Sex differences in personality: The article I cited in the post on race differences in personality also examined sex differences. The aim of the study was to see if personality assessments used by employers are biased against minorities. Since they found that non-whites came out ahead on most traits, then of course there is nothing to worry about.

But I digress. Here are the results by gender:



Compared to men, women are less adjusted and sociable. They score lower on intellect and stress tolerance, and have less clerical potential.



Women are less influential, less relaxed, less emotionally controlled, less active, less innovative, less competitive, less data rational, and they are less methodical.




Women are less work-oriented but are more perfectionistic.

Most of the differences I list are small. The gaps on "active" and "data rational" are larger.

Many of these differences seem plausible, but give me a second to flex my brain to figure out why the gaps would be more valid for sex than for race....

Ow, that hurt. My guess is this: cultural differences and differing reference groups might cause racial groups to score themselves higher or lower on self-assessments. Males and females belong to the same culture, so that factor is eliminated. On the other hand, I imagine that men tend to compare themselves to other men when self-assessing, and women with other women. If I'm right, then we still have a reference group problem.

Over at Secular Right, John Derbyshire writes that his book Prime Obsession is being translated into Russian and that it only seems fitting that he get a name like a character in a Russian novel. John Jovanovich Derbishky, or something like that.

Then I wondered what kind of Russian name would best describe me. My first thought was Prince Myshkin--the protagonist from Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. (Hat tip to Mel Brooks).

But then I thought of a name even closer to the real me: Count Jerkoff.

Race differences in personality: I found an interesting British study (Journal of Occup. and Organizational Psych. 2002. 75, 255-76) that examined racial differences in personality. The sample included university students: 324 whites, 56 blacks (Caribbean, African and other), 47 Asians/Indians (Pakistani, Bengladeshi, Indian), and 30 Chinese. Three personality tests were used. They are all self-reports:



Let's just hit the larger differences. Compared to whites, blacks have more managerial potential and are: less sociable, more prudent, and more service-oriented. Compared to whites, Chinese folks have more clerical and managerial potential and are more ambitious, prudent, service-oriented, and geared toward school success. Compared to whites, Asians have more managerial potential and are more ambitious, prudent, and oriented toward school success.






Compared to whites, black are more indecisive, relaxed, emotionally controlled, and more likely to give socially desirable answers. Chinese are more influential, emotionally controlled, active, data rational, achieving, methodical, and are less decisive, relaxed and sociable. Asians are more influential, empathic, innovative, data rational, achieving, and methodical.







Compared to whites, blacks are warmer but have less stamina. Chinese people are more competitive, limelight-seeking, and have less stamina. Asians are more risk-taking.

Some of the results for Chinese and Asian students seem plausible, but many black-white differences don't square with other types of data; in fact, they seem just the opposite. I'd like to see personalities assessed by others--perhaps by spouses, close friends, or experts, with a mixed-race population as the reference group. Or measurement through experimental manipulation would be interesting. Keep in mind that the sample is university students, so the range of personalities is restricted. Also--it would be nice to know how many students are immigrants.

UPDATE: In connection with this post, it is interesting that black Americans rate themselves as the smartest in self-assessments of intelligence, while Asian Americans rate themselves as least intelligent.

Attitudes of Jews towards other ethnic and racial groups: In a recent post, I showed that of all the different American groups non-whites have the coolest feelings toward Jews. Now let's turn it around and see who Jews like the least.

Some might think the answer is obvious: Jews are white, so of course they like their own group the best. But others will say, the answer is obvious: Jews compete against whites and consider non-whites to be allies in the struggle. Or, much anti-Semitic persecution has come from whites--not blacks, Hispanics, or Asians--so it makes sense that Jews would dislike whites.

The GSS asked 46 American Jews how coolly they felt toward certain groups. Here are the means:


Mean coolness score

Whites 2.28
Blacks 2.89
Hispanics 3.16
Asians 3.07


The pattern mirrors what we saw in the earlier post. Of all the different ethnic groups, it is minorities that like Jews the least, and here we see that Jews like them less than they like whites. Race seems to trump any grievances Jews might have towards other whites.

I detect the implicit racial identification that I was writing about earlier. Whites, including Jews, feel affection for their own race. Non-whites don't like Jews as much as whites do. Why? Perhaps because they are a different race. As the black comedian Chris Rock said, "I don't hate Jews. I hate all white people."

Racist sports cabal: Sportswriter Doug Farrar, along with Rush Limbaugh, must meet regularly in a smoke-filled room to plot schemes to undermine black achievement on the football field. Farrar claims that, after his performance yesterday, it is clear that Donovan McNabb is a dumb quarterback.

Score one for social justice that Adolph Limbaugh won't be able to buy the Rams. Now, we need to find Farrar another line of work--perhaps shoe shine.

Punish the employers: In contrast to elites, the ordinary folks have got it about right on illegal immigration:

U.S. voters want aggressive action to restrict illegal immigration, but they don’t think immigrants should bear the brunt of the enforcement efforts on their own. Most say the federal government and those hiring illegal immigrants also need to be brought into the discussion.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% say the policies of the federal government encourage people to enter the United States illegally. Only 27% disagree, and 17% are not sure.

Republicans and unaffiliated voters overwhelmingly believe that federal policies encourage illegal immigration. Thirty-two percent (32%) of Democrats agree, but 41% do not.

The view that the federal government is enticing people to violate the law is consistent with earlier surveys. Among voters who are angry about immigration, 83% are angry at the federal government. Only 12% direct their anger at the immigrants.

Voters want the laws of the land enforced but not just against illegal immigrants.

The new survey finds that 64% believe law enforcement officers should sometimes conduct surprise raids at places where immigrants gather to find work. An even larger number (71%) say those who do the hiring also should be arrested.

Earlier surveys have shown that voters overwhelmingly believe that those who employ illegal immigrants should be punished.

Feelings toward Jews: GSS respondents (Americans) were asked how warmly and favorably do they feel toward Jews on a scale from 0 to 100, 100 being the warmest. Here are the means by ethnic group (with Jews removed):


Mean warmth toward Jews (N =3,499)

Czech 66.6
Italian 64.5
Irish 63.7
Polish 63.6
English/Welsh 63.4
Scottish 62.9
Dutch 62.5
German 62.3
Danish 61.9

All Americans 61.6

Norwegian 60.5
Swedish 59.5
Black 59.5
French 58.2
Puerto Rican 57.4
Japanese 56.8
Spain 56.4
Mexican 54.3*
Amerindian 53.8
Greek 53.1
Russian 52.3
Asian Indian 52.2*
Swiss 51.9
Chinese 42.6*
Arab 34.2

* p < .05, two-tail test, compared with all Americans


While many Jews seem to feel an affection for racial minorities, the favor is not generally returned. Immigrants from Mexico, India, China, and Arabic countries are moving the country in a more anti-Jewish direction.

