Gotta like that oxytocin

Fellow Betas, I think I may have discovered how it is that women developed stronger and deeper feelings for me over time, the opposite of how I expected it would work. From pages 70 and 71 of Why Women Have Sex:

Diane Witt, a researcher at Binghamton University, proposes that the release of oxytocin can be classically conditioned to the sight of certain people. Recall the Nobel Prize-winning Russian scientist Pavlov and his dogs. Dogs salivate when they are exposed to food--it plays an important role in the digestive process. Pavlov began ringing the bell every time he fed his dogs, and after a while the sound of the bell alone caused the dogs to salivate. The dogs had been classically conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell. Witt believes that, in a similar way, oxytocin can be classically conditioned to be released by the brain with exposure to certain partners. 

For example, a woman meets someone and on the first date she decides he doesn't match up to her ideal--Clint Eastwood--but he's still acceptable enough to date a few more times. Eventually she decides to have sex with him--and oxytocin is released, so she experiences that "oohhh so good" feeling. After having repeated sex, and oxytocin releases, with the same man, she forms a conditioned association. Pretty soon, just seeing the guy can cause her brain to release oxytocin--without even having sex. Suddenly "Mr. Acceptable Enough" becomes "Mr. Can't Live Without."  Some researchers believe that prolonged attachment with a given person actually causes chronically high levels of oxytocin and its close hormonal relative vasopressin, which could feasibly help maintain long-term relationship bonds between women and men.

 Problem is, you have to be acceptable in the first place.

You can choose to be an American first

After reading my last few posts, a skeptic might claim that I'm naive about race. I'm advocating that Americans of all colors put their Americanness first and their racial loyalty last. I've also argued that there is some truth to the idea that race is socially constructed.

Let's begin with the idea of socially constructed race. You haven't been reading this blog if you think I deny the biological reality of race. What I deny is that it must be at the center of how you define yourself. The phrase "You are born with your uniform on" is poetic, but misleading.

My brown eyes are a biological reality. Must I then define myself as a Brown and organize with the rest of the dark-eyed world against the Blue and  the Green?  Handedness is a biological reality. Should I march with my fellow left-handed brothers against our right-handed Oppressors? (I should contact our sinistral President. I hear he's got experience as an organizer). Baldness is basically genetic. Should Larry David and I form an army and drive the Hairy-Headed into the sea?

I certainly don't believe we should pretend that race doesn't exist and doesn't explain anything--much of this blog marshals evidence against that--but I'm not sure it has to be at the center of who you are.

Irishness was important when the Irish first arrived. Now, not so much. Polishness was important when they were new. Now, not really. For most now, we're just white folks.

You might respond that ethnicity is flexible, but not race. Blacks and American Indians have been here for centuries, but race is still central to who they are. Well, for a long time it was unrealistic for a black man to minimize his blackness. When you are made a slave because of it, it's important whether you want it to be or not.

Liberals like to pretend the circumstances really haven't changed much, but they are responsible for much of the race-clinging, and the truth is that the importance of race for a black person is now a choice. You probably know blacks who are culturally pretty much like whites. I do, and I don't see why more blacks can't move in that direction. In prior posts, I could find no predictors of voting Republican among blacks, so it's not simply a function of something like IQ or social class.

The move to American first-hood should be easier for Hispanics and especially Asians. The problem is that the country doesn't shame them for their backward particularism. In fact, it encourages them. People need to be challenged: Are you a tribalist, or are you an American?

Don't get me wrong--I'm not saying we can make the correlates of race disappear. A person can't choose, for example, to have an IQ of 115 just because he wants one. I'm talking about how you define yourself. You can choose to be an American first. 


   

"We were here first"

In the immigration debate, a common argument made by Hispanics goes something like this: "We've been in this country for generations. We were here before you were."  

To borrow a term from our postmodernist friends, let's deconstruct that a bit. "We" clearly means Hispanics, or perhaps some narrower group like Mexicans. "You" refers to whites. The meaning of the argument is that the America is just a piece of land claimed by two racial groups--whites and Latinos--and Hispanics have dibs since they arrived first. 

