Data: Has racism declined over the past few decades?

Despite decades of militant effort to root out racism in America, blacks continue to be concentrated at the bottom rungs of society.  Now we all walk on egg shells when it comes to race, so where is the supposed hatred that is keeping blacks down?  To save the argument, liberals have shifted and now claim that racism isn't cross-burnings and lynchings; it's sneaky.  It's so sneaky, you can't even find it. It's like the Devil: invisible but powerful.  It's either hidden in institutional arrangements, or whites are simply faking their goodwill. 

There is clear General Social Survey (GSS) evidence that contradicts the view that whites don't talk or act so racist, but the same hatred still lurks in their hearts.  I've long argued that one of the few survey measures of racism that has some validity asks participants how warmly they feel toward blacks.  At least it's better than BS measures like whether you support racial preferences or not.

GSS participants were asked the warmth question in 2002.  Look how mean "coolness" increases with age for southerners (blue) and northerners (red):

   









People in their 20s would have been born in the 1970s, those in their 30s in the 1960s, etc.  People aged 70 and above are noticeably colder than those in their 20s.  It's about one-half of a standard deviation difference. And even the elderly group averages a "warm" response.  A five would be neutral, but a four is positive.  Even whites born in the South in the 1920s like blacks.  The US is a racist country?  BS.  Just the opposite.

Notice how young southerners are a little colder than northerners, but the two regions converge and even flip among the oldest group. In other words, elderly northerners like blacks less than elderly southerners do.

Anyway, I think even most liberals would admit that whites act better now than they did in the 1950s, which is all anyone should worry about anyway.  Who cares what's in someone's heart as long as they treat you well?  But if we are worried about private sentiments, there is a significant difference between younger and older Americans.  (Of course, I'm assuming people develop their feelings when young and then tend to hold on to them throughout adulthood. It is possible that people are warmer when young and get colder as they age.)

By the way, I'm trying to figure out why my cohort, those born in the 60s, appear to be colder than those who are both younger and older.  I was in college during the Rodney King riots in 1992, and it did make an impression on me.  But I was a liberal, so I found myself making excuses for all the destructive behavior.  Perhaps all the violent crime of the late 80s and early 90s left its mark. 

Data: What percentage of Americans are "white nationalists"?

The General Social Survey asks respondents the following: "What about the number of immigrants from Europe? Should it be increased a lot, increased a little, left the same as it is now, decreased a little, or decreased a lot?"  People were asked the same about immigrants from Latin America.

These questions enable us to measure a preference for one group or the other.  I created a variable that ranges from 1 to 9 where 9 is a person who wants to increase immigration a lot from Europe and decrease it a lot from Latin America.  A person who scores a 1 wants a large increase from Latin America and a big decrease from Europe.  A person who wants the same level for both groups, regardless of the level, is given a 5, which indicates no preference.  All the other numbers indicate milder forms of preference for either one group or the other.  So let's show the results by race of the respondent:

Immigration preference (%)

Whites (n = 1,033)

Very strong European  0.1
Strong European  2.6
Moderate European  5.3
Mild European  8.7
No preference  77.1
Mild Latin  5.5
Moderate Latin  0.4
Strong Latin 0.2
Very Strong Latin  0.1 

I was pretty sure the most popular score would be "no preference," but there are small percentages of whites who do show a European preference.  It's 16.7% of whites that show at least a mild European bias, and I imagine there are more who were unwilling to admit the preference to an interviewer.  So conservatively speaking, we can conclude that 17% of whites could be classified as at least mildly Eurocentric.  Some might want to put a nastier label on it and say that 17% of whites are white nationalists or white supremacists.

Notice, too, that over 6% of white Americans have a Latin American preference.  Let's now turn to black respondents: 

Blacks (n = 191)

Very strong European  0.0
Strong European  1.6
Moderate European  4.2
Mild European  4.7
No preference  83.2
Mild Latin  4.7
Moderate Latin  0.5
Strong Latin  0.1
Very Strong Latin  0.0

Blacks are even more likely than whites to not have a preference, but 10.5% have a Euro preference, compared to only 5.3% having at least a mild Latin preference.  These numbers are not consistent with blacks viewing Hispanic immigrants as brothers in the fight against whites.

Other Races (n = 77)

Very strong European  0.0
Strong European  7.8
Moderate European  3.9
Mild European  6.5
No preference  68.8
Mild Latin  10.4
Moderate Latin  2.6
Strong Latin  0.0
Very Strong Latin  0.0

You actually have a higher percent of people from other races showing at least some Euro bias than whites: 18.2% to be precise.  Slightly over two-thirds report no preference, while 13% have a Latin preference. Keep in mind that many of these "other race" are Hispanics.  I would have expected more people from this group to show favoritism to other Latinos.

Overall, there is a noteworthy number of people from each race who are more favorable to immigration by whites than immigration by Hispanics (or at least less unfavorable). So if these people are indeed white nationalists, then we have white nationalists of all colors.

Data: How smart are Christian Arabs in the US?

Recently, there was a big Twitter war between a bunch of smart pro-IQ guys (i.e., pro-science), including Stever Sailer, Greg Cochran, and Geoffrey Miller, against the otherwise smart Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  Taleb is from a Lebanese Christian family, and a side question that arose from the debate was about the intelligence of Lebanese Christians.  Sailer mentioned all the Lebanese billionaires like Carlos Slim as being quite impressive, and most are Christians.

The General Social Survey can help a little here. While it does not ask if you're Lebanese, it does ask if you're Arab, as well as what your religion is.  I was able to identify 12 Christian Arabs in the sample who were born in the US.  Their mean IQ is 103.5.  I've attended church with several Arabs over the years, and they seem like accomplished people.

Data: What is the IQ of the average black person with an advanced degree?

We know that colleges have gotten less selective as they have tried to boost the numbers of blacks and Hispanics.  (In fact, as higher education has gotten more egalitarian, it has become less selective for all races.)  My guess is that mean IQ for blacks of a given degree level has dropped over the past few decades.  Here's what GSS data say (N = 3,856):

It looks like I'm right, but only for graduate school.  Mean IQ in the 70s was 112, but now it has fallen all the way to 101.  For a 4-year degree, the average has hovered around 100.

Two things really strike me.  First, the average black with a Master's degree or higher has an IQ close to the average white in the general population. That really needs no comment, but you can imagine what the thesis is going to look like (if a thesis is even required).