Retards and mental cases: It looks like Rush Limbaugh won't be able to buy the Rams because he claimed a few years back that Donovan McNabb was being given too much credit by black-boosting sports journalists. (We can see now that the media definitely does NOT root for high-profile blacks).

I've learned from Steve Sailer that sports is PC times ten, especially among journalists (I don't follow sports) but folks don't want to do business with Limbaugh for that?! It turns out that these macho sports guys are actually little girls on the inside.

Race mania is so unbelievable, white nationalists (WNs) are going to be able to persuade people that the races need to be separated because when whites live anywhere in the vicinity of blacks, they turn into instant retards. And while we're at it, WNs will also convince folks that blacks need to be ruled by other blacks so they don't develop a blame-the-white-guy mental disorder.

According to Rasmussen, over 60% of Americans oppose proposals to charge overweight people more for their health insurance.

In an related story, the CDC reports that over 60% of Americans are overweight.

Mexicans weigh in on illegal immigration: A Zogby study Of 1,004 Mexican nationals conducted last month reported the following:

• Fifty-six percent of people in Mexico thought giving legal status to illegal immigrants in the United States would make it more likely that people they know would go to the United States illegally. Just 17 percent thought it would make Mexicans less likely to go. The rest were unsure or thought it would make no difference.

• Of Mexicans with a member of their immediate household in the United States,65 percent said a legalization program would make people they know more likely to go to America illegally.

• Two-thirds of Mexicans know someone living in the United States; one-third said an immediate member of their household was living in the United States.

• Interest in going to the United States remains strong even in the current recession, with 36 percent of Mexicans (39 million people) saying they would move to the United States if they could. At present, 12 to 13 million Mexico-born people live in the United States.

• A new Pew Research Center poll also found that about one-third of Mexicans would go to the United States if they could.

• An overwhelming majority (69 percent) of people in Mexico thought that the primary loyalty of Mexican-Americans should be to Mexico. Just 20 percent said it should be to the United States. The rest were unsure.

• Also, 69 percent of people in Mexico felt that the Mexican government should represent the interests of Mexican-Americans (Mexico- and U.S.-born) in the United States.

• A plurality, 39 percent, of Mexicans thought that in the last year fewer people they know had gone to the United States as illegal immigrants compared to previous years. Only 27 percent thought more had gone. The rest thought it had stayed the same or were unsure.

• A plurality, 40 percent, also thought that in the last year more of the illegal immigrants they know had returned to Mexico compared to previous years. Only 25 percent thought the number returning had fallen. The rest thought it had stayed the same or were unsure.

• Both the bad economy and increased immigration enforcement were cited as reasons fewer people were going to America as illegal immigrants and more were coming back to Mexico.

Okay, let's summarize. Mexicans believe amnesty will encourage more illegal immigration, and those who are the best informed (i.e., people who have family here) are more likely to feel that way. So amnesty is not going to fix a problem, it's going to grow the problen, which is probably what advocates want anyway. We get more Democrats. More people in need of government social services. It's a win-win.

Family and social networks between the two countries are thick. You'd think it was the same country. Some people would like it to be.

Most Mexicans also have no respect for American sovereignty, integrity or interests. America is simply the world's boarding house. Its ATM. There are no Americans, just Mexicans and other nationalities fattening their savings accounts. How would Mexicans like it if we snuck millions of immigrants into their country and expected them to be loyal to us and for our government to not consider them Mexicans, and to defend their interests against the interests of Mexico?

America is the woman you think you can "enter," cheat on, slap around, call a whore, and she'll beg for more. Masochistic. Low self-esteem. Maybe it's no accident that baby girls are sometimes named "America"--never boys.

Almost 40 million Mexicans wish they were here--even when things are so bad. Fortunately, the recession seems to have slowed illegal movement. Thank God for small favors.

Illegal immigration is the fire at the door: Recently, there was an interesting discussion over at OneSTDV concerning policies that HBD-ers should advocate.

Let me add that of all our concerns, nothing currently touches illegal immigration in importance. (In Europe, it's Islamification). Everyone's political efforts should be focused on this issue.

HBD priorities should be set in terms of an issue's: 1) practicality, and 2) immediacy. Blocking amnesty is practical. Many Americans are already fired up about it, the country is currently in no position to be handing out its precious jobs to foreigners, and health care reform is going to make it harder to get some kind of amnesty legislation passed because illegals will become legal residents eligible for whatever health care benefits are available to the rest of us.

The villains here are employers. We need to join forces with those on the left who are concerned with worker exploitation, and we should direct our anti-amnesty ire against the companies that are driving the problem. Those who hire illegals should get prison sentences in my opinion. When the jobs dry up, folks will pack their own suitcases and head home.

Not only can we make real gains here, but the problem is immediate and must be dealt with now. If the millions of illegals end up here, the country gets them and their descendants from now until the sun burns out. And they will make every effort to get their relatives over here, and the cycle will continue forever.

Much of the HBD discussion is connected in one way or another to differential reproduction. While all of that is very important, it's important on a scale of centuries. We're talking about evolutionary processes here, and they are slow by definition. As John Derbyshire writes in his new book We are Doomed (everyone buy a copy--it rocks) we might not make it to 2022, forget about the population composition in 2200. Thinking about feminism, the family, eugenics, and all that is needed, but illegal immigration is the fire at the door.

Diversity ruined journalism: Older-guy insiders are always a pleasure to read and listen to because they don't give a damn anymore and enjoy actually telling the truth.

Bernie Goldberg admitted on the O'Reilly Factor tonight that diversity ruined journalism. It was dominated in the old days by white men who had a code of skepticism and were after the who, what, when, where, why, and how of a story.

As minorities and women moved into the profession, anything remotely resembling objectivity disappeared. It wasn't clear if he was saying these demographic groups are simply more liberal, or that they, on average, lack the ability to be objective, but he puts the blame squarely on diversity.

God bless grumpy old men for getting past the lies.

IQ and negative emotionality: The GSS asked respondents four questions: How many days out of the past week were you: 1) angry, 2) anxious and tense, 3) sad, and 4) fearful that something would happen to you? Answers were all intercorrelated. I converted them to z scores and summed them to create an index of negative emotionality (also called neuroticism). The alpha coefficient is .68.

Here are the mean scores for smart people (those scoring 9 or 10 on the vocabulary quiz) and for everyone else:


Mean negative emotionality (N = 935)

Smart group .62
Everyone else -.11


The difference between the two groups is significant at the 95% confidence level. The gap is 26% of one standard deviation which indicates a small difference.

The results seem right, but I am not sure why smart people are more neurotic. Perhaps a reader steeped in the science has an idea.

It does seem like there is a calmness that comes with not thinking about things much.

