Who has more general knowledge--men or women?

Richard Lynn and colleagues have done a series of studies (6) in multiple countries looking to see if there are sex differences in knowledge.  The thesis is that more intelligent people seek out and absorb more knowledge of all types.

The researchers focused on a wide variety of topics. Here are the sex differences in Cohen's d effect size statistics: over, say, 0.8 would be considered large. The black/white IQ gap is around 1.0, for example. A positive effect size indicates a male advantage; a negative Cohen's d means female advantage:

Sex difference--Cohen's d

General knowledge  .53
Games   .51
Jazz and blues  .46
Sports   .39
Finance  .35
Exploration   .33
General science   .32
Politics  .28
Geography  .27
History  .26
Medicine  -.24
Cookery   -.22
Classical music  -.19
Biology   -.11
Film   -.11
Art  -.08
Popular music  -.07
Fashion  -.05
Literature  .01

Men know more in 10 categories, while women take the lead in 8 areas. The female advantages tend to be small. When it is all summed up, men score one-half a deviation more than women. The samples are teenagers and young adults.  The male advantage would probably be bigger if the sample was older--knowledge accumulates with time.

The sex differences make sense. Men tend to know more about the more impersonal subjects: finance and science. Women tend to know a little more in softer "home topics" like medicine and cooking.

The results are consistent with the view that mean male intelligence is a few points higher than the female mean.

Who is more likely to be arrested--a white or black rapist?

Looking at the period 2005-2010, Steve Sailer shows that the black rate rape was 3.5 times higher than the white/Hispanic rate. His calculations are based on a very large national survey of Americans that asks about being a victim of crime and the characteristics of offenders.

If we do the same calculation based on FBI arrest data for the years 2008-2010 (2005-2007 are not available), the black rate is 3.1 times higher. What this tells us is that black rapists are less likely to get arrested than white/Hispanic rapists. The bias at the level of arrest is in favor of blacks and is in direct contradiction to the message that is drummed into us on a daily basis that the criminal justice system is deeply racist.

The Inductivist admits that culture matters

A pure naturist would claim that the culture of East Asians would not change after moving to America. Let's test this with one question from the General Social Survey that should differentiate Asians and whites: whether a not a child should learn to think for himself. Answers ranged from "most important for a child" (5) to least important (1).

Research has found that Westerners value independent-mindedness, while the East emphasizes fitting in. Here are the means for 1) American whites (n = 19,602), 2) Chinese (n = 102) and Japanese immigrants (n = 31), and 3) American-born Chinese ( n = 25) and Japanese (n = 26).

Mean score--valuing thinking for yourself

Native-born whites  4.00

American-born Japanese   4.00

American-born Chinese   3.72

Japanese immigrants   3.45

Chinese immigrants   3.18

Asians with individualist attitudes might choose to move to America, so the most relevant comparison is between immigrants and American-born Asians. The mean for Japanese immigrants is close to a half of a standard deviation less individualist than whites, but the American-borns do not differ from whites. 

Chinese immigrants are less individualist than Japanese immigrants, and while they do assimilate the same distance as the Japanese (roughly 1/2 sd), there remains a small difference between American-born Chinese and white Americans. 

So, the GSS data suggests that while genes might play a small role in the case of the Chinese, culture seems more important here. It might be the case that culture can influence attitudes quite a bit, but might have less impact on behavior (e.g., time studying) or abilities (e.g., IQ). 

UPDATE: I thought of a way that the Asian American embrace of independent-mindedness could be genetic: Asians might be predisposed to conform to whatever the mainstream culture is even if it's individualistic! 

By the logic of race deniers, sex is not real biologically either

A common argument made by race deniers is that since there is more variation within races than between them, race does not exist. Let's see how silly this seems if applied to something else.

Let's grab a random example of an obvious difference between men and women: height. The General Social Survey asked 2,632 people how tall they were in inches. The between-group variance is 8.04, while the within-group variance is 8.77. This means that women differ with each other in terms of height more than the sexes differ. Same for men. By the logic of the race deniers, sex is not a real thing.

Of course, these days many liberals believe that sex is not a biological reality, but they're daffier than Uncle Jaffey. 