Set aside the question of who showed up first. In this scenario, there is no United States of America and no American citizens. There are two racial groups fighting over land. This is the worldview of a thoroughgoing racialist. How is the logic of the argument different from the white nationalist who argues that North America belongs to the white race because it was developed by them?  

The outlook of a true American citizen is that only Americans can decide who can move here, and that decision should be based only on what is in the long-term interests of the nation. We Americans have all been here the same length of time--since the birth of the country. Arguments advancing the interests of one racial group against another are illegitimate to the citizen.       

This "we got here first" argument betrays the mind of a tribalist: "I am a cell in a racial body that is in conflict with the racial body of which you are a cell. I operate on this understanding, and so do you, white guy. Your kind believes the same way and always has. Nationhood and citizenship have nothing to do with it. We're not on the same team." 

Liberal delusions to the contrary, very few whites think like that. When whites criticize illegal immigration for its lawlessness and cost to the country, they mean just that.  Of course, "illegal immigration hurts me" is a common underlying sentiment, but "it hurts my race" is rare indeed. 

Whites, even savvy whites, let minorities pull this crap all the time. Activists start talking like brown Nazis, and whites think it's a perfectly legitimate argument. 

Critics are right when they claim that whites think they are superior to others, but they're  looking at the wrong attitudes. White superiority goes like this: Enlightened humans are not tribalists. Non-whites are naturally (and properly) tribalists. Therefore, non-whites are not enlightened humans like us. (The last step is usually not thought through, but it's the logical conclusion). White tribalists are especially low because, while such behavior is normal for people of color, it is beneath a white person. 

I'm not a supremacist because I think non-whites are equal to me and therefore should be held to the standards I impose on myself (non-tribalism). They are not inferiors like children who cannot reach the lofty heights where I reside. 

The only problem with my expectations of non-whites is that I look like Pollyanna in a pink dress.    

Begging us to become white racialists

Here's a compelling case made by Lawrence Auster that the reaction of organized Hispanics to the new immigration enforcement law in Arizona demonstrates that they are Latino racialists first and Americans second. These people are begging us 200 million white folks to become white racialists first and Americans second.

Good God Almighty

Good God Almighty, you can't read a single paper around here without there being some hysterical witch hunt surrounding it.

Read here about the controversy over Nyborg's paper that I described in the last post. 

It seems that the paper gave the ladies of the Arhus University Committee the vapors.  

The book burners never sleep.  

UPDATE: Here's an eloquent letter of support from Steven Pinker. And one by Henry Harpending.

Are men smarter than women?

According to the New York Times:

In a closely watched case, a sharply divided federal appeals court on Monday ruled 6-5 that a sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart could proceed as a class action for more than a million women. The suit is the biggest employment discrimination case in the nation’s history.

The evidence for discrimination that the plaintiffs offer is that while 65 percent of Walmart's hourly employees are women, only one-third of its managers are.

Let's pack it in and go home--I, for one, am convinced that Walmart places hatred of women above its desire to make a profit.

The Gods of Human Biodiversity must have been guiding my path today: I was in the middle of reading a research study on the male advantage in IQ when I heard about the lawsuit. 

For years I've assumed that men and women have the same average general intelligence. Why have I assumed this?  Because King Arthur Jensen told me so. In the g Factor. Now, I'm not so sure. 

In the journal Personality and Individual Differences, Danish researcher Helmuth Nyborg reviewed studies examining sex differences, and of the several methodological criteria set by Nyborg, only one study was adequate. Many of the criteria are technical, but the most compelling to me is that results depend a lot on the mix of subtests, some which favor males and some which favor females. The way around the problem is to maximize the number of subtests, which makes sense since general mental ability is supposed to penetrate a broad array of cognitive tasks.

The study that meets all of his requirements is by Colom et al. (2002) which gives a male advantage of 3.6 points. He then goes on to describe the results of his study based on two Danish samples--one of children and one of adults--where 20 subtests were given. (That's a lot). The male advantage in g for the kids was 3.15. When the adult sample was added to increase statistical power, the male advantage rose to 6.90 points.

Nyborg was then able to closely predict the observed sex gap in general intelligence with the sex difference in brain size (men have bigger brains--one-third of a standard deviation larger). The bigger brains give men 15 percent more neurons.  