Race, ethnicity, and trust: Americans (GSS respondents) were asked if people can be trusted. Here are the percent who answered yes by ethnic/racial group:


Percent trusting (N = 27,313)

Norwegian 56.0
Finnish 54.4
Swiss 53.8
Danish 52.3
Belgian 52.1
English 51.1
Swedish 50.9
Scottish 48.3
Yugoslavian 48.4
Russian 47.6
Jewish 45.7
Irish 45.4
French 45.2
Japanese 44.4
Chinese 44.2
German 44.0
Czech 44.0
Austrian 43.6
Hungarian 42.9
Polish 42.8
Dutch 41.2
French Canadian 40.9
Lithuanian 40.5

All Americans 39.6

Greek 39.3
Italian 38.2
Arab 36.4
Portuguese 34.5
Asian Indian 32.8
Rumanian 31.9
Spain 31.6
Amerindian 26.2
West Indian 26.1
Mexican 24.0
Filipino 21.3
Black 16.7
Puerto Rican 16.2


The pattern is very clear for Americans of differing ancestries: those of northwestern European descent are the most trusting; Asians and central and eastern Europeans are in the middle; southern Europeans, Asian Indians, and Arabs are low; Amerindians, Mexicans, Filipinos, blacks, and Puerto Ricans are the least trusting.

Differences are large. For example, Americans of Norwegian descent are more than three times as trusting as black Americans.

In a recent analysis, I showed that trust in the political process is associated with greater interest in politics, and in the comments TGGP linked to a post by n/a which reveals the same kind of European and American pattern in civic engagement that we see with the trust numbers above.

In the Big Five factors of personality, trust is a subcomponent of the broader personality trait Agreeableness. In a study that removed the heritable component of Agreeableness from Trust, a substantial unique heritability remained: .31, and .50 after reliability was corrected. (Jang et al. 1998. Heritability in facet-level traits in a cross-cultural twin study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1556-1565.)

Race and anger: GSS respondents were asked three questions about anger: 1) how many days in the past week were you angry at someone; 2) how intense was the anger, and 3) how long did the anger last? The alpha coefficient for the three measures is .53. I converted the scores on each question to z scores and summed them, creating an index.


Mean anger index (N = 1,110)

Blacks .56
Whites .02


Whites are significantly less angry than blacks at the 95% confidence level. The difference between the two means is 25% of one standard deviation.

A study of twins calculated heritabilities for the angry-hostility sub-scale of the NEO: .52 for Canadians, .52 for Germans, and .40 for Japanese (Jang et al. 2001. Covariance structure of neuroticism and agreeableness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 295-304.)

Variables: ANGRY, HOWANGRY, ANGRLAST

Incidents of discrimination I have witnessed: I can't resist a note on personal knowledge of discrimination. I know I should stick to data, and I plan to show at some point that the research supposedly documenting how rife the country is with racism is mostly crap. But indulge me.

I've witnessed white people up close and personal for four decades. I have had conversations with hundreds of these folks. Of course, people talk more frankly about race with people of their own group, and I'm the kind of guy that people open up to. I've chatted with employers--the people who actually matter on the question of discrimination. In four decades, I am aware of one objectionable incident, and this was related to me by my wife.

She was working in an office at the time, and her boss had advertised some position. She (the boss) was going through a stack of resumes, saw one with the name "Shanneequa" or something like that, said she had seen enough, and threw the resume in the trash.

The other incident I can recall was not discrimination against a minority, but it is relevant. While in grad school, I was having a conversation with a white security officer. He told me that his career goal was to be a cop. About two years before, he had gone through the long application process, had learned that he had one of the top scores on the written examination, but subsequently found out that he was being dropped because the department needed to make more room for minority officers. The guy told me that as a kid he had never had any problem with blacks, but after losing his chance to go to the academy, he was looking for a white sheet.

Here is my personal experience with discrimination against white men. In my career, I have sat on nine faculty search committees. In every case, our ad strongly encouraged minorities to apply. This is the 21st century's way of telling white men they "need not apply." In three cases, we were told by the dean that she didn't want to see any white men sent up to her. In eight of nine cases, someone other than a white man was chosen, although they were roughly 40% of applicants.

Discrimination against minorities, my ass.

The country's choice: individualism or racialism

This graph shows that support among whites for laws against black-white marriages has dropped from 40% in the early 70s to around 10% in this decade (N = 24,739).




If we focus on young adults (ages 19-29) you can see that the number has dropped to 3% (N = 5,511).

The notion that whites can organize and get laws passed that explicitly advance their collective interests seems completely unrealistic. Over the past four decades, whites have become more libertarian in a non-economic sense, and they have become less racial.

Whites have interests just like everyone else, but the strategy that makes sense is to make use of historical trends. Two imporant trends for whites have been individualism over racialism and a keener sense of fairness. Fine, but these principles should be expected of non-whites too. If white organizations are illegitimate, then so are black and Hispanic organizations. If laws that favor whites are unacceptable, then so are laws that favor non-whites--affirmative action, enhanced penalties for hate crimes, etc.

If liberals push the idea that white racism justifies a double standard, we demonstrate that NAMs do poorly because of factors internal to their communities, and we demonstrate that poor non-whites benefit from our presence while we suffer from theirs.

This same line of argument can be used against mass immigration, legal and illegal. The country has two options: if it aims for minimal racialism and maximal individualism, then it needs to maintain a large white majority, and the borders need to be shut. The second option is a country with no majority group, which is a recipe for a racialist system. The country has to decide what kind of white people it wants. You can't get rid of them. The choice is a between a country with nice white people or a country with not nice white people.

Elites are clearly not historians. They look an ordinary white man and see some squishy wuss in Dockers who is only too happy to give his child's spot in college to some stranger just off the boat; who welcomes the daily trashing of his friends, relatives, and ancestors; who applauds while his town is turned into the New Guadalajara. For forty years, regular white guys have been treated as the playground pussy who will take anything that bullies care to dish out. "Want my lunch money? Fine. Here's my allowance too." But history shows what kids and grown-ups do when they get pushed around.

Interest in politics and actual voting

Reader the Undiscovered Jew wondered if people interested in politics are actually more likely to vote. The connection might seem obvious, but I know folks who follow politics closely yet argue that voting is not rational because one ballot makes no difference.

The graph shows that as interest increases (higher numbers on the x-axis mean greater interest) so do the rates of actual voting.

The types of people interested in politics: I regressed one's level of interest in politics on the following predictors ( GSS data):


Standardized OLS regression coefficients (N = 611)

Male .14*
Age .14*
Size of place -.02
IQ .04
Years of education .17*
Occupational prestige .02
Family income .03
Church attendance .05
Conservatism .03
Trusts Congress .15*

* p < .05, two-tail test


At the bivariate level, interest in politics is positively correlated with IQ, educational level, occupational prestige, and income, but since all these predictors are intercorrelated, only education comes out statistically significant in the multivariate model.