What's the profile of a person who believes astrology is scientific? (Answer: the exact opposite of me)

Clearly, anyone who believes that astrology is scientific doesn't understand what science is, but how common is this belief, and what's the statistical profile of a believer?

The General Social Survey asked respondents the question with answers varying from "very scientific" to "not scientific" at all (sample size = 5,548). 36.6% of people said astrology was at least sort of scientific. That's a lot of dummies.

Here are the factors that predict belief (standardized OLS coefficients):

Predictors of thinking that astrology is scientific

Female   .09
Black   .13
Other race    .04
Age   -.07
IQ   -.17
Educational level   -.11
Church attendance   -.04
Political conservatism   -.04

All of the coefficients are statistically significant at the p < .01 level (or higher, two-tailed test).  So the profile looks like this: female, black (vs. white), other race (vs. white), young, unintelligent, uneducated, non-churchgoer, and liberal. The coefficients indicate the strength of the prediction: IQ is the best predictor of thinking astrology is not scientific.

Who has happier marriages--the religious or irreligious?

I haven't annoyed my irreligious friends in a while, and the only person who reads this blog that I don't want to be annoyed occasionally is me.

A common type of contemporary thinking goes like this: The more slowly, deliberately, and freely people decide to get married, the happier their marriage will be. Following this line, highly religious people should have the most miserable marriages because they marry younger. They might feel more pressure from family to get married and might want to avoid the temptations experienced all too often as singles.

The General Social Survey asked respondents how often they attend religious services and how happy their marriages are (if they are married).  The sample size is 11,543:

The pattern is clear:  satisfaction with one's marriage rises with church attendance, especially among more frequent churchgoers.

In recent years, I've been shifting away some from the conservative sociologist's view that traditional institutions (e.g., church, marriage) improve people's lives toward the naturist view that people with certain genetically-influenced traits (i.e., agreeableness, conscientiousness) select themselves into traditional institutions. There could be some truth to both views.

Marriage and religion are universal practices, and as NN Taleb instructs us, institutions that have been around forever are probably doing something for us whether we understand it fully or not.

The BIGGEST sex differences

A study by John Archer reviewed meta-analyses on psychological sex differences, so we're talking about hundreds of studies. I will highlight the largest differences; those with means that are at least eight-tenths of a standard deviation apart. For the non-stats people among us, that is a very big gap.

Largest sexually dimorphic psychological traits (difference in sd units)

Homicide   2.54
Rape   2.32
Mate choice--Age difference   2.00
Violent computer-game use   1.41
Occupational interests   1.39
Systemizing   1.21
Pain tolerance  1.17
Fear in real-world situations   -1.16
Violent crime   1.11
Engineering interests   1.11
Partner homicide   1.06
People-things distinction   -.93
Empathy   -.91
Weapons use  .88
Sexual v. emotional jealousy  .87
Revenge   .83

Among the traits that Archer included, there is no bigger difference between the sexes than violence. Men are the violent sex and love it much more than women (i.e., violent video game use).

Male superiority in visuospatial ability is talked about a lot, and there is a difference, but it is not large enough to make the list. Interest is where the big gap exists. Men are much more likely to have an interest in engineering, making systems, and working with things over people.

While I've admired my wife's ability to suffer the pains of childbirth repeatedly, experimental research indicates that men can tolerate pain much better than women. Women are much more fearful of being harmed in real-world situations. This might figure into male willingness to get his ass kicked in a fight.

Women are the empathetic sex. They are much less likely to desire revenge. They get jealous about their man having romantic attachments, while men are much more concerned about sexual betrayal. Women desire older, resource-possessing men, while men desire younger women who have lots of reproductive potential.

These sex differences are what evolutionary theory would predict: men compete with each other, sometimes violently and vengefully, for access to mates.

There must have been benefits for women to be more sensitive to the feelings of others--effective childcare comes to mind--and men must have benefitted from a greater orientation to the analysis of systems. Strategic thinking for hunting and war?


UPDATE: Archer neglects to include perhaps the largest psychological sex difference: males are overwhelming attracted to females, while females are overwhelmingly attracted to males. The exceptions are noise. And the evolutionary reason is obvious.