Now a few IQ points doesn't seem like a big deal, but that gets magnified at the high end. Based on his Danish data, for every woman with an IQ of 145 or higher, you will get eight men.

We shouldn't be the least bit surprised to see men dominate the higher ranks of a large organization. And that's not even counting higher natural levels of ambition, competitiveness, and dominance.  

Makes me wonder about the sex of the plaintiff's lawyers.     


UPDATE: Dennis Mangan explains how biological differences explain lower pay for women here.

Are beautiful people intelligent?

High status men mate with attractive women, producing bright, beautiful babies, right?

ADD Health interviewers were asked the following about the study participant: "How physically attractive is the respondent?" Answers ranged from "very unattractive " to "very attractive." For each race/sex group, I calculated the Pearson correlation between this measure and the student's vocabulary test score--a proxy for IQ.

Pearson correlation coefficient

Males
White .12*
Black .23*
Hispanic .22*
Amerindian .21*
Asian .18*

Females
White .04*
Black .11*
Hispanic .01
Amerindian .18*
Asian .07

*significant relationship

All of the correlations are in the predicted direction, but they are weak (or non-existent). They are stronger for males than for females--I'm not sure why.

The College Degree Gap: Young Women Outnumber Men at Every Level

The College Degree Gap: Young Women Outnumber Men at Every Level

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Candor on surveys

ADD Health interviewers were asked the following about the study participant: "How candid was the respondent?" Answers ranged from "very candid" (1) to "not candid" (4).  Here are means by race/ethnicity:

Mean evasiveness score (N = 6,477)

Males
White 1.64
Black 1.89*
Mexican 1.82*
Puerto Rican 1.93*
Cuban 1.80 
Amerindian 1.65
Asian 1.66

Females
White 1.55
Black 1.82*
Mexican 1.65
Puerto Rican 1.89* 
Cuban 1.85
Amerindian 1.55
Asian 1.61

*significantly higher than white counterpart


For both sexes, blacks and Puerto Ricans were significantly more evasive than whites. Mexican American males were also less candid than their white counterparts. The largest gap is between whites and Puerto Ricans. It turns out to be one-third of a standard deviation (sd) for males and four-tenths of an sd for females--moderate differences. 

The numbers are consistent with another study I described which found that, compared to whites, blacks and Hispanics score higher on lie scales when participating in surveys. It might simply be due to mistrust of authorities. These results suggest that the true racial gaps in undesirable behaviors like crime might be larger than survey data indicate.     

White culture

In his recent article, Pat Buchanan sees the Tea Party movement as an emerging tribe. He's buying the hype of the left that these protesters are anti-black racialists. As I showed in an earlier post, almost as many Hispanics support the Tea Party as whites. Are they white nationalists too? I suspect Buchanan wants liberals to be right because tribalism generates much more political power that individualism. 

Buchanan's piece was inspired by an article written in the New Yorker titled, "Beyond the Pale: Is White the New Black?" The author, Kalefa Sanneh, reviews a couple "whiteness studies" books and concludes that whiteness is emerging as a positive identity (historically it has meant "not non-white" and the consequences have been pernicious), and it might end up being relatively benign. 

I don't see it, but I've been trying to answer a question from the article that was posed to Glenn Beck by Katie Couric: "What is white culture?" Beck had said earlier on his show that, "This President, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture."  Beck didn't give an answer, but, having some idea how he thinks, he probably meant that limited, constitutional government is a white American phenomenon, and Obama is a black liberationist.

But the question got me wondering. If Buchanan and Sanneh are right, and people like me are turning into white folks, what is my culture? Your ideas would be helpful, but you'll admit it's a tough question. It's like pinning down a cloud. 

My first stab at it would be to focus on the highest aspects of culture, and to personify them with the best culture creators. Charles Murray does this systematically in Human Accomplishment. It would not have been a gross exaggeration to title the book White Accomplishment. (This is what you're going to get from us if you turn us into white people). Anyway, the short list would include Euler, Newton, Galileo, Einstein, Lavoisier, Darwin, Aristotle, Plato, Beethoven, Mozart, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Watt, and Edison. Although some would disagree with me, I would add at least Jesus and St. Paul. (We needed to beef up the Jewish contribution to the list).