So the picture of a politically interested person that emerges from the data is of an educated older man who has faith in the legislative process. A young uneducated woman who has no faith in the system is likely to be uninterested in politics.

What do these characteristics have in common? My guess would be a person who has developed the perspective of a leader. People who see themselves as responsible for the political system--a system they believe can work--are more interested in its management. Men, the educated, older people--they're more likely to feel part of the group that helps run things.

We saw in the earlier post that Jewish Americans and those of English descent are likely to feel part of that group, while Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans do not. As a reader suggested, it might be an attitude carried over from the old country.

Ethnic groups and interest in politics

In an earlier post, I suggested that the political power of American ethnic groups might be determined, in part, by differences in extraversion (in addition to mean IQ and size). Steve Sailer makes the sensible point that some groups are simply not interested in politics.

The General Social Survey asked Americans their level of interest in politics. Answers ranged from "very interested" to "not interested." The table lists mean scores for each ethnic group.

Americans with Jewish or English backgrounds have the greatest interest, while Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans are bored by politics. This helps explains why Mex-Ams have less political power than one might expect. A person active in the Texas Democratic party told me once that Mex-Ams are not sleeping, they're dead.

Next, I'll use GSS data to create a profile of a politically interested person.

Political party and implicit whiteness: As a follow-up to my last post, I wanted to see how much white Democrats and Republicans differ on this "closeness to race" question (N = 567). Seventy-six percent of those who voted for Bush in 2000 said they feel close or very close to their ethnic group or race. The corresponding number for white Gore voters was 72.3 percent. A trivial difference. Implicit whiteness is not a conservative thing.

Seventy-five percent of whites feel close to their ethnic group or race: GSS respondents were asked: "How close do you feel to your ethnic or racial group?" The answer choices were "very close," "close," "not very close," and "not close at all." I calculated the percent who said "very close" or "close."


Percent who are close or very close to own ethnic/racial group (N = 1,893)

Black 89.9
Puerto Rican 87.5
Jewish 86.8
Mexican 83.6
Italian 81.9
Chinese 81.2
Irish 79.8

All Americans 78.5

All whites 75.5
English/Welsh 73.1
German 72.5
Scottish 71.2

I'm not the least bit surprised that non-whites and Jewish Americans overwhelmingly feel close to their ethnicity, but look at everyone else. Would you have expected over three-quarters of whites to say they feel close to their ethnic group or race? You might not be stunned to see Irish Americans feeling that way about the Irish, but Americans of English, Scottish or German descent feeling close to their race?

I say race because I've shown in a previous analysis that fewer than 5 percent in these groups consider their ethnicity important. As much as I admire England, I would answer the question for myself thinking about the white race. I completely agree with the pretty black girl in my class who said, in response to our discussion of ethnicity among whites, "I don't know anything about English or German or Italian--you're all just white to me."

Evidently, the wording of this question was just right in order to pull out a race-conscious response from whites. "Not very close" or "not close at all" sound like what you would say about an estranged relative. While whites are not race-loyal like blacks, most are not prepared to say they are estranged from their race.

I take this as evidence of the implicit whiteness that Kevin MacDonald talks about. The proper question can tease out an unconscious affection whites feel for their group. Affection by some whites might be ethnic, as in the case of many Jews, but for many it's racial. Only a small percentage think actively and deliberately in terms of race, but if asked to think about it, only SWPL-types feel they must reject their own group.

Extraversion and political influence: Based on IQ, one would expect Jewish Americans and Asian Americans to have a disproportionate political influence on the country. We certainly see this with Jews, but not Asians (correct me if I'm wrong). Based on IQ levels, we would not expect blacks and Hispanics to have much influence, but of the two, Hispanics should be more powerful since they are smarter. The truth, though, is that blacks are the stronger group.

My recent posts might help explain this pattern. Blacks and especially Jews are extraverted groups, Asians and Hispanics are not. American Indians are another introverted group who seem to be practically invisible. Of course, population is a factor with all the groups, and I'm not arguing that groups do not have power on particular issues. I'm thinking more of an overall presence in the political process.

IQ and extraversion might also explain the disproportionate influence of homosexuals. My last post revealed that homosexuals and bisexuals have high extraversion scores, and I showed some time ago that the mean IQ for white gay men is 105.

Extraversion can also help explain differences in cultural influence and media presence.

And let's not forget that broad heritability for extraversion is around .5, suggesting that genetic differences might help explain these patterns.

Homosexuals and bisexuals are more extraverted: Here are mean introversion scores (GSS behavioral measure--self-reported trait not available) for sexual orientation groups:


Mean introversion score (N = 11,642)

Straight women 14.2
Straight men 13.4
Lesbians 13.2
Gay men 12.2
Bisexual men 11.7
Bisexual women 11.0


All groups are significantly more extraverted than straight women (p < .05. two-tail). N's are pretty good. The smallest group is bisexual men at 35. Here are the effect sizes:


Effect Size

Straight men .22
Lesbians .28
Gay men .56
Bisexual men .69
Bisexual women .89

The differences between straight men and lesbians on the one hand and straight women on the other are small, but the straight women/gay men difference is of moderate size. Bisexuals of both sexes are much more extraverted than heterosexual women.

The Extraversion Gap: In an earlier post, I used a behavioral measure to show that Jewish Americans are, on average, more extraverted than Americans of English descent. The finding is reinforced by my other GSS measure of extraversion based on two questions asking if you are: 1) sociable and 2) not reserved. The means are:


Mean extraversion score

English 6.44 (n = 122)
Jewish 7.35 (n = 26)

Since the Jewish sample is so small, the difference falls just short of statistical significance at the .05 level. The effect size is .54 which indicates a half standard deviation gap between the two groups.

Extraversion and lifetime sex partners: Here are the median lifetime sexual partners for different demographic groups ages 30-59 by level of extraversion:


Extraverts
White men 8.0
Black men 10.0
White women 4.0
Black women 3.0


Introverts
White men 5.0
Black men 10.0
White women 3.0
Black women 3.0


Extraversion is associated with more partners for both white men and women, but not for blacks. It seems odd that introverted black men have the same median partners as extraverted black men.

And you can see the typical gender disparity: men are probably exaggerating while women are under-reporting their sexual experience. (Prostitutes probably up the male numbers as well). The gender gap is larger for blacks.

Do the devout tend to be conservative in all religions? Using GSS data (N = 43,542), I calculated the association between frequency of attendance of religious services and level of political conservatism. The correlations are all positive for Abrahamic religions, but what about other religions? Look:



The relationship is negative, and the magnitude is noteworthy for all except Buddhism.

Extraversion and type of job: I put together a list of the mean introversion scores of people in various occupations. I included them if they were significantly higher than average ("introverts") and if they were significantly lower ("extraverts"). The sample size is 16,796 (GSS).