Is the black-white IQ gap caused by income inequality?

Some liberal researchers contend that the black/white IQ gap is due to income inequality. If that is true, then changes in the IQ gap over the past few decades should parallel changes in income disparities.

Here are graphs for males and females generated from General Social Survey data (sample size = 25,589).  (For many analyses, it is appropriate to use median income, but we are interested in inequality so the mean makes more sense).

Mean individual income (constant $)--males

Mean IQ--males

For men, the black-white gap in income grew over the past five decades. The gap in constant dollars is $12,300 in the 1970s and $18,400 in the 2010s. This kind of widening should lead to a larger IQ gap, but the IQ difference shrunk from 10.6  to 8.2 points over the same period.


Mean individual income (constant $)--females

Mean IQ--females

We see the same widening income gap for women from $1,300 in the 1970s to $5,900 in the 2010s.  Over the same period, the IQ gap dropped from 11.6 to 8.6 points.

Once again, the trends contradict the liberal prediction.

Now, you might respond that GSS data do indicate a narrowing of the racial IQ gap over the past five decades, and indeed they do. We don't know for sure why that is--it might be due to the horrible black high schools in the South getting better in the last few decades (perhaps vocabularies can be improved a little with decent schools)--but the point of this post is that it does not look like the difference in black and white IQs is due to the fact that whites make more money.

UPDATE: Sean Last posted this Pew graph which shows a widening in the black-white income gap:

An analogy that might offend

I'm surprised I've never run across this analogy for homosexuality that now occurs to me.  Imagine a group of people who are, what we could call, alternative eaters.

For whatever reason, these folks prefer to consume food either through their nostrils or their anuses.

And imagine that sensitive individuals didn't want to exclude any of variety of preference. It's not fair that the anus eaters get all the attention, so we develop an inclusive acronym. We call anus eaters A's, and those who prefer nostril eating N's. If they enjoy both methods, we'll call them AN's.

Some like both mouth eating and anus eating, so we call them MA's. Those who like mouth eating and nostril eating, we'll call MN's. A few enjoy all three methods, so we call them Tri's or T. Those who are trying to figure out which methods they prefer, we will call I's for investigating. For all others, we'll indicate a plus sign. That leaves us with the acronym of ANANMAMNTI+.

And don't get me started on the people who like alternative excretion.

Why I write about human biodiversity

We HBD-ers are in an unfair situation.  I'll explain it with an analogy.  My wife is a beautiful woman, but let's imagine she's ugly as sin. And let's add she would make a good Jerry Springer guest.

Now, imagine we're at a dinner party, and all the attractive people there make her feel inadequate. So she gets upset with me and starts yelling about how I am never willing to pay for high-quality cosmetics, gym memberships, or expensive cosmetic surgery. I'm very embarrassed that she is making a scene in public, but she has just slandered me, so I proceed to explain to everyone that I have paid for attractive clothing, cosmetics, gym memberships, and plastic surgery, but the simple truth is that my wife is ugly, and nothing will change that. And how does the crowd react? Do they chide her for making false, nasty accusations in front of everyone? No, the crowd turns on me and thinks I'm an asshole for saying out loud that my wife is ugly.

People who report the facts about human diversity get the same kind of treatment. Liberals denounce whites publicly all the time for keeping minorities poor and dysfunctional. When we explain that the causes of minority problems are internal--for example, that they are due to lower intelligence--and that they don't have much to do with us, the crowd doesn't see the accusers as really nasty and unfair; instead, they turn on us as being insulting and abusive. And for the Left, being rude reveals that one is filled with hate.

I know that many HBD advocates preach truth first, middle, and last. I have another view.  If my wife were ugly, I wouldn't say it even though it's true. I would be diplomatic. I would only speak of it if I really needed to--perhaps if she were packing her bags to devote her life to becoming a Hollywood starlet. You speak unpleasant truths if you need to defend yourself, or it's the only way to help; if it's really necessary. And you don't go on about it.

The only reason I go on about HBD issues all the time is because the Left is destroying our society with its lying, irrational race obsession. I'm trying to help. I'll shut up when they do.

"If you can judge a wise man by the color of his skin, then, mister, you're a better man than I."