For the highest of white American culture, we could just pick the leading Americans from Murray's lists--Whitman and Edison, for example.    

Of course, these are the cultural leaders. Cultural followers come in all colors, so "white culture" like any culture is a limited concept. 

Skeptics might argue that there is very little in common between, say, Jesus and Edison; "white" is an artificial social construction. I would answer yes and no. I would answer that it is being constructed by liberals every day. "The white race is the cancer of human history" is a classic example. As Sanneh wrote, "The history of human culture is the history of forgeries that become genuine, categories that people make and cannot simply unmake."

The GSS vocabulary test

Via a reader at iSteve, it looks like this might be the vocabulary test used by the General Social Survey. (Someone please tell me if I'm wrong).

A. SPACE 1. school 2. noon 3. captain 4. room 5. board 6. don’t know

B. BROADEN 1. efface 2. make level 3. elapse 4. embroider 5. widen 6. don’t know

C. EMANATE 1. populate 2. free 3. prominent 4. rival 5. come 6. don’t know

D. EDIBLE 1. auspicious 2. eligible 3. fit to eat 4. sagacious 5. able to speak 6. don’t know

E. ANIMOSITY 1. hatred 2. animation 3. disobedience 4. diversity 5. friendship 6. don’t know

F. PACT 1. puissance 2. remonstrance 3. agreement 4. skillet 5. pressure 6. don’t know

G. CLOISTERED 1. miniature 2. bunched 3. arched 4. malady 5. secluded 6. don’t know

H. CAPRICE 1. value 2. a star 3. grimace 4. whim 5. inducement 6. don’t know

I. ACCUSTOM 1. disappoint 2. customary 3. encounter 4. get used to 5. business 6. don’t know

J. ALLUSION 1. reference 2. dream 3. eulogy 4. illusion 5. aria 6. don’t know


UPDATE: FYI, the mean score in 2008 was 6.29 for whites, 4.99 for blacks, and 5.56 for Hispanics born in this country.

Does IQ explain racial differences in violent crime?

Adolescents in the ADD Health Study were asked if they had intentionally injured someone in the past year. I estimated logistic regression models to see if: 1) non-Asian minorities (NAMs) were more likely to answer yes, and 2) are the racial/ethnic differences explained by lower IQs.

The coefficient for blacks is 0.34 (p = .001) and 0.24 for Hispanics (p = .013). The numbers indicate that members of both groups are more likely to have injured someone. When a measure of IQ is added to the equations (it's a vocab test), the results look like this: 

Logistic regression coefficients

Hispanic model (n = 6,150)
Hispanic 0.16
IQ -0.01*

Black model (n = 6,154)
Black 0.28*
IQ -0.01*

* p < .05, two-tailed test

When IQ is entered into the model the Hispanic effect disappears. In other words, lower IQs explain why Hispanics are more likely to be violent. On the other hand, entering IQ into the model for blacks reduces the relationship between being black and violent, but it does not eliminate it. According to ADD Health data, other factors are necessary to fully explain high levels of violence by blacks.

Religiosity and pregnancy

White female adolescents participating in the ADD Health Study were asked how often they attend church, and if they've ever been pregnant.

Percent ever pregnant (N = 657)

Never attends 16.5
Less than once a month 17.8
At least once a month but not weekly 10.6
Weekly or more 12.9

The differences are not statistically significant (meaning we're not sure that they're not an accident of the sample). These findings do not support the contention that religious girls are the ones who get pregnant.

Digit ratios among ten populations

As I described before, the ratio of the length of the index finger to the ring finger is thought to measure the balance of estrogen and testosterone an embryo/fetus is exposed to. Shorter relative index finger length indicates masculinization. The graph above is from page 19 in John Manning's Digit Ratio: A Pointer to Fertility, Behavior, and Health (2002, Rutgers University Press). It shows the means for males and females from ten different populations. The graph does not show the results for Lithuanians and Latvians who scored in the mid-90s. (They were not included since subjects' hands were measured differently). 

The trend looks curvilinear with "masculine" populations nearer to the equator or at high latitudes (Finns). The two black populations are masculine. Notice how the population differences are much larger than the sex differences. Jamaican women have more masculine ratios than most of the male European populations.