Second, a black person with an advanced degree is basically not smarter than one with a bachelor's.  Universities are not recruiting a select bunch out of the pool of college graduates. They're selecting on other traits like who thinks a teaching assistantship sounds preferable to a real job.

Data: Are Jews the smartest whites?

The human biodiversity community knows that Jews are the smartest whites, but are they, really?

Using the General Social Survey's IQ measure, here are the top five white IQ groups by religion:

Mean IQ (N = 22,242)

Buddhist  110.9
Other Eastern religion  109.4 (n is only 13)
Jewish  108.1
Episcopalian  107.7
Hindu  106.3 (n is only 6)

Jews actually come in third behind Buddhists and whites following other Eastern religions.  Plus, Episcopalians are pretty close to Jews.  Hindus are smart, on average, too (although we shouldn't make much out of such a small sample).

In case you're curious, whites with no religion have an average IQ of 102.8.

Data: The verbal IQs of black northerners and especially black and white southerners have risen since the 1970s

The General Social Survey has been giving participants a vocabulary quiz since the 70s. Research indicates that this is a decent proxy for verbal IQ.

Supposedly, education for blacks in the South was awful prior to the civil rights movement.  If education makes any difference, perhaps IQ scores of southern blacks have gradually improved since the 1960s.  The graph below shows mean IQ per decade for southern (blue line) and northern (red line) blacks (N = 4,435):

Keep in mind that the sample is all adult blacks, so educational improvements for children would have a very gradual impact on the whole adult population, if any at all.  In the 1970s, the gap for the two groups was six IQ points (85 vs. 91). By the 2000s, the gap was down to three points (90 vs. 93).

Notice, too, how the means increased for both groups, especially for southerners, over this period. Perhaps southern schools have gotten better, and some other factor has boosted scores for blacks in both regions.  It could be some biological factor like nutrition, or perhaps something like more exposure to mainstream vocabulary words via television.  I'm pretty sure the same 10 questions have been used since the beginning, so the quiz hasn't gotten easier.

Here is the graph for whites (N = 24,363):

Like blacks, whites from the South gained significant IQ points from the 70's to the 2000s; four points to be specific (96 to 100). Northern whites, on the other hand, only gained 6/10's of a point, from 100.6 to 101.2.

It looks like northern blacks and especially southerners of both races benefited from something.

UPDATE: The South has gotten to be a more attractive region post-civil rights era. Perhaps part of the story is intelligent black and white northerners moving south, thus boosting the mean IQ.

A comment on criminal justice reform legislation

Folks should know some basic facts about criminals before applauding the Senate's vote for sweeping federal criminal justice reform.

One basic finding in criminology is that criminals are not specialists. They are opportunists who like to cut corners by stealing stuff, selling drugs, and using violence to get their way.  Serving a sentence for drug dealing in no way implies that the offender is simply a businessman who never steals or attacks people. He happens to be serving a sentence for a drug conviction, but next time it is almost as likely to be for a property crime or violence.

Also--criminals who are serving time in federal prison for a drug offense are not decent people who simply have a drug addiction problem. They are traffickers.  More than 90% of all felonies are plea bargained, so it is not uncommon for someone charged with trafficking to get it reduced to a lesser offense like possession in exchange for a guilty plea. The only druggies who are locked up in federal prison are people who commit other types of federal crimes--i.e., serious stuff.

Almost all ex-convicts recidivate.  A recent study that tracked former inmates for 10 years found that more than 80% were reconvicted and returned to prison, many within two or three years. And those were only the criminals who were caught.  Research shows that many offenders will commit dozens of crimes without ever being apprehended, and some criminals are more skilled at evading arrest and conviction than others.

All the evidence points to criminality being a life-long trait that is highly influenced by genes. Noticeably bad behavior emerges early in life, it becomes more obnoxious and dangerous when the boy (it's typically a boy) reaches adolescence; serious criminality peaks around age 20; and the criminal impulse weakens as a man ages into his 30s and beyond.  It follows testosterone levels over the life-course. (There is another pattern of rebellious adolescence which starts later, ends much earlier, and remains more superficial than what we see with the hard cases.)

And one of the only ways to stop the biologically-driven career criminal is to incapacitate him behind bars. 

And perhaps even dumber than setting hard cases free is to allow them conjugal visits, so we increase the rate of hard cases into the next generation.

Data: Cleanliness is next to godliness, or the irreligious are slobs

In the last post, I accidentally discovered that people with no religion have the dirtiest homes of all religious statuses.  Let's look at this a little more. Below you will see mean dirtiness scores by church attendance. I'll limit the analysis to whites -- blacks show no trend:

Mean dirtiness score

Never attends  2.11
< one per year  2.04
Once per year  1.87
Several times per year  1.85
Once a month  1.91
2-3 times a month  1.85
Nearly every week  1.77
Every week  1.64
More than weekly 1.72

You can see here a tendency for more religious people to keep a cleaner home. This is consistent with my earlier point that religious individuals tend to be more conscientious or self-disciplined.  Lazy people, even if they believers, may want to stay in bed on a cold Sunday morning. Keep in mind that the gaps are not big here: If we focus on the largest difference, never attenders vs. weeklies, the gap is close to one-half of a standard deviation --  a moderate difference.

UPDATE: I just a quick look at dirtiness scores by political orientation. The pattern is very similar to that for religiosity: extremely conservative people are about half a standard deviation cleaner than extreme liberals.

Data: Do immigrants make America dirtier?

Pacific Life pulled its ads from Fox News after Tucker Carlson said immigrants make America dirtier. In my experience, black and Hispanic communities tend to be dirtier than white neighborhoods (although I lived in a clean middle-class, predominantly black neighborhood), but is this the case for immigrants? 

I don't have data for neighborhoods, but General Social Survey interviewers rated people's homes during interviews. Ratings ranged from very clean (1) to dirty (5).  The mean for people born in the country is 1.93; for immigrants, it's 1.86. So immigrants' homes are slightly cleaner.

Tucker might have had a white/immigrant comparison in mind. The white mean is 1.88 -- a number similar to immigrants.

Let's look at a dirtiness ranking among selected ethnic groups in the US:

Mean household dirtiness (N = 3,657)

Black  2.17
American Indian  2.17
Mexican  2.04
Irish  1.91
Swedish  1.91
Chinese  1.90
Filipino  1.90
India  1.90
German  1.87
Polish  1.85
English/Welsh  1.85
Puerto Rican  1.82
Italian  1.73
Russian  1.71
Greek  1.65

Blacks, American Indians, and to a lesser extent, Mexican Americans have the highest dirtiness ratings which is consistent with my experience of neighborhoods.  Greeks are the cleanest.  It seems to me that cleanliness is a measure of conscientiousness. Jews seem conscientious, so let's look at religion, too, and see if the numbers match my thinking.