I often listen to classic rock radio stations. Once in awhile I hear "Livin' on the Edge" by Aerosmith, and think about why they inserted the following lyrics: "If you can judge a wise man by the color of his skin, then, mister, you're a better man than I." The song came out in 1993, so this was prior to the Bell Curve brouhaha. Rushton was publishing articles on the issue, but I doubt Rock-n-Rollers would know anything about that. Too busy snorting coke and screwing groupies. Maybe the band was simply responding to the stereotype that blacks are unintelligent.

So, are they right about choosing wise men? In one way, I would answer yes. All races are made up of mostly unwise people. If you have two random people, one black and one white, and you guess the white one is the wise one, you're likely to be wrong. Chances are, they're both ordinary.

On the other hand in choosing the white guy, you'd be less likely to be wrong. If we were to set the cutoff for wiseness at an IQ of 115, for example, there is a 16% chance you'd be right with the white guy, but you've only got a 2.5% probability with the black guy. In other words, you're 6.4 times more likely to guess right by betting on the white person.

The Left calls us racists, but the truth seems to be that they are the people who think in absolutes and categories, and we're the guys who didn't sleep through stats class and so know a little something about probability.

Which sex is more likely to reject evolution, and why?

Research indicates that men have more general knowledge than women, and--important for this blog--men know more about science. People like Richard Lynn see this as evidence that men have, on average, higher levels of general intelligence. The idea is that smart people seek out and absorb more information than others.

Perhaps this is relevant to the issue of belief in evolution. Understanding science better, are men more likely than women to accept the theory of evolution?

The General Social Survey asked participants if they believe that man descended from other species. In a sample of 6,375, 59.1% of men and 48.2% of women answered yes. That's roughly an 11 percentage point difference.

Now, let's see if superior knowledge of science helps explain the gender gap. We'll use logistic regression.  Here is the relationship between gender and acceptance of evolution

Belief in evolution--logistic regression coefficients

Male   .44***

***p < .001, two-tailed test

Men are significantly more likely to accept Darwin. Now let's see how much the coefficient shrinks when scores on a science quiz are added:

Male   .38***
Science Quiz   .42***

So some of the gender gap is due to superior male knowledge of science. How about religion? Women are more religious than men, and there is a tension between religious belief and acceptance of evolution.

Male   .14**
Science Quiz   .27**
Belief in God   -.62***
Church attendance   -.18***

**p < .01, two-tailed test

The gap closes even more: Women are less likely to accept evolution, in part, because they are more religious than men.

My last hypothesis goes beyond the sex difference in religiosity--perhaps men are more likely than women to accept ideas that are unpleasant. Most people are not thrilled to think that life has no objective meaning or purpose, or that they have a monkey for a grandfather.

The question was asked if the respondent agreed with this: "Life is only meaningful if you provide the meaning yourself."

Let's add this variable to the model:

Male  -.05
Science Quiz  .15
Belief in God   -.62***
Church attendance   -.14***
Meaning subjective    .32***

Gender and even science knowledge drop to non-significance when the meaning variable is added. The gender gap in belief in evolution seems to be explained by men's harsher, more secular worldview.

Which religious group is most likely to reject evolution?

The Left dislikes evangelicals as much as they dislike anybody, and one of the reasons they don't like them is because they tend to reject the theory of evolution--which is ironic since the Left rejects the implications of evolution for human nature. But what about Muslims? Don't they reject evolution as well? The Left is usually silent about Muslim fundamentalism.

How many American Muslims don't believe that humans descended from earlier species of animals? General Social Survey (GSS) respondents were asked this question. Here are the percent who answered no listed by religion (sample size = 6,353):

Percent who don't believe humans descended from animals

Muslims  65.6
Christians  65.5
Protestants  63.6
Catholics  36.2
Orthodox Christians  32.1
Jewish   20.1
No religion  19.8
Buddhists   4.5
Hindus   3.2

Muslims are at the top of the list. Compare them to Buddhists and Hindus. An enormous difference.

If fundamentalism is an impediment to a pro-science culture, why isn't it a problem when it's found among Muslims? For the Christian fundamentalists always you have with you, but inviting the growing Muslim world to move to the US is a choice.