Political news dummies

Pew recently asked 1,003 adults 12 questions about political news information. Here are the percent who answered each correctly:

Let's look at the percent answering correctly two of the most "difficult" questions.

The political news dummies: women, blacks, young adults, folks with no more than a high-school degree, and Democrats. And the overall score:

Same pattern. You can add low-income folks to the list as well.

How about you can't vote without at least a passing grade?  I have low standards.

Black violence is linked to Latino immigration

From American Renaissance:

LSU Sociology Professor Edward Shihadeh and Ph.D. candidate Raymond Barranco have published a study titled “Latino Employment and Black Violence: The Unintended Consequence of U.S. Immigration Policy,” in the March 2010 issue of Social Forces, the field’s preeminent journal.

The study confirms that Latino immigration and dominance of low skill jobs have displaced blacks from low-skill labor markets, which in turn led to more violence in urban black communities. According to their analysis, this is traceable to U.S. immigration policies over the last several decades.

Before the United States/Mexico border was militarized, Latino immigration was a two-way trip; immigrants, mainly from Central America, moved to the United States temporarily to finance a project in their home country. But in response to U.S. public pressure, border security was intensified. Tall fences were built, cameras installed and the border was patrolled relentlessly by well-armed guards. As a result, Latino immigrants in the United States stopped returning home for fear that they could not repeat the trip. This increased the number of Latino workers in the United States competing for jobs in agriculture, manufacturing and construction. Blacks lost that competition in many cities, and where that occurred, murder rates went up.

“{snip} We do not advocate restricting the flow of Latino migrants in either direction. This is what triggered the flow of events in the first place. There is no reason to deprive this country of the rich contributions made by Latinos. Our study simply describes how immigration policy opened a new chapter in the history of the U.S. labor market and how that harmed black communities,” [said Shihadeh].

Liberals and cheating on taxes

Ah, Tax Day.

A recent survey by Pew revealed that 86 percent of conservatives agree that "not reporting all income on your taxes is morally wrong" compared to only 68 percent of liberals. 

Conservatives want lower taxes but feel they should pay what they owe. Liberals want you to pay more but don't stress about paying their own.   

I finally figured out why blacks folks won't go to protests that drum up images of American revolutionaries. Two words: Crispus Attucks.

Church attendance and sexual assault

White male adolescents in the ADD Health Study were asked: "Did you ever physically force someone to have sexual intercourse against her will?" Here are the percentages who answered "yes" listed by church attendance:

Percent of males having forced sex (N = 604)

Never attends 4.2
Less than once a month 2.3
Between monthly and less than weekly 3.5
Once a week or more 1.2

There are no significant differences here, but if that issue is ignored, guys who never attend church are 3 1/2 times more likely to report forced sex than those who go weekly or more often.

Girls were asked: "Were you ever physically forced to have sexual intercourse against your will?

Percent of females forced to have sex (N = 657)

Never attends 15.7
Less than once a month 11.3
Between monthly and less than weekly 11.9
Once a week or more 10.5

Once again, there are no significant differences, but the numbers suggest that, compared to girls who attend most frequently, those who never go are 1 1/2 times more likely to have been forced. Less restrictiveness on the part of the parents seems the most probable explanation.

Religious affiliation and sexual intercourse among white teens

White adolescent participants in the ADD Health Study were asked: "Have you ever had sexual intercourse? When we say sexual intercourse, we mean when a male inserts his penis into a female's vagina."

Here are the percentages who answered yes by religious affiliation (sample size = 4,180, mean age is 15.0):

Percent of teens who have had sex

No religion 47.1*
Pentecostal 42.0*
Baptist 40.6*
Methodist 33.7
Catholic 32.7
Disciples of Christ 31.6
Presbyterian 30.6
Lutheran 30.5
Episcopal 28.2
Jewish 27.8
Mormon 21.4

* significantly higher than Mormons


Those with no religion are most likely to report sexual intercourse.  Compared to Mormons, their rate is 2.2 times higher.