Introverts

Mail clerks, except postal service 16.3
Laundering and dry cleaning machine operators 16.0
Postal clerks, except mail carriers 15.9
Statistical clerks 15.7
Licensed practical nurses 15.7
Typists 15.6
Private household cleaners and servants 15.5
Farmers, except horticultural 15.4
Textile sewing machine operators 15.4
Farm workers 15.3
Maids and housemen 15.3
Librarians 15.3
Bus drivers 15.1
Hand packers and packagers 15.1
Laborers, except construction 15.1
Machine operators, n.s. 15.1
Cooks, except short order 14.9
Assemblers 14.9
Nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants 14.8
Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks 14.7
Janitors and cleaners 14.7
Registered nurses 14.5
Secretaries 14.3


Extraverts

Designer 13.2
Managers, properties and real estate 13.1
Real estate sales occupations 13.1
Painters, sculptors, craft-artists, and artist printmakers 13.0
Sales occupations, other business services 12.9
Advertising and related sales occupations 12.5
Actors and directors 12.4
Airplane pilots and navigators 12.1
Architects 11.8
Athletes 11.7
Securities and financial services sales occupations 11.4


I don't see any big surprises. Introverts tend to have clerical or low-skill jobs, while extraverts have jobs requiring people skills (sales), leadership skills (managers), or creativity (designers, artists, actors).

Growing introversion: Here are America's mean introversion scores over four decades:


Mean introversion score

Seventies 13.8
Eighties 14.0
Nineties 14.1
This decade 14.2*

* p < .05, two-tail test, compared with the seventies


The country has gradually gotten a bit more introverted. This might be due to increasing numbers of Asians and Hispanics. (Immigrants in general tend to be more introverted).

English Americans are most introverted, Jewish Americans are least: Here are mean introversion scores for various white American groups:


Mean introversion score (N = more than 20,000)

English/Welsh 14.2
Dutch 14.2
Swiss 14.2
Scottish 14.0

All ethnicities 14.0*

Irish 13.9*
Hungarian 13.9
Portuguese 13.9
Spain 13.9*
German 13.8*
Danish 13.7*
Rumanian 13.7
Polish 13.6*
Swedish 13.6*
Belgian 13.6
Italian 13.5*
Czech 13.5*
Russian 13.4*
Norwegian 13.4*
French 13.4*
Yugoslavian 13.4
Finnish 13.3*
Lithuanian 13.3*
Jewish 13.3*

* p < .05, two-tail test, compared with English/Welsh


The groups with asterisks are significantly more extraverted than Americans of English or Welsh descent. Here are the effect sizes for those who differ significantly:


Effect size

Irish .09
Spain .09
German .11
Danish .14
Polish .17
Swedish .17
Italian .20
Czech .20
Russian .23
Norwegian .23
French .23
Finnish .26
Lithuanian .26
Jewish .26


The differences among whites groups, even at the extremes, are small.

I checked to see if the observed pattern was influenced by immigration. I suspected that immigrants are more introverted than natives, and I was right. If we compare Jews and those of English descent born in America, the effect size increases to .37--a moderate difference.

Extraversion and number of offspring: As a follow-up to the last post, I looked to see if introverted people have more children (GSS data, N = 10,153). For people ages 40-59, the correlation between introversion score and number of offspring for each of the past four decades has hovered around .10. A trivial positive association.

Extraversion and marital status: Here are the mean introversion scores for each marital status for Americans ages 30-49 (GSS data):


Mean introversion scores (N = 2,870)

Married 14.6
Widowed 14.3
Divorced 13.5*
Separated 13.7*
Never married 13.0*

* p < .05, two-tail test, compared with married people


All groups except for widowed are significantly more extraverted than married people. Makes sense. Marriage is for homebodies. Introversion might help explain the lower divorce rate of Asians. Here are effect sizes:


Effect size

Divorced .32
Separated .25
Never married .46


The differences between married/widowed people and the other categories are small to moderate.

I've detected in HBD World two contrasting images of a Real Man.

Here's one of them:

And here's the other:



I won't speak for the rest, but I vote for the first one.

Race, extraversion, and crime: Using last post's measure of extraversion, I wonder if it could help explain racial differences in crime. Ever getting arrested is the dependent variable. Here are the logistic regression coefficients, and I'm comparing two groups at a time:


Logistic regression coefficients

Whites and Asians (N = 3,087)

White 0.64
Extraversion 0.14*


Blacks and Asians (N = 468)

Black 1.46
Extraversion 0.12*

* p < .01, two-tail test


Compared to Asians, whites are more likely to get arrested, but the difference becomes non-significant when extraversion is entered into the equation. The exact same thing happens when we compare blacks and Asians. So the evidence here suggests that extraversion helps explain the racial gap in criminality.

But why, you ask, would extraversion raise the risk of breaking the law? Compared to, say, the guy who likes to spend his time blogging alone, people who love to be out doing things with other people are more likely to find themselves in situations conducive to crime. And they would be less likely to back away from criminal opportunities.

Another look at extraversion: I took another approach to measuring racial and ethnic differences in extraversion by looking for GSS behavioral questions. Respondents were asked how often they: 1) visit neighbors, 2) visit friends outside of the neighborhood, and 3) go to a bar. Answers varied from "almost every night" (1) to "never" (7).

These items were all positively correlated with each other, but Cronbach's alpha is only .45. I summed them together to create an introversion score and limited the analysis to those ages 30-49 out of concern that the groups might have different average ages and that going out, especially to bars, is influenced by age. Fortunately, the sample size is large (N = 9,528).


Introversion score

White 13.80
Black 13.91
Mexican 14.84*
Chinese 14.79*
Filipino 14.57
American Indian 15.04*

*p < .05, two-tail test, compared with whites.


Consistent with the earlier analysis, blacks and white do not differ, but Mexican Americans are significantly more introverted. The large sample size allowed me to look at other minority groups, and you can see that Chinese Americans and American Indians are less outgoing. The difference between whites and Filipinos fell just short of statistical significance. I went ahead and calculated the effect sizes too:


Effect size

Mexican .30
Chinese .29
Filipino .22
American Indian .36


These numbers indicate small to moderate ethnic/racial differences. Keep in mind that broad heritability for extraversion is around 0.5.

A significant number of the angry people on the Left are criminals: President Carter informs us that right-wingers who are angry at Obama are overwhelmingly racist. How does he know this? Because they're mad, and Obama's black. Two plus two equals four, right dummies? Just like a year ago when all the right-wingers were ringing talk radio's phones off the hook with angry calls concerning plans for bailout. All that rage was proof positive that conservatives hate white people. Bush is white, isn't he?

I'll believe Carter's "overwhelmingly" claim when he brings me a carefully conducted study where, say, 80% of right-wingers report hating black people.