UPDATE: My 12-year-old son informs me that Hindus naturally accept evolution because they believe in a God that is an elephant.

What is the profile of a scientifically knowledgeable person?

Scientific progress is crucial for the problems we humans face, but what types of people know science the best?

The General Social Survey (GSS) asked respondents 12 basic science questions. A random example is, does the father determine the sex of the child? One problem with the list of questions is that they are a bit too easy; the mean number correct is 9.5.

Shown below are OLS standardized coefficient for a number of factors I thought might predict scores on this science quiz (sample size = 203):

Standardized OLS regression coefficients

Male  .09
Age   .01
Black   -.19**
Other race   .00
Years of education   .32***
Believe in God   -.19**
Church attendance   -.07
Political conservatism  -.06

**p < .01, ***p < .001, two-tail test

According to the results, basic scientific knowledge is predicted significantly by being white; having more education; and being skeptical about the existence of God. The other variables are not predictive.

But you might be thinking, hey, this is a HBD blog--where's IQ?  Well, I wanted to throw it in last to see how it changes things:

Standardized OLS regression coefficients--IQ added to model

IQ   .35***
Male  .20
Age   -.10
Black   .08
Other race   .04
Years of education   .08
Believe in God   -.33**
Church attendance   -.04
Political conservatism   -.01

**p < .01, ***p < .001, two-tail test


Education and being black drop to non-significance when IQ is added to the equation.  In other words, the reason why more education people know more science is because they are smarter, not because they were exposed to more information than less educated people, and blacks score lower because they are, on average, less intelligent.

By contrast, skepticism about God strongly predicts scientific knowledge even after taking IQ into account. This suggests that, at least under current conditions, skeptics take to science more than believers, even after controlling for differences in IQ.

UPDATE:  I discovered that fewer people were asked the last science question, so I dropped it to get the sample size up to 1,039--much bigger. Here are results for the final model:

Standardized OLS regression coefficients--IQ added to model

IQ   .29***
Male  .14**
Age   -.02
Black   -.12***
Other race   -.03
Years of education   .22***
Believe in God   -.16***
Church attendance   -.12***
Political conservatism   -.07*

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001, two-tail test

We now have the statistical power to see smaller effects.  IQ still dominates the model, but now we see that the following traits predict knowledge: male, white, more education, disbelief, not attending church, and liberal political orientation.

After IQ, education is most important, followed by skepticism, gender, race, attendance, and political orientation. Keep in mind that these factors matter even after taking IQ into account. For example, and man whose IQ is the same as a woman's is likely to know more science than she does.

Race differences in drug dealing

What are the racial differences for drug sales? Arrest data for 2018 were provided by the FBI:

Percent of Arrests for Marijuana Manufacture/Sales
Black   44
White   52
Asian     2
Native American   1

According to the Census, blacks were 13% of Americans in 2018. The Census lumps Hispanics and whites together: They were 77% of Americans in 2018.

Based on these numbers, the black rate of marijuana sales is 5 times that of whites/Hispanics.


Percent Arrests for Opium or Cocaine Manufacture/Sales
Black   47
White   51
Asian     1
Native American   1

Using the same calculation, the black rate of opium/cocaine sales is 5 1/2 that of whites/Hispanics.


Percent Arrests for Other Dangerous Nonnarcotic Drug Sales
Black   19
White   78  
Asian     1
Native American   1<1 font="">

Compared to whites/Hispanics, the rate of other dangerous drug sales by blacks is almost 1 1/2 times higher.


Percent Arrests for Synthetic Narcotic Sales
Black   21
White   78  
Asian     1<1 font="">
Native American    1

Finally, the black rate for synthetic narcotic sales is 1.6 times that of whites/Hispanics.

Blacks surpass whites in all types of sales, especially opium, cocaine, and marijuana. Of course, with Asians being only 6% of the country, comparing them with blacks would reveal much larger differences.

Have white liberals veered left in recent years because they've lost their moderates?

Zach Goldberg has documented how white liberals have done a sharp left turn on racial issues over the past few years, a phenomenon that's called the "Great Awokening." I wondered how much of this is due to more moderate white liberals shifting to a moderate or conservative self-label.