Sexual orientation and physical attractiveness

ADD Health interviewers rated the physical attractiveness of adolescent study participants and also asked them if they had ever been attracted to a member of the same sex. I'll categorize those who answered "no" as heterosexual, and those who answered "yes" as homosexual. Here are the means for physical attractiveness:

Physical attractiveness mean (N = 4,255, white sample)

Straight males 3.49
Gay males 3.44
Straight females 3.74
Lesbians 3.70

According to ADD Health data, homosexuals do not differ significantly from straights in terms of physical attractiveness. I had guessed that gay males would be more attractive, and lesbians less attractive.

Derbyshire on living with differences

Is that famous English common sense genetic, or what?  From John Derbyshire's recent talk to the Black Law Students Association at the University of Pennsylvania on the government's role in eliminating racial disparities: 

We are all, to various degrees, aware of our own individual strengths and limitations. Certainly I am aware of mine. For example: My wife is a keen ballroom dancer. Because I love my wife, I did my best to become a ballroom dancer myself. For two years — two blessed years, ladies and gentlemen — I went along twice a week with her to the local Arthur Murray studio to take instruction. At the end of it, I still had two left feet. The instruction I received was like water poured on to a sheet of glass.


Even at the things we are good at, most of us are not very good. I make my living by writing; yet I can name, in my own small personal acquaintance, a dozen people who are better writers than I am. That's not even to mention the Shakespeares and Tolstoys. Most of us are hopeless at most things, and mediocre at the rest.


And yet — look! We don't lose sleep over this. We don't sink into rage and frustration at our own individual differences, or agitate for politicians to put balm on our psychic wounds. We accept our individual shortcomings with remarkable equanimity, playing the cards we've been dealt as best we can. That is the attitude of a healthy human being. To do otherwise would, most of us I'm sure would agree, be un-healthy. How much more unhealthy, then, to fret and rage and agitate about mere statistical abstractions?

(H/T Steve Sailer--not unfamiliar with common sense, himself.)

Support for the Tea Party

In a recent Quinnipiac survey, people were asked the following question: "Suppose a Tea Party candidate were running in your district. If the 2010 election for the U.S. House of Representatives were being held today, would you vote for the Republican candidate, the Democratic candidate, or the Tea Party candidate in your district?"

The sample was of 1,907 registered voters nationwide.

Only three percent of blacks answered that they would vote for the Tea Party candidate. This in no way demonstrates that blacks are loyal to Obama and the Democratic Party; rather, it proves that boisterous Medicare recipients hate black people. It's textbook social science: if you want to know a group's attitudes, observe the attitudes of another group.

Evidently Hispanics hate blacks too since they basically match whites in support for the Tea Party (at least on a survey). Seventeen percent of whites said they would vote for the Tea Party candidate, but 15 percent of Hispanics said the same. Funny, but I somehow missed the media's coverage of that statistic. 

Racial differences in digit ratio

John Manning and colleagues have used the ratio of the length of the index to the ring finger (2D:4D) as a proxy measure of in utero exposure to relatively more estrogen and less testosterone. In other words, a long index finger compared to the ring finger is an indicator of "feminization" in the womb, and a comparatively short index is a sign of "masculinization."

 It turns out that there are large ethnic differences in the 2D:4D ratio. Manning is quoted as saying that, "There’s more difference between a Pole and a Finn than a man and a woman." According to the results of one study, "The Oriental Han had the highest mean 2D:4D, followed by the Caucasian Berbers and Uygurs, with the lowest mean ratios found in the Afro-Caribbean Jamaicans." In plainer language, Hans were the most feminized and Jamaicans the most masculine. You can read about a long list of characteristics associated with digit ratio here.

You gotta love citing studies that have Robert Trivers as a co-author.

The Myths of Racial Profiling

The name MacDonald used to drum up an image of a pale-faced redhead in floppy shoes. Now I think of a curly-haired truth warrior:

The Myths of Racial Profiling

Race, ethnicity, and IQ according to ADD Health

The ADD Health Study gave teenagers a five minute vocabulary test and converted scores into a measure of IQ. (As a reader pointed out in an earlier post, vocabulary accurately captures general intelligence). Here are mean IQ scores for all kids who were born in the United States (non-Hispanic whites are set at 100, and the standard deviation is 15):

Jews are heads and shoulders above other groups. Jews and blacks, in fact, are 1 1/2 standard deviations apart--an enormous difference. Except for Koreans, all Asian groups score lower than whites, and Filipinos are toward the bottom of the list. All Hispanic groups have lower averages. Mexican Americans are nine points lower than whites.