Oh, but I just happened to have data showing that a sizeable share of left-wingers are criminals. According to the General Social Survey, 29.8% of very liberal guys ages 18-59 say they have been arrested before. Therefore, it is illegitimate to oppose Republican policies because that's what gangsters do.

When I follow the example of liberals and smear the other side, at least I bring some evidence.

Inductivist hits a thousand: This blog has now reached the milestone of one thousand posts. Of those, perhaps 700 or so have been data analyses, and my plan is to continue to anger the folks at the National Opinion Research Center (GSS people) by answering all the wrong questions with their data.

But let's mark the occasion with something amusing that just happened to me. After finishing his test, a black student came up to me a laid his exam on top of the stack and then proceded to ask me a long list of questions about the online course he was also taking from me. I turned away from him to pull up his information on the computer, but after a second turned my head back and he was leaning over the top of his exam and had his arms around the stack to hide the fact that he was trying to write on his exam. I told him to stay away from the test; you can't touch it after you've turned it in. He denied touching anything, but it was obvious to me that he had quickly looked at the answers on the first page of the test beneath his before placing his on top, then he had started to ask me questions about the other course so I would turn my back, so he could change his answers. He wasn't even listening to what I saying about his online course.

After he left, I looked at his test and saw that four true-false questions had been changed on the first page and thought, "The bastard has got me because I didn't actually see him change his answers, and he, of course, would claim he changed them before turning in the exam." Then I looked closer and laughed because all four answers were now wrong! He had gone to all this trouble to cheat right under my nose, and his original answers were correct! It's like I always tell my students: Don't cheat off your neighbor because chances are, he's dumber than you are.

Race and the Big Five

* p < .05, two-tail test, comparison with white counterpart.


The General Social Survey asked ten questions in 2006 about personality traits--two questions for each of the Big 5. Two questions per trait is not nearly enough (typical performance by sociologists) but we'll use what we've got.

For extraversion, the questions asked about outgoingness, and for agreeableness, people were asked if they agreed that they didn't find fault in others and trusted them. On conscientiouesness, people were asked if they agreed that they were hardworking and thorough. Questions for emotional stability asked about agreeing that you are relaxed or prone to nervousness.

Respondents were asked if they are imaginative and artistic, so I called this measure "creativity." Answers to these pairs of questions were summed. You see the means in the table.

Whites are significantly more extraverted than Mex-Ams, but do not differ from blacks. Blacks are more agreeable than whites, but Mex-Ams are less so. The group do not differ on conscientiousness.

Blacks are more emotionally stable than whites. This contradicts findings from my last post, but keep in mind that the measure I used before tapped depression more than anything else, while this one focused on how relaxed someone is.

Finally, the groups do not differ on creativity.

One comment about the data: it's clear that respondents lack some objectivity because a disproportionate number of people describe themselves as having what I'm sure people see as the positive quality. Few people admitted that they are lazy and fail to do a thorough job. Conscientiousness was more skewed than any other measure, but the others were skewed as well. There is a tendency to think you're outgoing, agreeable, conscientious, relaxed, and creative, regardless of the facts. I don't know if groups differ in these biases, but there is an overall bias, no doubt.

Race and negative emotionality--again: In the last post, data on college students revealed no significant difference between blacks and whites on the trait negative emotionality.

In some ways, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) is a better source of data because: 1) it's a sample of high school students, so it has much less of a range of restriction problem; 2) it includes several racial/ethnic groups; and 3) the sample size is much larger.

I summed answers from five questions about the respondents level of sadness, the blues, depression, fearfulness, and being bothered by things. Three of the questions deal with depression, so this characteristic is weighed heavily. Cronbach's alpha is .79 which indicates that we're measuring a single, underlying trait. Here are the mean scores:

N is 6,476, but of course it gets much smaller for individual groups. To maximize sample size, I first compared groups with males and females lumped together. All minority groups have significantly higher negative emotion scores than whites, but as the effect sizes indicates, differences are not large.

When we turn to gender-specific comparisons, minority groups sometimes differ from whites, but not always. Mexican American and Amerindian males are not higher in negative emotionality than white males, but black and Asian guys are. The black-white difference for females falls just short of statistical significance, but all other minority women have higher scores.

How do we make sense of these patterns? Most of the researchers I know would announce imperiously that this is proof of pervasive white racism. Minorities of all colors experience more negative emotions because they have to deal with us traumatizing white people all the time.

Following the example of my august colleagues, I will declare imperiously that white folks are genetically the most even-keeled of all races.

(By the way, I'm sure you noticed that women score higher on this trait. The effect size for whites is .35--I'd call that a moderate difference).

Narcissism, negative emotionality, and race: In an earlier post, I showed how homosexual men, as a group, are more narcissistic than straight men. Using the same survey, I used answers from 11 questions to develop a scale of negative emotionality (anxiety, moodiness, depression, emotional instability, etc.). Cronbach's alpha was .91.

I compared white and black men and found no statistically significant difference on the trait or on the narcissism measure (N = 814). Studies show that heritability for negative emotionality is .4 to .5, and it's as high as .6 for narcissism. The data here suggest that, even with moderate heritabilities, trait frequencies will not necessarily differ between racial groups.

I assumed the lack of race research on the Big Five was due to fear, but perhaps some of it is due to lack of difference. Anyone know of documented differences? I've guessed at some things, but haven't run across research (Lynn's work on psychopathy is an exception).

All this reveals one of the perversions of this era of racial hysteria (Jimmy Carter being the best recent example). IQ research has documented a huge racial gap, but since everyone is too afraid to research personality differences, it leads one to assume based on IQ research that blacks and whites are probably very different (and possibly genetically different) in many ways. Give us the damn research so we know the truth and don't have to guess!

Suckiologists III: A genetic twin study on impulsivity (and other traits) by Eaves, Martin, and Eysenck was published in 1977 which showed very small shared environmental effects. Loehlin et al. (1987) reported zero shared environmental influence for impulsivity in a study of adoptees. A Swedish study (1988) found that the correlation for identical twins raised together was almost the same as that for identical twins raised in separate families indicating no effect of shared environment.

These methodologically powerful studies persuaded sociologists in the early 90's to drop their interest in the role of parenting in causing impulsivity.

Oh I'm sorry, in 1990, sociology started for the first time in forty years to focus on disciplinary styles. Sociologist Travis Hirschi and his colleague Michael Gottfredson published a book called A General Theory of Crime. In it the authors claimed that all crime is caused by a failure to punish children when they behave badly. Permissive parents raise kids who never learn to check their impulses and end up as career criminals. The theory is so powerful, the authors said, it even explains white-collar and organized crime.

Then, in 1998, the world of social science was rocked with Judith Rich Harris' The Nurture Assumption. She echoed these earlier studies--and many, many others--that pointed away from parental influence, and she suggested that peer influence was important instead. Sociological criminology naturally followed suit by turning its attention to peer influence.