Buddhist  2.13
None  2.10
Protestant  1.91
Catholic  1.84
Hindu  1.84
Muslim  1.76
Jews  1.68

Jews come in the cleanest. Buddhists and people with no religion are the dirtiest.  Religious people do tend to be more conscientious.  Keep in mind the differences are not large.  The gap between Greeks and blacks/American Indians is only one-half of a standard deviation.

It's possible that people differ somewhat in terms of indoor and outdoor behavior.  I'm messy in my house but freak out if I drop a gum wrapper in a public place.

Data: Among East Asians, are lighter-skinned people smarter than darker ones?

Three times in a row (for Hispanics, whites, and Asian Indians), I've shown that the lighter skinned members of a group tend to be smarter than darker members.

I now find the same pattern for a small sample of East Asians born in the US (n = 24). The correlation between darkness and IQ (based on a vocabulary test) is -.16 -- a small effect.

Note: A potential confound occurs to me. Do lower IQ people spend more time in the sun?  With larger samples, it might make sense to look at the sexes specifically.  Lower IQ men might work outside more, but I wouldn't expect this for low IQ women. 

Data: Are lighter-skinned Asian Indians smarter than their darker counterparts?

As I've done in the last couple posts, I correlated the skin tone of General Social Survey participants with IQ scores -- this time for people whose ancestors are from India.

The sample is small, only 39, but the correlation is impressive: -.40. In plain English, the tendency for lighter Indians to be smarter is fairly strong.

This is the third group in a row (Hispanics, whites, now Indians) that has showed the same positive lightness/IQ correlation.

Data: Are pasty whites smarter than olive-skinned whites?

This study shows some evidence for what some contend; that northern Europeans tend to be more intelligent than Mediterranean people. In a recent analysis of General Social Survey data, I found little evidence that IQ varies among whites by which European country your ancestors come from.

As an alternative approach, let's see if there is a correlation between skin tone, as rated by interviewers, and IQ among self-identified whites. Keep in mind IQ is measured with a vocabulary test.

It turns out the the correlation for a sample of 3,162 whites is -.13, meaning there is a slight tendency for pasty whites to be smarter than olive-skinned whites.

Don't accuse me of bias: While my ancestry is 100% northern European, people always ask me if I'm Italian or something. My maternal grandfather was a dead ringer for Vincent Gardenia ("You've got three kinds of pipe").

Data: Are lighter-skinned Hispanics smarter than those with a darker tone?

The General Social Survey (GSS) had interviewers rate the skin tone of respondents from 1 (lightest) to 10 (darkest). This can serve as a rough proxy of European ancestry. GSS also gave them a ten-question vocabulary quiz which is highly correlated with verbal IQ.  I limited the analysis to Hispanics born in this country who self-identified as white (N= 185).

The correlation between IQ and skin tone is -.28, which indicates a medium-strength association between European ancestry and higher intelligence. 

Data: Both men and women are happiest if they have one sexual partner

The last post showed that men with a minimum of one sexual partner in the past year are happier than men with nobody.  But does a man gain more happiness as the partners increase beyond one? Here's a graph showing mean happiness by partner number:

We see that mean happiness drops back down to the celibate level beyond one partner with the exception of the very small number of guys saying they had more than 100 partners.  

What about women? 

As with men, the happiest women had one partner last year. Celibates are less happy as are those with more partners. The mean happiness for the very small number of women with more than 100 partners is very low. 

Data: Are men who have a sexual partner happier?

Writing about sexual inequality among males got me wondering about the bottom line: Are men who have no partners unhappy? 

As we discussed before, the General Social Survey asked people how many sexual partners they had in the past year. They also asked if the person was generally very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy these days.

The graph shows that men with at least one partner tend to be happier. Specifically, 32% with at least one partner is very happy, compared to only 23% of those with no one.

On the other extreme, 19% of the celibate guys were not too happy, while the number for the other group was only 11%.

So having a sex partner is associated with happiness. We just don't know what's causing what. I like to think that sex is not as important as elite culture assures us it is, but it could be the driving force here.

On the other hand, unhappy people might have less luck finding and holding on to partners. I suspect more and more that personality traits, which are grounded in brain wiring and are due to a large extent to genes, explain a lot.  It might be, for example, that people who score high on negative emotionality are more likely to find themselves alone. 

Data shocker: Higher status men tend to have more attractive wives

After blogging recently on sexual inequality among men, I'm surprised that it's so easy for people to be so skeptical about basic ideas that come from evolutionary theory.  I would never question that some men have more sex than others. It's obvious. I don't naturally waste limited mental energy on this type of issue until someone comes along and questions it.

So, it made me wonder: How many people doubt that high status men tend to have better looking wives?  Here's a graph from GSS based on 587 women whose physical attractiveness was rated by interviewers (1-5) and who were asked the educational level of their spouses:

The x-axis is years of school completed by the husband, and the y-axis is the mean of the wives' attractiveness.

You can see that attractiveness tends to rise with the husband's education. To get specific, high school dropouts have wives that are roughly three-fifths of a standard deviation less attractive than the most educated group.

I don't know about you, but I'm shocked.

UPDATE:  I'm overeducated and have a smokin' hot wife, so I'm biased.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  I suspect the status-hotness relationship would be even stronger if men rated the women. Most GSS interviewers are women, and I strongly suspect they tend to be biased toward rating a woman's face, dress, cosmetics, etc., while men tend to focus on curves.

Data: Hirono is a moron -- Republican mean IQ is 2 points higher than mean Dem IQ

In this video, Senator Hirono explains that Democrats have a difficult time connecting to voters because, like the worst math teacher you ever had, they are simply too smart.

Ms. Hirono with her enormous brain should be able to understand this: According to the General Social Survey (GSS) data, those of us who vote Republican have higher average IQs than those pull the lever for Democrats.

The most recent data we have is for 2012. GSS participants are given a 10-question vocabulary quiz, which is a serviceable measure of IQ. I converted the vocab scores to IQ scores, setting the mean at the US average -- 98 (Did I just hear the fish from SpongeBob say, "WAH, Wah, wah"?).  More than 2,000 people were also asked about their 2012 vote.

The results? The mean IQ score for those who voted for Obama was 97.0. For Romney, it was  99.1. Not even close.

