Study: Does a strong ethnic identity make whites happier?

The General Social Survey asked respondents, "When you think about yourself, how important is your ethnic group membership to your sense of who you are? Answers ranged from very important (4) to not important at all (1).  They were also asked about how generally happy they are these days with answers ranging from very happy (3) to not too happy (1). Here are the means for happiness listed by level of ethnic identification (sample size = 1,087):

Mean happiness

How important is your ethnicity?
Very   2.28
Moderate   2.23

Slightly   2.17

Not at all   2.17

On average, whites who are more ethnocentric are happier. The effect is statistically significant but small (around a one-fifth of a standard deviation between the extreme categories). 

It seems to me that ethnic or racial pride is a form of self-esteem, and feeling good about oneself promotes happiness. 

What explains the tremendous cross-national variation in religious devotion? IQ? Race?

If you're like me, you could use a break from all the coronavirus, stuff, so let's focus for a moment on race, IQ, and religion. The 2010-2014 World Values Survey asked 88,042 around the world whether they were religious, not religious, or atheist. Here are the percentages listed by country who answered that they were religious:

Percent religious

Pakistan    99.7
Georgia   97.1
Ghana   97.0
Nigeria   95.9
Rwanda   95.9
Qatar   93.8
South Africa   90.7
Haiti  90.3 
India  88.8
Armenia  88.5
Yemen   86.3
Poland   86.2
Turkey   83.5
Colombia  82.5
Morocco   82.4
Peru   81.5
Romania  81.4
Philippines   80.7
South Africa  80.0
Brazil  79.7
Trinidad and Tobago  78.8
Cyprus   78.3
Iraq   76.8
Algeria   74.2
Mexico   74.2
Azerbaijan  73.2
Palestine  72.4
Ecuador   71.1
Libya   68.5
Ukraine   68.3
Argentina   67.8
USA   67.0

Total Sample  66.7

Tunisia   65.1
Slovenia   64.2
Lebanon   63.6
Belarus   62.2
Kazakhstan   61.7
Malaysia   53.7
Russia   53.1
Singapore   53.1
Uruguay   50.8
Chile   50.3
Germany   49.5
Uzbekistan   48.7
Netherlands    43.8
Taiwan   43.3
Netherlands   43.8
New Zealand   42.7
Spain   40.0
Thailand   32.0
Sweden   31.2
Estonia   30.9
Japan   20.9
Hong Kong  19.8
China  12.5

First, the world is quite religious: two-thirds of the total sample described themselves this way. On the other hand, there is tremendous variation. Almost all Pakistanis are religious, while few Chinese are.

On the issue of race, noticeable patterns emerge. South Asians and blacks tend to be very religious, and while the numbers here suggest Islam is associated with greater religiosity, countries like India, Ghana, and Rwanda show that South Asians and blacks do not need to be Muslim to be highly religious. The least religious country with lots of blacks is Trinidad and Tobago, but it is still well above average.

On the other end, East Asians are typically secular. China is at the bottom with 12.5% religious. Filipinos are the exception. This raises the importance of IQ in explaining religiosity. Depending on the estimate, mean IQ for the Philippines is between 74 and 86, and research clearly shows that lower IQ people tend to be more devout.

Europeans vary a lot with levels from 97.1% in Georgia down to 30.9% in Estonia.  Historical factors are important, but a virtue of focusing on IQ is that it helps simplify the world--a major goal of science. Estonians, for example, have a mean IQ of around 100, while it is in the low to mid-90s in Georgia.

Muslim-dominated societies vary quite a bit, too, from 99.7% religious (Pakistan) to 48.7% (Uzbekistan). IQ appears to be a little higher in Uzbekistan. Malaysia, another somewhat secular,  Muslim-dominated country (53.7% religious) has a mean IQ somewhere in the low-to-mid 90s. Overall, Muslim countries are religious.

Latin Americans countries are also fairly devout. On the high end, 82.5% of Colombians are religious, and on the low end, 50.3% of Chileans. Again, IQ might help explain the pattern: it's in the high 80s in Chile, but the low 80s in Colombia.

It looks like any association between race, ethnicity and religious devotion is, in large part, simply a reflection of differences in IQ.  The simple three-race categorization works very well: blacks (low IQ/high religiosity), whites (medium IQ/medium religiosity), and East Asians (not Filipinos) (high IQ/low religiosity). We could add South Asians as well (low IQ/high religiosity).

New Italian study: Men, on average, have higher levels of perceptual reasoning and working memory

A new Italian study led by a female researcher and published by the flagship journal Intelligence reports that men, on average, have higher levels of perceptual reasoning and working memory.

Perceptual reasoning refers to mental operations used to analyze novel problems, rules, and logical relationships, and to create and test solutions. By working memory, researchers mean storing, focusing attention on, and manipulating information for a relatively short period of time.

The researchers are concerned with sex differences in subtest scores that could be due to test bias or social ways that the sexes might differ, and not due to differences in general ability (that are presumably due to biological factors).

They reasoned that if subtest scores are due to broad abilities, the size of the sex difference for the subtest should correspond to the factor loading on the broad ability. For example, if the sex difference on the arithmetic is large, the sex difference on working memory (i.e., a higher-order ability) should also be large. If the latter is small but the former is larger, the authors contend that there is bias in the arithmetic test.