Oh, I'm sorry, what actually happened is that Hirschi and Gottfredson's "self-control" theory went red hot and quickly became a leading criminological theory. Peer influence was so 80's. So now scads of studies are coming out showing a correlation between erratic parenting, impulsivity, and crime. Do they investigate the possibility that the correlation is due to genes? (I mean, broad heritability is .4 or.5, after all.) Of course not, only racist Neanderthals do that (when they're not opposing Obama).

Sociologists are classic examples of academic SWPL-hood. Their discipline is driven by fads. People jump at a new idea, get tired of it, and then jump to the next thing. Data has little to do with it. What a friggin' joke.

Mean offspring for smart and dumb Cads

In the table, I present the mean number of children for white men ages 30-59 who have had at least 20 sex partners. I divided them into those with IQs under 100 and those above.

The terms "Alpha" and "Beta" give the former too much credit, so I'm going to use "Cads" and "Dads" instead. We saw in an earlier post that, while Dads have more kids, the gap is narrowing. The table shows that dumb Cads are contributing more kids to the current generation than their more intelligent counterpart.

The number for the dummies may be rising a bit, while falling for the smarter group, but the changes are too small to make anything of them. One factor that complicates the analysis is that small sample sizes forced me to include a wide range of ages, so the extensive overlap across decades hides trends.

A request: Folks in the Steveosphere are frequently called bad names: haters, bigots, racists, fascists, Nazis, etc., etc. Well, in my opinion, a person should have some say about his put-downs. Go ahead and insult us, but please refrain from any slur not found in the following list:


Jap Lover
Beijing Butt Buddy
Yapping Fool with Yellow Fever
Seoul Sweetheart
East Injun Lover
Singapore Whore
Peking Paramour
Tokyo Truelove


Thank you for your cooperation.

Homosexuality and narcissism

College males were asked the following questions while participating in the Longitudinal Study of Violence Against Women:

1. "I feel that 'I'm the greatest' and better than other people."
2. "I brag a lot about myself and what I do."
3. "I am a self-centered person. I want things to go my way."
4. "I remind myself that I'm "number one" and have to look out for myself first."
5. "I am better at doing most things than other people."


Answers ranged from "not at all like me" to "very much like me." I correlated the answers, and Cronbach's alpha was .76. Cronbach's indicates how well a set of items measures a single, underlying construct, and .76 is pretty good. So I summed the items and called it a narcissism scale. Next, I lumped gay and bisexual men together to increase N, and calculated means. For the gay group it is 12.00 (n = 39), and for straights it's 10.42 (n = 708). The differences are statistically significant (p < .05, two-tail).

German Jews less liberal? American Jews of Polish and Russian background have a reputation of being more liberal than German Jews. Is it true today?

I calculated "conservatism" means for the groups from GSS data. When asked about political views, respondents were offered a seven-point scale ranging from "extremely liberal" (1) to "extremely conservative" (7).


Mean conservatism score

German Jews 3.38 (n = 55)
Russian Jews 3.48 (n = 275)
Polish Jews 3.48 (n = 98)


No evidence here that German Jews are less liberal.

Occupation and lifetime sex partners

Here'a a table of the median lifetime sex partners for the occupations with at least 100 GSS sampled white men. I use median since the mean is completely thrown off by the small number of men with dozens and dozens of partners. Keep in mind that the overall mean for white men is about 6.

Managers, salesmen, and those with muscular jobs are toward the top (although supervisors and proprietors, sales occupations is an anomaly) and computer geeks, low status janitors, and farmers are at the bottom. I suspect farmers are more traditional and marry early.

Mean number of offspring for Alphas and Betas

Following Thursday's suggestion, I calculated mean number of children for Alphas and Betas at different IQ intervals. The sample includes white men ages 30-59 from the 1990s and this decade (in order to maximize N). Betas of various intelligence levels are fairly similar in their family size. Mean number of offspring, however, drops more steeply among Alphas as IQ rises. Evidently, the dumb guys and their partners have sex more recklessly.

Alpha and Beta IQs

Here are the IQ percent distributions for Alphas and Betas. I widened the age range to 25-59 and the period to the 1990s and this decade to maximize N since I couldn't detect differences with a smaller sample. It still seems the two groups don't really differ in terms of intelligence. (It looks like there might be a few more retarded and really dumb as opposed to just plain dumb Betas).

Alphas, Betas, and Marital Status

The table lists the percent distribution for Alphas (20-700 lifetime sex partners) and Betas (1-2 partners) based on GSS data. I'm using the same age, race, and period: whites in this decade ages 30-39. You can see that Betas are much more likely to be married, while Alphas are more likely to have never married. No surprise there.

But look at the divorced and separated statistics. I thought that any woman who could catch a Real Man would never let him go, no matter what, while married women with squishy Betas would throw them over for even a smile from Mr. Testosterone. The percent of divorced Alphas is eight times that of Betas.

These facts are consistent with my view that while some women like the idea of a roll in the hay with Studly, on a day-to-day basis they want a man who treats them well. Women like attention, consideration, thoughtfulness, responsibility, and generosity. If she gets treated like dirt, she's eventually going to move on, no matter how sexy the guy is.

More on Alphas and Betas: Let's compare these two groups. Keep in mind that I'm defining them as guys with twenty or more lifetime sex partners and those with one or two, and I'm focusing on white thirty-somethings from this decade:



Alphas are a bit smarter, but are less educated. They earn substantially more, but have less prestigious jobs. They are less likely have a religion, they attend services much less often, and they are less politically conservative.

Median number of sexual partners: Feminist X makes a good point that we shouldn't assume that a given number of sexual partners now and in the past measures the same trait. The same guy who had two partners in the past might have 20 partners now.

My earlier analysis only covers the past three decades, so I think the period is short enough to assume that we're measuring the same thing in each of the three decades (80s, 90s, 00s). But it's always better to check.

The mean number of sex partners for white men ages 30 to 39 looks like it hasn't changed much since 1980, but the mean is a poor statistic to use because it is very sensitive to the handful of guys with many, many partners. The median is much better: it was seven partners in the 80s and 90s, and it's six in this decade. Cultural conditions don't seem to have changed much.

Alphas and Betas

Alphas, N =360



Betas, N = 384

These graphs show the trends in number of offspring over the past three decades for white men ages 30-39 having a lifetime total of 20-700 sexual partners (Alphas) and those with only one or two (Betas). There are only about 30 cases for each group in the 1980s, so we should pay more attention to the last two decades. First, it's clear that Alphas were more likely to be childless prior to this decade, but the gap has almost disappeared. Now, Alphas are more likely than Betas to have one kid but less likely to have two. Twenty-percent of both groups have three or more.

If we look at means instead, we get:


Mean number of children

Alphas
1980s 1.11
1990s 1.03
This decade 1.23

Betas
1980s 1.64
1990s 1.66
This decade 1.44


The story is similar here. Betas average more kids, but the gap is narrowing. Standard deviations (not shown) are increasing for both groups too, indicating greater variation in this decade.