UPDATE: Even more depressing news: The actual mean IQ in the US is more like 97 than 98, so we can adjust the Dem mean down to 96.0, and the GOP mean down to 98.1. And if current immigration trends continue, we can all look forward to those numbers continuing to drop over the next few decades.
  

Intelligent Christianity creates the foundation for science, while the universities are trying to destroy it

I knew reading America's greatest philosopher, Charles Peirce, would pay off.  He has taught me the root of our current predicament.

You're baffled that supposedly intelligent people now claim there are 56 genders? Peirce informs us that the villain is William of Ockham. You say you're shocked? Isn't Ockham that awesome dude who said that the simpler is more likely to be true? Well, let me educate you. Ockham is an ass.

Plato got it wrong when he claimed that the redness we see in an apple is actually a property that exists in the World of Forms, and is only imperfectly instantiated in a particular apple. In other words, redness truly exists independently of any particular red things.

Then the greatest philosopher in the history of the world, Aristotle, said, "Master Plato, you're off your rocker." He explained that redness is a real thing but it only exists in particular objects.

Later, the Catholic Church fervently embraced Aristotle. Ockham was a devout Catholic, but he got some bad ideas from Muslim fools about God's omnipotence, and ended up concluding that what we call redness is just something humans impose on objects. To Ockham, there are just unique, particular things, and we invent classes and categories.  Do you hear a whisper here?  I can make it out: "Social construction..."

The amazing thing is that modern philosophers took Ockham and ran with it at the same time that modern science was progressing by leaps and bounds based on the old fashioned belief that there are such things as natural classifications. Not just hydrogen and helium, but male and female.

Ockham's view is called "nominalism." Aristotle's is called "realism."  Modern philosophers are generally nominalists, while scientists operate like realists, whether they know it or not.

Until now. Now we see social scientists take Ockham seriously, and it's no surprise that categories that were taken for granted for centuries are now under assault. Nominalists are ANTI-science. They tend to reduce all understanding to dust.

But you science lovers say,"We'll at least they aren't TRUE anti-science people like those evil Catholics." The truth is that in the Roman Catholic church, it is a damn HERESY to be a nominalist. I'm not kidding.

Intelligent Christianity creates the foundation for science, while the universities are trying to destroy it.

I pray Google Ads doesn't understand our readers

The last post mentioned machine learning.  Look at a current Inductivist ad link below: PLEASE don't tell me that some machine is figuring out the tastes of our readers.

Current Inductivist ad

Study reveals an evil secret: You can look at a brain and tell whether it is a man or woman

In this new study, the researchers use MRIs to measure examines the brains of a fairly large sample (N = 1,300) of incarcerated men and women. They use machine learning to classify sex. They are able to predict whether the brain is of a male or a female with 93% accuracy.  This finding replicated what the authors found earlier with a healthy, non-incarcerated sample. 

Now, how are these findings possible when every good person knows men and women have interchangeable brains, and to think otherwise makes you a Neanderthal? 

The researchers also found that there were certain brain regions that are highly differentiated: the orbitofrontal and frontopolar regions, larger in females, and the anterior medial temporal regions, which are larger in males.  Reduced functioning in the orbitofrontal region has been linked to aggression and violence.  The anterior temporal cortex is closely connected to limbic and paralimbic structures that influence social and emotional processing, traits associated with disinhibition and violent/aggressive behavior. 

The frontopolar and orbitofrontal regions are also crucial  in moral judgment and planning behavior. The temporoparietal junction is also important for execution of attentional shifts required for perspective-taking, theory of mind, and empathy. 

This is also consistent with the behavioral deficits males show with respect to interpersonal skills, empathy, threat sensitivity, disinhibition, and aggression. 

Conclusion: Grandma was right--men and women are (biologically) different.   

 

Data: There is NO sexual equality among men

According to evolutionary theory, sexually reproducing animals can invest more in parental effort (providing for offspring) or mating effort (pursuing copulations). The advantage of the first strategy is that the success one's offspring is enhanced; the advantage of the second is that one can potentially produce many offspring with little effort per child.

This theory would expect sex differences in the strategy taken, and it also predicts that some men will chase skirts while others will focus on being family men. Since evolutionary theory sees competition as fundamental, we would also expect some men to fail at either strategy.

Recently, there was a discussion about whether the losers feel so aggrieved that they might, like the poor, act out with violence and begin to organize politically to gain sexual equality.

This sounds like joke, but a recent analysis of high school data, motivated by the discussion, concluded that sexual inequality is a myth. It's funny how analysts can so easily dismiss hypotheses derived from the only theory of humans we know is true with one cherry-picked data set of high school kids, many of whom are not mature enough to have even entered the "sex market," but hey that's the state of contemporary social science.

I will avoid cherry-picking by doing what I always do -- relying on the General Social Survey to answer empirical questions.

The focus seems to be young men, so I limit the analysis to those ages 18-30. Here are estimates (N = 3,201):

First, trends seem pretty stable for the past four decades, but, do you see sexual equality here among men?  I don't.  If we remove the gay men, 12.7% of men ages 18-30 had ZERO partners last year; 60.2% had one; 14.2% had two; 9.5% had three; 6.5% had four; 7.0% had 5-10; 1.8% had 11-20; 0.5% had 21-100; and 0.1% had 100+ (if you believe them). If this looks equal to you, you can borrow my glasses.

What emerges here and typically with other data (unlike others, I don't ignore the body of research) is what we could call the "Sexual 1 Percenters." Many men have zero partners, while others have dozens. And even the difference between 0 and 1 is enormous enough.

Massive inequality! But liberals, the implacable enemies of inequality, yawn because the affected group are men.

UPDATE: Another approach appears to be to look at these kinds of numbers, and to simply deny there is inequality there. I will use this strategy the next time an employee complains that my salary is double his. My response will be, "For all intents and purposes, Tom, we make the same."

Which religion holds on to its members best?

The General Social Survey asked Americans their religion at age 16 and also at their current age. The first number you see includes results from 2000 to 2016 (N = 22,659), and the next number shown in parentheses refers to the period 1973-1999 (N = 36,286):

Percent of members not changing their religion
Jewish  81.7  (85.1)
Protestant  79.9  (89.2)
Hindus  71.1  (40.0)
Islam  69.4  (60.0)
Catholic  68.5  (80.2)
Orthodox Christian  68.4  (80.8)
None  59.2  (47.8)
Buddhism  55.0  (66.7)

First, most people do not switch, but Jews switch least.  You'd expect Protestants to be toward the top since they are a huge group, and one could switch from one denomination to another and still say he didn't switch away from Protestantism. This is not the case for small groups like Jews. It is impressive that members of some small groups, surrounded by a sea of people from other faiths, tenaciously hold on to their religion. I consider this to be a measure of a group's chauvinism.