While authors find evidence of some bias in the WAIS-R test, they conclude that the WAIS-IV is "quite fair." If we focus on the results from the WAIS-IV data, we find that men have a small advantage in perceptual reasoning and a moderate advantage in working memory (3 IQ points).

By contrast, there are no significant sex differences in verbal reasoning or processing speed. (Some studies have found a female advantage in processing speed). When indices are combined to created a full-scale IQ score, men have a small advantage--perhaps 1 or 2 IQ points. And, according to the authors, these differences are due to broader abilities, not various forms of bias.

UPDATE: An interesting sidenote: When analyzing WAIS-IV, the researchers look at the sex differences for 15 subtests. You might expect that if there is unintentional test bias, men would come out ahead in some tests, while women might in others. But in zero of the 15 tests do women have a statistically significant advantage.

New research finds cortical differences between seriously antisocial individuals and controls

In this new study, structural MRI data were collected on 672 45-year-old participants in the Dunedin Study, a population-representative longitudinal cohort. Twelve percent were classified as having life-course persistent (LCP) antisocial behavior, while 23% were categorized as having adolescent-limited (AL) antisocial behavior. 

These are classifications developed by criminologist Terrie Moffitt back in the 90s who hypothesized that the LCP pattern is characterized by genetically-rooted, neurological deficits, while the AL pattern is explained more by social factors experienced during adolescence.

The authors found that the LCP group, compared to the low antisocial behavior group, had a significantly smaller mean global surface cortical area and lower mean cortical thickness. The effect sizes were of moderate size for the cortical area and of smaller magnitude for the cortical thickness.

The cortical measures for the AL group were not significantly different than those for the low antisocial group.

The authors concluded that the results for both the LCP and AL groups were consistent with Moffitt's theory of antisocial behavior.

Do intelligent Mormons and Muslims have more kids than their less intelligent counterparts?

Mormons and Muslims are two groups that tend to have a lot of children. Strongly religious groups often do. Is there any chance that, unlike most Americans, their fertility patterns are eugenic? For example, do smarter individuals have more children?

The General Social Survey (GSS) asks about how many children you have had, but there are a couple problems with using this question. The sample sizes for women or adults who would be finished with having children is small, and GSS's annoying practice of putting Mormons in the "other" category forces us to rely on the question about one's religion at age 16--a question not asked of many people in the sample.

An alternative is to use the question about one's number of siblings. Since the GSS is an adult sample, most respondents will not gain any future siblings. Because the samples are still small, I've divided people into a high (7-10 answers correct on WORDSUM) or low IQ group (0-6 answers correct).

Mean number of siblings

Mormons (n = 44)

High IQ   3.63
Low IQ    4.05

Muslims (n = 73)

High IQ   4.05
Low IQ    5.04

Both religions have large families, but the lower IQ groups average more siblings. So even for groups known for their fertility, the trend is dysgenic: compared to the unintelligent, the intelligent devote more of their energy to careers, money, etc., than to having kids. Over the very long term, these groups are getting genetically dumber. Just like everyone else.

If IQ were skin color, how visible would the racial gap be?

I often describe the differences between groups in terms of standard deviations or Cohen's d, but maybe we can get a clearer picture of what these mean with a black-and-white example; namely, skin tone.

Skin color is a very noticeable racial difference and tends to dominate discussions of race even though it is just one characteristic. People focus on it because it is obvious, and I suspect race deniers like it because they can treat it as something superficial, something only shallow people would focus on. People like Dinesh D'Souza who I often agree with will say idiotic things like race is nothing but a "coat of paint." Never mind that skin is our largest organ and carries out many important functions, and that skin color appears to have important functions as well. And anyone who claims that aesthetics aren't important doesn't know human nature.

Anyway, General Social Survey interviewers were asked to rate the skin tone of respondents with a number ranging from 1 (lightest) to 10 (darkest). The lightest ethnic group is Americans of Danish descent with a mean of 1.33. (I'm weird because I'm all NW European and 1/8th Danish but look like an Arab). We'll use Danes as the comparison group. What I show below is the gap between the Danish mean and the mean for the focal group in terms of standard deviations:

Degree to which group is darker than Danish Americans (in sd units)

Blacks  2.2
West Indians  2.2
Asian Indians  1.3
Mexicans  0.8
Filipinos  0.8
American Indians  0.8
Puerto Ricans  0.7
Chinese   0.6
Japanese   0.6

Total Sample  0.6

Spanish   0.5
Arabs   0.5
Jews  0.3
Portuguese  0.2
Italians  0.2
Greeks  0.2

A gap of 2.2 standard deviations between Danes and blacks is so huge, it's the reason why people decided long ago to define groups as the opposite of each other: black and white. If a study reports a 2 sd gap, be impressed.

Another way of describing the gap goes like this: not a single black in the sample is lighter-skinned than any Dane, and 97% of Danes are lighter than 94.5% of blacks.

If you want a visual that matches the size of the black/white IQ gap (1 sd), think of the color gap between Danes and a typical Mexican and typical Asian Indian blended together--a very large difference. Another way of saying this is that the black/white IQ gap is only half the size of the color gap.

Even a difference that is only 10% of the black/Dane gap is still visually easy to detect: the Italian and Greek means are 0.2 standard deviations darker than Danes--0.2 considered a very small difference--but southern Europeans are known for being darker than northern Europeans. The higher Spanish mean is probably due to darker Hispanics claiming Spain as their homeland.

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.