So the two groups are converging: more Betas are now childless, while Alphas are reproducing at greater numbers. It looks like fewer Betas are able to find a partner now, and perhaps women are becoming more willing to have an Alpha's baby. Single motherhood is becoming more common and acceptable for whites, so women might be more willing to risk having a baby with an unreliable man.

Predictions are a very dicey business, and Alphas are still less prolific, but if current trends continue, Alphas could surpass Betas in the baby race.

Sexual behavior and number of kids

From Half Sigma:

What Roissy calls “beta behavior” evolved because it’s the most successful reproductive strategy in a civilized society. When pre-marital and extra-marital sex was very strongly discouraged by society, being able to talk a girl into bed didn’t mean spreading your genes as much as it meant being forced to marry her at the end of a shotgun (or crossbow or sword or whatever weapon was used back then), or even worse, killed by her angry relatives, put in jail for the crime of adultery, etc.

Modern society is now reverting to a more primitive form, and the beta behavior bred into humanity over many thousands of years will much more quickly be bred out.

Good stuff, but it looks like the data don't really support the idea that, compared to, say, 50 years ago, promiscuous men are producing more babies, while more monogamous men are failing to reproduce. Audacious has shown that men with only one lifetime sexual partner have the largest families. This is true for all races, and the correlation across categories is strong (.57).

How many female sexual partners you've had since 18 was asked on the General Social Survey twelve different years from 1989 to 2008. Men of all ages were asked the question, so a skeptic like Whiskey might argue that the sample is loaded with old men whose prime reproductive years were during an earlier era where sexuality operated differently. So let's look at men ages 30 to 39 from this decade. (We need to choose men who are old enough to have demonstrated their sexual pattern). I focus on white men since the black sample size is insufficient.

The pattern is the same as that observed by Audacious: the group with the most kids are men who've only had one sex partner since age 18. And these men were in their teens in the 80s and in their twenties during the 1990s, so they do not come from an era where out-of-wedlock births were uncommon.

Next, we'll look at trends to get a sense of the future.

Genes without Darwin

As a follow-up to the last post, I wanted to add that conservatives can draw on biological research without emphasizing evolution (Reader David expresses a similar idea). The point is that there is genetic diversity--whatever its source. It explains what nurturism cannot, and it's not going anywhere fast.

The graph shows two things: 1) a sizeable minority of Americans--I included all races--think that genes play a major role in determining personality; and 2) Republicans are a bit more open to the idea than Democrats. As the science continues to come out, conservatives would do well to sing the results from the rooftops. Leave Darwin out of it.


UPDATE: David Hume looks at belief in genes by demographic groups here.

Darwin, God, and politics: I see that the HBD-ers and social conservatives are currently duking it out. Since I consider myself to be both, I suppose I should punch myself in the face.

It seems to me that what is essential for a viable political movement is that it tells a persuasive, coherent story to a large segment of the population. I say coherent, but I didn't say something that was so internally tight, it must have been developed by Aristotle. Conservatism, I don't think, has ever claimed such internal consistency. It's more like a stance.

We can't all be Burkes. Someone needs to do the market research: I volunteer. This time around, let's look at the two Men who people seem to be siding with: God or Darwin. A movement needs to either: 1) favor a thing; 2) oppose it; or 3) shut up about it. The data indicate that in America, on the question of Darwin and God, it's probably best to shut up about both of them, but if we need someone to rally around, just make sure he's not Nietzsche.

In 2000, 1,023 Americans (GSS) were asked: 1) their confidence in the existence of God; and 2) how true is the statement that humans evolved from animals. Here are the top ten most common combinations of answers:


Percent of all respondents

1. Knows God exists--Evolution definitely not true 33.0
2. Knows God exists--Evolution probably true 14.7
3. Knows God exists--Evolution probably not true 11.5
4. Believes but doubts--Evolution probably true 7.7
5. Knows God exists--Evolution definitely true 5.8
6. Believes but doubts--Evolution probably not true 4.1
7. Some higher power--Evolution probably true 3.7
8. Believes but doubts--Evolution definitely true 2.9
9. Some higher power--Evolution definitely true 2.5
10. No way to know--Evolution definitely true 2.0
10. Doesn't believe in God--Evolution definitely true 2.0


Any American who likes to push atheism or likes to criticize believers must enjoy having no political voice whatsoever.

People are divided, on the other hand, when it comes to evolution. It's not popular with most people--my students think the whole thing stinks, as much as I push it--and it's especially unpopular among folks on the Right. On the other hand, it's intellectually satisfying to smart people.

So what's the solution? It looks to me like the only realistic way to go is for conservative elites to inform their worldview by sneaking peaks at HBD stuff when no one is looking, but they will have to fashion their ideas in a way that appeals to the common man. Does that sound like lying? Of course it does because that's what politics is, or haven't you noticed?

More on teachers' IQs: Here's a follow-up to the last post. I calculated mean IQ for different types of teachers. Keep in mind that samples sizes are low:


Mean IQ

High school teachers
Whites 108
Blacks 91

Women 107
Men 105

Teaches math 114
Teaches art, drama, or music 116
Teaches English 119
Teaches foreign languages 121

Elementary school teachers
1980s-90s 106
This decade 105

Kindergarten and pre-k
1980s-90s 99
This decade 102


The most striking finding is that IQs for black high school teachers are so much lower than for whites. I included specific types of high school teachers with large enough samples to calculate a mean. The numbers are all high. Elementary school teachers are not less intelligent than high school teachers, but people who teach little kids are.

What is the typical teacher's IQ? Reader David made an interesting comment on the post about the breadwinner family that with homeschooling your child is taught by someone with a IQ higher than that of the typical teacher (not to mention having the right politics).

What is the level of intelligence of today's high school teacher? Looking at GSS data, I calculated mean IQs for the 1980s and 1990s combined (N = 107) and for this decade (N = 68) . For the early period, the average was 107. Now it's 104. I'm not impressed.

Infidelity and length of marriage

Males, N = 1,172

Females, N = 1,732


The graphs show the percent of married people who have cheated on their spouse by the number of years they have been married. With the men, prevalence gradually increases up to about 30 years, then goes down perhaps a bit. For the women, the increase is similar but at a lower level, but then there is a collapse after 30 years of marriage.

There is more than one way to interpret the data, but my guess is that: 1) infidelity for both sexes is to some extent a function of opportunity, and the chance that an tempting opportunity presents itself accumulates gradually over the course of a marriage. It's so gradual, people married 30 years are more likely to have cheated than those married 20 years. 2) The drop-off after 30 years is due to fewer unfaithful people among those married before 1960 (the question about infidelity was asked in the early nineties). The decline is not clear for men, but it's dramatic for women.