Look how the general trend has been more switching in the more recent period. Don't trust percentages for small groups because they are based on tiny sample sizes. By contrast, the greater tendency of "Nones" to stick with their non-affiliation is probably real. More switching by people who grew up Catholic also seems to be a thing.

When people switch, where do they go? Let's list the modal category for the later and earlier period (in parentheses):

Most popular (non)religion to which one switches

Jewish  None  (None)

Protestant  None  (None)

Hindus  None  (None)

Islam  None  (None)

Catholic  None  (Protestant) 

Orthodox Christian  Protestant  (Catholic or None, tied)

None  Protestant  (Protestant)

Buddhism  None  (None)

In both time periods, the most common switch is to no religion. Quite a few Nones switch to Protestant in both periods -- I assume this is often evangelical.  The numbers are too small to make anything of the Orthodox pattern, but Catholics used to most commonly switch to Protestant, but now are more likely to switch to nothing.

Keep in mind that all this switching to no religion doesn't mean people drop all religious belief and practice.  In the latter period, 58.1% of Nones pray. There has been an increase in disbelief but also an increase in the deinstitutionalization of belief. (On the other hand, 88.6% of Nones prayed in the earlier period.)

Best 2018 movie scene

Thanks to Steve Sailer, I learned that the Coen Brothers were coming out last Friday with a new Western on Netflix. This scene split into two parts is the best I have watched in some time. I wish they started the first clip a couple minutes earlier, but you'll get the idea.  It's just so real, so un-PC, and reminds us how heroes used to be portrayed by Hollywood: fearless, capable, and chivalrous.   

Data: Which ethnic groups think art should aim for beauty?

Americans participating in the General Social Survey were asked by interviewers: "Please tell me which statement is closest to your opinion: 1. Art works should celebrate what is most beautiful about the world and the human spirit 2. Art works should freely express the artist's deepest thoughts and emotions, good or bad."

Here are the percent who agreed with the beauty option, listed by ethnic background (at least 25 respondents):

Percent agreeing that art should aim for beauty (N = 1,389)

Mexican  59.7

American only  51.7

Black  48.7

American Indian  43.1

German  38.2

Scottish  37.5

Whites  37.0

Irish  33.9

Italian  35.4

English  30.7

French  30.0

Polish  29.6

Jewish  0.0

There is a tendency for smarter groups to favor the "expression" school of art.  Look how zero Jews (n = 25) prefer beauty. (This reminds me of the anti-Semitic belief that Jews are responsible for ugly art.)  I suspect that more intelligent individuals are influenced by the elite view that beauty is old-fashioned. 

I stand proudly with my less enlightened brothers. Who cares about an artist's "deepest thoughts and emotions"?  Confessions by Jeffrey Dahmer would be fascinating, but it's not art.  Now, if it's Nabokov putting sublime language into the mouth of a hebephile, that's art because the words are beautiful. 

Beauty takes many unexpected forms, some of them very dark, so don't think that I am arguing for the Thomas Kinkade school of art.  His paintings are beautiful like Smarties are delicious.  I'm sure those of us who favor beauty would often disagree about what is beautiful.   

    

 

Data: People who waiver in their belief in God have the lowest self-esteem

Over the years, I've done a number of analyses that indicate that the psychologically most healthy people are both atheists and people who know God exists. The groups in the middle who are uncertain about God are, for example, less happy and are more likely to drink too much.

General Social Survey participants were asked how often did they feel worthless in the past 30 days.
Answers ranged from "all of the time" (1) to "none of the time" (5). Here are the means for a sample of 1,218 people:

Mean self-esteem score

Don't believe  4.88
No way to know  4.49
Some Higher Power  4.57
Believes sometimes  4.09
Believes but doubts  4.55
Knows Gods exist  4.63

Atheists have the highest mean, while confident believers come in second. At the absolute bottom are those who believe sometimes. This group is one standard deviation lower than atheists, which in English means a huge difference.

This is the pattern we've seen previously. The confident on either side are psychologically better off than those in the squishy middle. Personality might explain this. Decisive, confident people trust their abilities, and if they take a position on God, dammit they know they're right.

People who frequently doubt themselves also doubt their beliefs. One's uncertainty about oneself seems to go hand-in-hand with uncertainty about everything else.  

Also--these results contradict the view that atheists will have a low view of themselves because they are likely to believe they are the accidental product of natural forces, not the children of God. Personality seems to be much more important than people realize.  Self-esteem seems to be in your brain, not your beliefs.

Data: Liberals are more dishonest than conservatives

With all the vote counting shenanigans we see going on now, are liberals simply more dishonest people than conservatives? The short answer is, yes.

The General Survey asked participants, "Do you feel it is wrong or not wrong if a taxpayer does not report of all his income in order to pay less income taxes."  Let's compare answers for those who describe themselves as "extreme liberals" with those who are "extreme conservatives."  Percent answering tax cheating is wrong (extreme libs/extreme conservatives, sample size = 2,396) Seriously wrong 10.9/43.7 Wrong 60.0/43.7 A bit wrong 21.8/5.6 Not wrong 7.3/7.0 Conservatives are much more likely to think cheating on one's taxes is seriously wrong (43.7% vs 10.9%), while liberals about 4 times more likely to think it's only a little bit wrong. I'd bet money many liberals feel voter fraud is only a "little bit wrong," and that it's actually righteous if it strikes a blow against Orange-Headed Lucifer. UPDATE: Look at Hollywood, for example. Does anyone disagree that Hollywood has more per capita liars than any city in the world? Okay, maybe Washington, DC does, but both places are crawling with liberals.

High vs low mating success among never-married men

This graph displays the number of sex partners since age 18 for never-married men ages 30-39.  You can see that this is a very diverse group.  More than 10% have had zero partners ("40 year-old virgins"), and 41% have been with five or fewer.  By contrast, 35% report a dozen or more partners.

If we divide these men into a low (0-5) and high group (12+), the median for the low group is 2, and it's 25 for the high group. That's 12.5 times more women than the low group.

The high group --roughly one-third of never-married men -- looks like it is following the high mating effort strategy that was discussed in the last post, while the low group, with a median of two women, seems to be doing poorly at any strategy.  