The graph above shows trends in political self-identification among whites, according to General Social Survey (GSS). Let's summarize the trends over the past, say, decade by creating a list:

2010-2108 Trends in Political Self-Identification

1. More extreme liberals
2. More extreme conservatives
3. Fewer moderates
4. Fewer slightly liberal
5. Similar number of liberals
6. Similar number of conservatives
7. Similar number of slightly conservative

Changes have not been dramatic, but overall the extremes have grown at the expense of the middle. A small number of slight liberals have moved, but it is not clear to where. Let's look at a chart where all conservatives are lumped together and the same for all liberals.

First, we see the same shrinkage among moderates. Since 2010, conservatives ticked up a bit as did liberals. So, bottom line, it looks at though liberals really haven't gotten more radicalized because they've lost moderates. Their size is similar to a decade ago; they have simply veered left on racial issues.

Does the racial gap in fertility shrink in low-cost areas?

When it comes to having kids, it's possible that whites are more sensitive to the cost of living than are blacks or Hispanics. Perhaps the racial differences in fertility are smaller in inexpensive regions. Using General Social Survey (GSS) data, I calculated the mean number of offspring for women ages 40-59 during the years 2010-18.  The GSS records the region of the country in which the respondent lives. There are nine regions: I decided to compare the Pacific (west coast) and West South Central (TX, LA, OK, AR) regions since the former is expensive while the latter is more affordable.


Mean number of offspring
Pacific
Hispanic    2.92
Black         2.08
White         1.75

West South Central 
Hispanic    2.55
Black         2.27
White         2.11

As expected, Hispanic fertility is highest in both regions, while whites are on the bottom. While black and white women have more kids in the WSC region, Hispanic women in the Pacific have bigger families than Hispanics in the WSC, contrary to expectations.

Look at how the racial gap in the WSC is smaller than in the Pacific region. The Hispanic-white gap in the former is .44 kids, while it is 1.17 in the latter. Comparatively speaking, whites benefit from living in low-cost regions.

Do whites benefit when they move from a high-cost to an inexpensive region? The best I could do to answer this question with GSS data was to use a question about where you lived at age 16.  I extended the time span to 2000-2018 to get a large enough sample size and focused on a move from the Pacific to the Mountain region since it was the most common expensive-to-cheap move.

Mean number of offspring--whites

Pacific to Mountain States   2.17
Stayed in Pacific                  1.71

You can see that whites who lived in the Pacific region at age 16 but subsequently moved to the Mountain States averaged more kids than those who did not move out of the region. The move to cheaper regions seems to help fertility.



             

Are religious people more ethnocentric?

Does loyalty to one group you belong to predict loyalty to other groups?  I suspect that religious people are also more likely to value their ethnicity.  The General Social Survey (GSS) asked people how important their ethnicity is to them with answers ranging from unimportant (1) to very important (4). 

I categorized people as not religious if they attend religious services no more than once per year. All others I lumped into the religious group. The means for thinking ethnicity is important to you are listed below--the means for the religious in parentheses, the means for the irreligious without parentheses (sample size = 2,110)

"My ethnicity is important to me"-- means

American Indian  3.50  (3.50)
Black  3.47  (3.53)
Chinese  3.40  (3.75)
Mexican  3.22  (3.47)
Puerto Rican  3.19  (3.60)
Italian  2.85  (2.72)
Jewish  2.76  (3.26)

Total  Sample  2.60  (2.84)

Scottish  2.55  (2.44)
Irish  2.45  (2.60)
German  2.35  (2.50)
Swedish  2.29  (2.67)
Russian  2.25  (2.95)
English/Welsh  2.21 (2.50)
Polish  2.13  (2.67)

For most of the ethnic groups, ethnocentrism is higher for the religious group. The differences are generally not large but look, for example, at how religious Swedes are almost as ethnocentric as secular Jews.

The difference at the extremes is large: the gap between religious Chinese Americans on the high end and the irreligious Poles on the bottom is well over one standard deviation. The typical Chinese person who goes to church says his ethnicity is 'moderately' or 'very important.' Compare that to the average Polish American who is not religious: he says his ethnicity is 'slightly important.'

