes me want to bite, and unlike some, I think issues connected to the institution of marriage are important.

There are many available arguments against gay marriage, the most obvious one being that the majority doesn't want it.

But allow me to take another tact--I'll steal from Aristotle. We can infer the purpose of something by its design. By examining the construction of a hammer, we can see that it is meant to hit things. (And here I'll use "penis" or other related words as a shorthand for the whole sexual reproduction system). By examining a man's parts, it is clear that their purpose is to impregnate some object, and we can see from studying the design of a woman that she is that object.

Now, clever humans manipulate sex to get pleasure without reproduction, but a penis pointed at a woman is likely to achieve its intended purpose sooner or later. One thing that ensures that the penis will not ever get around to serving its purpose is if the object of arousal is another man. It's, for example, like erectile dysfunction. As long as it persists, the purpose of a man's parts is thwarted. So same-sex sexual attraction can be seen as a dysfunction or a chronic health condition--probably one with no cure at the moment.

You might respond that a disability doesn't deprive one of his rights, like voting for example. But marriage is not a right. People can set up house with whomever they want. Marriage is the state recognizing a particular union. The government is putting its stamp of approval on the arrangement. It is holding up the relationship and saying, we like this and want to encourage it.

Throughout history, society via the law has venerated marriage for a variety of reasons, but it makes no sense to enshrine a relationship based on a disability. That would be like the deaf community that wants the government to put its stamp of approval on deafness, and to declare that it is just as good as hearing, and it should be venerated and encouraged as much as hearing.

The church and the bench: Allow me a follow-up to the last post. To be perfectly frank, I don't find most arguments against gay marriage to be particularly compelling. The real reason I oppose it is that it insults the beliefs of most religious people, and I generally side with this very large group of people. Simple as that. This point of view will not impress those who don't look to faith traditions for moral guidance, just like your arguments of "Why not?" will not leave much of an impression with me.

But to make this post a more useful one, let me explain the larger concern I have that is connected to the gay marriage issue, and that is my take on the institution of law.

Unlike many intelligent folks these days, I don't think a society of unguided individuals engaging in free exchange is a desirable state of affairs. I find wisdom in Old School sociology which would call such a state anomie. The idea is that humans are social animals, and they thrive the best when they are embedded in a web of defined relationships, and when there are authoritative norms to guide their behavior and when there is a trustworthy worldview to give their lives order, meaning, and direction.

Now, environments always change, so societies have no choice but to always be in the process of adaptation. To optimize well-being, however, the change should be slow and gradual. Rapid social change undermines the authority of norms and worldviews, and folks are left with the guides of individual appetite, expedience, and extremism. The chaos of the 60s is a milder example of what I'm talking about here.

American culture today is biased in favor of change. We love the newest and the latest, and there is a tendency to equate new with good. And there are major instutitions which are 100% in sync with our cultural bias. The market and Madison Avenue love to push the new--if you don't have this or that, what is wrong with you?

The university is the same way. History is mostly a story of atrocities, the teachers tell us. Only the future is worth fighting for. The elite media and Hollywood repeat the same story. All a presidential candidate has to do is utter the word "change" and half the country falls in love.

And related to this is science and technology: the old guys gave us some stuff, but the newer stuff is much better. The behavioral sciences and the myriad industries aimed at solving social problems are guilty of the same thing. Traditional ways of helping people with their difficulties are just superstitutions, and not even the research from a decade ago is any good. The study that came out today is the one with all the answers.

So, there are a lot of power centers in love with change, and there are a lot of folks anxiously waiting for the Revolution. But if there is any truth to my above description of an optimally functioning society, where are institutional brakes on all this desire for innovation?

Well, brakes are hard to find in this country, but perhaps the first thing to pop into your brain is the church. And yes, that can be a very important source of caution and restraint. Since it is one of the few sources of anti-newism, it really ticks me off when churches base their policies on the latest New York Times editorial.

Ah, finally we come to it. Traditionally, another brake on the American locomotive has been the courts. With a deep respect for precedent, judges were always looking back for the answers. It was a backward-looking institution. Law was revered because it was ancient--going back a thousand years to medieval England. Even back to Moses if you wanted to push it. In it was encoded the wisdom of our fathers.

Now, the change fetishists sit on the bench, and instead of being pulled kicking and screaming by public sentiment to get with the times, now it imposes the latest fad like a tyrant on a resentful populace.

All you innovators--you can have the rest of them, but take pity on us poor conservatives and leave the church and the bench to us.