Do men with a history of many sex partners avoid marriage?

According to evolutionary theory, there is a tradeoff between mating effort and parental effort. If you put more time and energy into pursuing sexual partners, this is less time and energy to devote to raising children. High mating effort or high parental effort are seen as alternative "strategies."

So, are men with lots of sex partners less likely to be married -- a measure of parental effort? Or is it generally the case that men with many partners follow a combined strategy of marriage plus lots of women? And on the low side, does a man with undesirable traits have few partners and fail to convince a woman to marry him?

The General Social Survey asked men how many sex partners they have had since 18, and they asked about current marital status. Let's focus on men in their 30s. Here are the mean number of partners (I exclude men who say more than 100 because these outliers throw off the mean) by marital status:

Mean number of sex partners since 18 (N = 2,827)

Never Married  14.2
Married  9.0
Widowed  6.6
Separated  14.8
Divorced  17.1

Widowed and married men have had the fewest partners, while never-marrieds and separated/divorced have had the most. Put very roughly, the anti-marriage group has had double the partners compared to the pro-marriage group.

I suppose you could argue that marital status is driving the number of sex partners rather than reverse -- the idea being that marriage reduces promiscuity -- but the average never-married has been with as many women as the typical separated guy. It looks to me like men who are good at getting partners avoid marriage or are weakly attached to it. Many of them do get married, but it's less likely to last. There does seem to be some tradeoff going on here.
 

Because of mass immigration, the US is becoming a second-rate country

Anyone who pays any attention to trends in intelligence knows that the average American IQ is falling. We're down to perhaps 97, and if current immigration trends continue, we'll probably be in the mid-90s by mid-century.

What does a country look like when it has around a 95 mean IQ?  Looking at a world table, I see the following: Argentina (93), Bosnia (94), Bulgaria (93), Greece (92), Israel (95), Hungary (97), Italy (97), Kazakhstan (95), Malaysia (92), Poland (95), Portugal (95), Russia (97), Slovakia (96), Slovenia (96), Ukraine (95), and Uruguay (96).

Take your pick: it doesn't look good for the US. And we're becoming much more ethnically diverse than many of these countries. Ethnic diversity generates identity politics and ethnic spoils systems, which will only add to the dysfunction.

China with its 105 IQ is smiling.

Pew Study: Jews are the most beloved religious group

This is an interesting graph from a new Pew study. It gives the average warmth score for various religious groups as rated by various religious groups.

In the wake of the Pittsburgh shooting, the main number that jumps out me is that Jews are the most beloved of all groups (not counting warmth towards one's one group). People who dislike Jews are a tiny slice of American society.  Not surprisingly, Muslims are the least liked religion. Black Protestants like them best, probably because many American Muslims are black.

If you thought atheists were the enlightened lovers of humanity, you were wrong. The lowest mean on the graph is the feeling of atheists toward evangelical Christians. There is a good strong streak of hatred among "brights." Evangelicals don't like atheists either, but every educated person knows to expect this from Neanderthals. Atheists also have a strong dislike of Mormons. Every intelligent person knows Mormons are awful, awful people. Agnostic folks are clearly warmer people than atheists.

Jews give high numbers. My impression is that Jews do tend to have warm feelings toward others, or at least they express how one should feel. Who would have thought that one of the highest numbers on the graph (except numbers given for one's own group) is how Jews feel toward Catholics?

Study: Whites suffer higher rates of mental illness than blacks

This new study used data on more than 11,000 Americans to test the "Black-White Mental Health Paradox": researchers have found that blacks suffer lower rates of psychiatric illness than whites. 

The researchers looked at 12 disorders for the past year and also over one's whole lifetime:

Results showed overwhelming evidence of the paradox across lifetime and past-year disorders for women and men. In addition, Blacks’ mental health advantage over Whites widened after adjusting for socioeconomic factors.

So the data is clear that rates are higher for whites, and the gap is even wider if you compare high-income blacks and whites, or if you compare low-income blacks and whites.

Researchers call this a paradox, but it's only a paradox if you subscribe to the theory that America is a racist society, and so the trauma of oppression should cause rampant mental illness among blacks.

The greater mental health of blacks is evidence that there are big biological differences between the two races. Whites are biologically more vulnerable to psychiatric disorders.

In this context, liberals have told me that blacks are just really strong people. Who else could survive slavery and Jim Crow? Although they won't admit it -- they tend to be lazy, biased, dishonest thinkers -- they are really saying that blacks have a biological mental health advantage.

As the genetic evidence of racial differences becomes more and more indisputable, I imagine lefties will concede the importance of biology where blacks have an advantage in order to look scientific, but will continue to flip out over biological differences where blacks come up short.

Does a parent's love really improve a child's behavior?

This new study examined 227 pairs of twins:

They found that the twin who experienced stricter or harsher treatment and less emotional warmth from parents had a greater chance of showing aggression and a lack of empathy and moral compass—a set of characteristics known as callous-unemotional traits.

The researchers conclude that the study provides compelling evidence that parenting matters.

They might be right, but the scientific literature indicates parenting has little long-term effect on behavior. Overall the long haul, genes simply dominate. 

The scientists fail to mention that, in their discipline style, parents might be reacting to differences in the twins' behavior. Identical twins turn out different because of accidental events that happen during development. For example, one twin could get fall and get a brain injury which worsens his behavior, and parents might react more harshly and coldly to such behavior. One might ask why would a parent systematically treat one twin different than the other? The obvious answer is that the twins diverge first, and then parents treat them differently second. Parents typically delay punishment until the child seems old enough to understand it.  

One the other hand, if it is true that there are short-term benefits to more parental warmth and more moderate discipline, that is not without value.  I have 6 children and spend a lot of time managing them. If there are techniques that get my kids under better control, that is awesome even if it doesn't change their long-term character.

Shutting down Gab.com? Our elites are dumb

From this article:

Gab, the social network scrutinized following the shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that left 11 dead, went offline as service providers suspended accounts and threatened to shut the website down. 

A message on Gab.com said the website would not be accessible for a period of time as the site shifts to a new hosting provider.  In a statement, hosting provider GoDaddy confirmed it has given Gab 24 hours to switch providers after claiming the website violated its terms of service.   

'GoDaddy investigated and discovered numerous instances of content on the site that both promotes and encourages violence against people,' read a statement from GoDaddy.  Medium, an online publishing tool, suspended Gab's account, which was used to release statements including one right after the synagogue attack on Saturday... 