Which racial groups think science does more harm than good?

While I am not a science worshipper, I do think it offers answers to many of our problems, at least eventually. Unfortunately, science doesn't happen magically. It requires very talented people and a society with the means and culture to support scientific work. 

Americans vary a great deal in their attitudes toward science. The General Social Survey (GSS) asked participants the following: "How much do you agree or disagree that, overall, modern science does more harm than good?" Answers ranged from "strongly agree" (1) to "strongly disagree" (5), so higher scores indicate greater belief in science. Here are the means by ethnic group (sample size = 6,226; I included religious affiliation as well):

Mean belief that science is good

Finnish  4.16

Jewish  4.08

Russian  3.99

Japanese  3.95

Lithuanian  3.87

Hungarian  3.86  

Buddhist  3.84

Austrian  3.83

Greek  3.83

English/Welsh  3.82

Danish  3.81
Scottish  3.81

Swedish  3.80

Norwegian  3.78

No religion 3.78

Italian  3.76

Irish  3.72

French  3.71

Hindu  3.67

Orthodox Christian  3.65

German  3.64
Swiss  3.64
Asian Indian  3.61

Dutch  3.61
Spanish  3.61

Total Sample  3.60

Muslim  3.60

Catholic  3.59

Chinese  3.53

Arab  3.50

Immigrants  3.37

Mexican  3.26

Black  3.20

American Indian  3.00

West Indian  2.82

The pattern is clear: whites groups have much more faith in science than non-whites. Japanese Americans, a smart, successful group, are an exception.  Among whites, Finns and Eastern/Central Europeans tend to be the most positive about science. Among religions, Jews come out on top. The gap between Finns at number one and West Indians on the bottom is well over one standard deviation--a very large difference. 

I included immigrants as a group: they are toward the bottom of the list. If we want to have a country fully in support of science, our immigration trends are counterproductive. 

It looks like some of the explanation for the pattern we see is IQ, but I wouldn't be surprised if non-whites have a tendency to see science as an evil white thing. Think Tuskegee. It's BS, but this might help explain negative attitudes. 

Are the Scots-Irish leading the way toward race consciousness?

I'm thinking that one way to measure an ethnicity's meaningfulness as a group is the extent to which they vote as a bloc. For example, why do blacks, whether wealthy or poor, urban or rural, religious or not, vote overwhelmingly Democratic? Because race is very important for them, and the vast majority see the Democratic party as best serving their interests.

The numbers shown below were calculated like this: 1) Look to see whether more of the ethnic group voted for Hillary or Trump; 2) subtract from that number the percent of all Americans who voted for that candidate; and 3) give a positive sign for those skewed toward Hillary and a negative sign for those skewed toward Trump. I included major racial and ethnic groups, and religions as well since they can also be cohesive groups (General Social Survey, sample size = 1,128).

Voting bloc index

Asian  46.5
White Southern Baptists  -45.0
White--American only  -43.3
Black   41.3
Puerto Ricans  32.2
Protestant Irish  -25.2
Scottish  -23.1
Southern Baptist  -22.0
Jewish   18.9
Mexican  17.5
Catholic Irish  -16.2
German  -14.1
Italian  -10.9
Whites  -9.9
Scandanavian  -9.4
English/Welsh   -9.2
American Indian  8.4
Slavic (non-Jewish)  -8.4
Episcopalian  -7.3
Catholic  -3.5
United Methodist   -2.9

Not surprisingly, non-whites tend to be the most ethnocentric. Asians include people whose families came from China, Japan, and India--they score even higher than blacks.

Hispanics and Jews are in the mid-range, but the striking numbers are for: 1) white Southern Baptists; 2) whites who say their ethnicity is American--Scots-Irish are likely to say this; 3) the Protestant Irish; and 4) Scots. The numbers for white Southern Baptists and for "Americans" are second and third highest on the list (!) and the scores for the other two groups are higher than that of either Jews or Mexicans.

I interpret this as an inchoate sense of identity. For other white groups or religious denominations, there appears to be weaker group cohesiveness. It's higher than zero for all groups, but the Scots-Irish seem to be leading the way on a path toward race consciousness.