No difference between white managers and liberals in warmth toward blacks

Liberals claim that blacks average lower incomes than whites because whites do the hiring, and all too many of them are racists. What we need, they say, is enlightened people (i.e., them) to do the hiring.

In the last post, I used General Social Survey (GSS) data to show that white police officers do not differ from other whites in their feelings toward blacks. Let's use the same question to see if there is a significant difference between white managers and white liberals. Respondents were asked,"In general, how warm or cool do you feel towards African Americans?" Answers ranged from "very warm" (1) to "very cool" (9). There were 232 managers and 266 liberals in the sample.

The mean score for managers is 3.55; for libs, it's 3.46. The difference is not statistically significant, meaning that we have little confidence that the difference in the estimates is anything more than noise. 

Are white cops racists?

Most blacks and many whites assume that white cops are racists.

The General Social Survey asked the following question: "In general, how warm or cool do you feel towards African Americans?" Answers ranged from "very warm" (1) to "very cool" (9). There were only 13 white officers in the sample (and 2,080 other whites). The mean for the police is 3.62, and it's 3.65 for all other whites. No significant difference.

White officers do not differ from other whites in their attitudes towards blacks.

More on the IQ regression to the mean

In the recent post on IQ regression to the mean, reader Levi Johnston asked if there were enough black respondents to calculate IQs for those with two highly educated parents, not one or two. The n for blacks drops from 47 to 16--a small sample, indeed--but the results are a mean of 109.6 for whites and 105.3 for blacks (the difference is not statistically significant). Compared to the earlier results, scores went up a couple points for whites but five points for blacks. The gap in standard deviation (sd) terms shrunk from around half to about three-tenths.

I should note that with the full sample of blacks and whites, the IQ gap based on the GSS vocabulary test in only about 10 points--not the usual 15. This is probably due to the fact that the test taps verbal IQ, a form of intelligence with a smaller racial gap. For the full sample, the black-white difference is only two-thirds of an sd--not the one sd difference that researchers usually observe when looking at general intelligence.

Traditionalism and family size

A traditionalism score was computed for white MIDUS Study participants based on the following items: endorses high moral standards; endorses religious values and institutions; expresses positive regard for parents; endorses strict child-rearing practices; values conventional propriety and a good reputation; opposes rebelliousness and unrestricted freedom of expression; condemns selfish disregard of others.

I divided the sample into low and high traditionalism groups and calculated the mean number of children for all ages 45 and over:


Mean number of children

Men
High traditionalism 2.93
Low traditionalism 2.39*
Difference: 0.54 children

Women

High traditionalism 2.88
Low traditionalism 2.58*
Difference: 0.30 children
 
* significantly lower than counterpart
 
Traditional white men average about one-half of a child more than their non-traditional counterparts. The gap is smaller for white women: 0.3 more kids. (All the means seem high. Respondents were asked to include step-children, adopted children, etc.) 
 
The heritability of traditionalism is estimated to be 60 percent.
 
The country might inch in a more traditional direction, if current trends are sustained (over a very, very long time). (I'm assuming the trend is the same among our growing population of Hispanics and Asians).

Regression to the mean with GSS data

Do black and white adult children of parents who attended graduate school have the same average IQs? Why shouldn't they? They had the same advantages that come from growing up in a home of highly educated parents.

Using GSS data, I calculated mean IQs (based on a vocabulary test) for blacks and whites whose mothers or fathers completed at least 17 years of schooling (20 years is the highest possible score).

Mean IQ (N = 546)

Has highly educated mother
White 107.0
Black 99.5*

Has highly educated father
White 107.6
Black 99.7*


* significantly lower than white counterpart

Even though these folks have equally educated parents, there is a gap between them that is roughly half of a standard deviation--a fairly large difference.

Our results fit just about perfectly a regression to the mean equation where heritability for IQ is set at 0.5; the mean IQ for educated parents is set at 115; and the means for the white and black populations are set at 100 and 85, respectively.