The accused Pittsburgh shooter, Robert Bowers, appeared to have an account on Gab where he posted multiple anti-Semitic messages. 'I can't sit by an watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics. I'm going in,' read a post on the account right before the shooting. 

I'm a bit reluctant to help American elites, but instead of shutting down Gab, why don't you exploit it?  A wide open forum attracts all types, including lots of crazies. Give them a comfortable platform so they blab about their plans, and then intervene before they commit crimes. You really want to shut these people up so you know less about them? Our elites seem to be stupid about everything.

Red, White and Blue McDonald's latest ad campaign

McDonald's is running an ad campaign with pairs of photos of customers to show us how much we have in common and how kind we can be to each other.  Honestly, I am getting a lot of warmth from the couple (I'm in Mickey D's all the time but have never seen guys like this there -- they wouldn't be caught dead in such a place, too much taste) but I gotta be frank: the young woman is not melting my heart. What's the deal? After Michelle Obama we're supposed to think that cold, hateful black women are the greatest thing since sliced bread?

Americans cannot handle much truth about race

I ran across this piece by Jared Taylor which argues that President Nixon believed in biological racial gaps among the races, but felt he must keep them secret. Taylor claims that Nixon believed in the use of "Noble Lies": telling lies that are good for society. Taylor thinks it's always destructive to tell lies, and telling blacks they are as capable as any group of rising to the top actually hurts society by making blacks resentful when they don't rise.

I would make one point: It is clear from the quotes that Nixon believed that social programs will be limited in how much they actually help blacks, so in this sense he did not think lying was good for society.

If I were Nixon, I would have talked about racial truths only to the extent that I could remain politically successful. Honest losers don't help anyone. I can't emphasize this enough. Race realists have a strong streak of social autism. You have to meet the American public where they are at. And in my view, at the moment -- even decades after Nixon -- they cannot handle much truth. Talk candidly, and you will be marginalized, and you will lose. Trump has shown about how far a very talented man can take the truth and still win. And he hasn't said much at all.

You don't lie for the good of society. You lie as much as you need to in order to win.

Readers might ask why a Christian would be okay with lying. I am with Machiavelli here.  He contended that Christian ethics should operate on a personal level, but when it comes to politics, saints ALWAYS LOSE. Politics is vicious. It's simply unavoidable.

Trends in the Jewish population

The declining religiosity of Americans is discussed a lot, but less attention is given to the shrinking and shifting of non-Christian groups. This graph shows that into the 1980s, Jews were just about the only non-Christian game into town. Jews as a share of non-Christians began to drop precipitously in the 90s, and is now under 50% (General Social Survey data):

Of course, some of this is due to the immigration of non-Jews, or Jews dropping out of the religion, but the number of offspring for those ages 40-64 has been dropping since the 70s (with an interesting reversal in this decade):

Orthodox Jews have helped fertility from falling further by having more kids than other Jews, especially in the last couple of decades:

On the other hand, Orthodox Jews are a fairly small minority within the Jewish community, and those who are some "other type" of Jew are growing, and they tend have few children.

Data: The family size split between the religious and secularists has grown

A recent study of the Canadian General Social Survey shows an increasing split in the fertility of religious vs. non-religious women.  From the paper:

For more than 100 years, women who attend church weekly have had more children than never-attenders. But the split accelerated from the 1950s to recent times. (More recent cohorts aren't finished yet.)

One standard explanation is that religious women use less birth control, but many religions, even conservative ones like Mormons, are fine with birth control, just not abortion. I imagine religious women are less likely to abort an unwanted pregnancy because of beliefs against it.  Religion also tends to stress the importance of motherhood. Mary, the feminine ideal, was first and foremost a mother.

In addition, research suggests that religious people tend to score higher on the trait of agreeableness and to a lesser extent, conscientiousness and emotional stability. Agreeableness, which includes trust, compliance, and tender-mindedness, predicts investment in church and family life.

This is one reason I'm a religious person (in addition to being pro-science). I feel at home with people who are pro-life in the broad sense. Secularism seems to me the road to death.

My kids and I go to our first Trump rally

Some of my kids and I were able to attend our first Trump rally. It was a blast -- the President is obviously a talented man -- but I pretty much know his routine, so my main focus was on the crowd. 

Frankly, I love these people. They are my father multiplied by 10,000. Ordinary Americans. People who fix things. The backbone of the country. I didn't see very many business-looking types. I didn't see many intellectual types. 

They were polite and friendly but tough. We were packed in like sardines. Animal behaviorists would have predicted several fights, but I didn't hear an unkind word. I was worried that my kids would hear a lot of bad language, but there was very little. 

Some really responded to the opening Christian prayer; others didn't seem religious at all but were respectful. Respect again and obvious pride when the Pledge of Allegiance was said and the National Anthem was sung. 

If journalists see fascism in these people, they are liars. These are the descendants of pioneers. Love of freedom is in their blood. They are wary of government and despise tyranny. They are not Fascists, they are Americans.

UPDATE: Two points on race: 1) Crowd applause rose and fell. I was one of the only people in my area who said "Yay!" when Trump said Hispanic unemployment was at an all-time low. Working-class whites seem pretty focused on their own situations. Don't expect them to show up in droves to vote for you if your main message is that other groups are benefitting from your policies. 2) I did not see a single white nationalist. I know folks might blend in and look like everyone else, but as for proud, visible WN's, none. 

One key difference between people like me and white nationalists

If people didn't know better, they might think from my last post on too much population growth in Africa that I am a white nationalist (WN). I am not. There are crucial differences between them and me.

While members of a movement do not agree on everything, I assume most WNs believe that the white race has an ultimate value, I suppose the ultimate value, at least for whites. My attitude is basically the same as it was 20 years ago. I place a high value on my family, my country, and humanity (and God, if we want to go beyond the natural world). The welfare of these groups tends to be enhanced by white people. Thriving is correlated with whites. They are a means to the desired ends of human success, achievement, and virtuosity. I'm not saying whites are only valuable because they benefit others. I'm saying they have the same value as all humans, but they contribute more. They are needed more.

Since my family and I are white, our fate is tied up with that of whites, but the fate of America and of other races depend on how whites are doing as well. The main difference between me and the run-of-the-mill conservative is that I recognize the overwhelming power of genes. Group differences simply cannot be wished away. The market cannot solve all our problems. We have to deal with these realities. And while I disagree with WNs (I focus on only one difference here), their intelligent representatives are much more in touch with social reality than the Loony Left is.

CDC: American fertility is now as pathetic as Europe's

The figure below is taken from an October 2018 CDC report. It shows large drops in US fertility over the past decade. Whites from counties of all sizes are now well below replacement. White women in large metro areas average about 1.6 kids each. These are pathetic European levels. People in the developed world want their trips to Aspen, not the hassle of raising kids. And don't give me the excuse that people can't afford kids. My grandfather had eight children on a maintenance man's wage. They lived simply, that's all.  I have six kids, and our household income is average.

And if you're celebrating because this is a sign of progress toward a sustainable global population, think again. Current trends just mean a shift away from whites and Asians and toward blacks, God bless them. We need thriving scientific populations, not exploding, perennially poor ones.

By the way, it's ironic, but Michelle Obama might save the day. She is pushing for much more female education in Africa. What works in one population doesn't necessarily work in another, but if history is any guide, nothing dries up a woman's uterus better than staying in school.

You don't see me kissing up to my 100% German boss by telling her stories of my single German ancestor from 19th century Pennsylvania

Carl Zimmer and Razib Khan have made a big deal on Twitter about the inaccuracy of the claim that Elizabeth Warren is no more Indian than the average White American. Razib, a geneticist, says that when the data are interpreted accurately, Warren would probably have 10 times the Indian ancestry of the average White American.

Truth is, 10 times the tiniest fraction is still tiny. Zimmer said the vast majority of white Americans have ZERO Indian ancestry. So you can have a absolutely trivial amount of indigenous blood and still have much more than most of us.

Assuming the Stanford geneticist is correct, Warren had an Indian ancestor 6 to 10 generations back. My parents have carefully documented our ancestry going back many generations. Most of my ancestors are English with a little Welsh, Irish, Scottish, and Danish mixed in.

But I do have one grandmother exactly six generations back who was born in Germany but ended up in Pennsylvania in the 19th century. Have any of my relatives ever dreamed they were German, or even part German? A huge tree of ancestors, and one damn German? It's absurd. I would be a liar if I told people I was German. My boss is 100% German, but you don't see me kissing up by telling stories about my German grandmother.

UPDATE: Hmmm. I wonder if it would work...

Data: White Americans seem fairly homogeneous (so far)

I recently showed that white Americans whose families are from east of the Hajnal line tend to be more clannish than those from west of the line.

In addition to the issue of clannishness, hbdchick also presented evidence that Western Europeans have a number of positive traits at higher levels than Eastern Europeans. Do these differences hold up in the US?

So far I've seen little evidence that they do. Their mean IQs are not different, nor are their chances of an arrest, nor their frequency of donating blood. The one difference I've detected so far is that W. Europeans are slightly less approving of cheating on their taxes--not even 1/5 of a standard deviation difference.

At least so far, American whites seem fairly homogeneous. European differences seem to have faded.

Meta-analysis: Mass immigration is unrelated to crime (and it leads to more crime long-term)

In this new meta-analysis of 51 studies, liberal researchers found a whopping correlation of -.03 between immigrants and crime. In other words, even when liberals try REALLY hard, they cannot say that more immigration results in less crime.

And further, even they have to admit that the children and grandchildren of immigrants have MUCH higher crime rates.

Notice, too, how all of their studies conflate legal with illegal immigration. What they have attempted to do is show everyone that conservatives are wrong in saying illegals are more criminal than native-borns by showing the effect of overall immigration on crime. Dishonest.

They also confuse the issue by mixing groups, for example, Mexican and Chinese immigrants--two VERY different groups in terms of street crime (the Chinese, of course, have very low rates).

Anyway, they have talked very loudly about lower crime rates among immigrants, but this meta-analysis shows that this is false, and they fail to acknowledge that their own data and methods indicate that LONG-TERM our crime problem gets much worse with mass overall immigration.

As for illegal immigration, they have a lot more research to do. And I don't trust them.

What kind of person thinks cheating on taxes is okay?

What's the profile of someone who thinks cheating on one's taxes is okay?

Using a General Social Survey question, this is what I found:

Thinking cheating on taxes is okay (sample size = 2,348, standardized coefficients)

Age  -.05*
Male  .07***
Non-white  .08***
City size   .05*
Immigrant  -.04
Education  -.08*** 
Church attendance   -.12***
Liberalism   .10***

So people who think cheating on taxes is not wrong are likely to be (from strongest to weakest): not religious, liberal, non-white, less educated, male, young, and living in a big city. Pretty close to a profile of a street criminal.

UPDATE: Amusing, isn't it, that liberals want to force you to turn over so much of your money to the government, but think it's fine to avoid paying their own taxes.

The clannishness of white Americans (or the lack of it) mirrors that of Europe

I recently presented evidence that non-whites tend to be clannish because they are non-white, not because they are outnumbered. But I also mentioned that there is variation among whites. This is consistent with bloggers hbd chick  and JayMan who stress that not all Europeans are the same, and that the Hajnal line divides them.

Using the General Social survey question ("When you think about yourself, how important is your ethnic group membership to your sense of who you are?" 1 = not at all, 2 = slightly, 3 = moderately, 4 = very) I calculated the mean score for various white groups:

Mean clannishness score (N = 2,173)

Orthodox Jew  3.50

Conservative Jew  3.43

White Mexican  3.38

Greek  3.20

White Puerto Rican  3.15

Reform Jew  3.09

White Spanish  3.08

Czech  2.89

Austrian  2.70

Italian  2.61

Russian  2.59

Swedish  2.56

Irish  2.55

All whites  2.54

Norwegian  2.51

Hungarian  2.50

Polish  2.48

Dutch  2.48

Scottish  2.47

Jew--no affiliation  2.46

German  2.44

English/Welsh  2.39

Danish  2.38

Finnish  2.29

French   2.23

French Canadian  2.19

To get a sense of the variation, the difference between Orthodox Jews and French Canadians is over one standard deviation--a very large difference. 

Following hbd chick, I categorized white Americans as Western Europe (=3, 53.1%), Mixed (=2, 22.5%), or Eastern Europe (=1, 24.4%). Next, I conducted OLS regression to see if this measure, along with several others, predicts clannishness:

Clannishness (standardized coefficients)

Age  .13***

Male  .01

Education  -.03

Conservatism  .09*  

Church attendance  .04

Westernness  -.07*

So whites are more ethnocentric if they are: older, politically conservative, and if their families came from outside these lines: 

 

 It's pretty amazing that Americans whose families left Europe a long time ago still show some of the clannishness found in the Old Country.