Study Finds Men Who Were High-IQ Kids Usually Vote Differently Than Their Average Peers
Rui Silvestre | UnsplashMany people would argue that intelligence and political leanings go hand in hand, and that might actually be truer for men than women. A study published in the journal Intelligence found that men who scored highly on IQ tests as children tend to vote differently than men of average intelligence.
There are a lot of things that can influence a person's political beliefs. Things like how they were raised, their educational background, the people they surround themselves with in their social life, and even the books they read can all be parts of which direction people lean when it comes to voting.
Men who were high-IQ kids usually vote more liberally than their average peers.
The study followed people who had scored exceptionally high on childhood IQ tests and then asked them about their politics as adults. On nearly every political metric, adults who had scored 130 or above on IQ tests as children and those who had scored around average were practically similar.
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The one clear difference was that high-IQ men scored much lower on conservative beliefs than average-IQ men. What stumped researchers was that it wasn't the same for women, and they didn't have a particular reason for why only men had different political leanings based on their IQ as children.
The authors of the study theorized that high-IQ men were more willing to question traditional ideals
Researchers Maximilian Krolo, M.Sc., and Prof. Dr. Jörn Sparfeldt offered theories for why intelligent men might be more liberal, although they didn't have definitive proof that these were the reasons. As noted by StudyFinds, the researchers suspected that higher intelligence is often linked to more complex thinking and questioning, which would make these men less likely to rely on rigid traditional ideologies.
It's a lot easier to question social norms when you are more comfortable questioning everything. Intelligence, as psychologist Mark Travers noted," is associated with enhanced abstract reasoning, pattern recognition, and complex problem-solving." That seems to align with the notion that having a higher IQ means not believing ideas just because that's what you've always known.
Of course, IQ alone doesn't reliably predict where someone lands on the political spectrum. But, there has been a significant shift in the way men are voting, especially Gen Z men.
During the last presidential election, there was a major shift in the way young men voted.
The 2024 Presidential election revealed an interesting divide happening amongst Gen Z men. Roughly 56% of Gen Z men voted for President Donald Trump, which was a large reversal from 2020, when about the same share supported Joe Biden, according to Associated Press VoteCast exit polling.
There hasn't just been a shift in voting, but also a shift in the norms and stereotypes that young men hold. An international survey found that 31% of Gen Z men say a wife should always obey her husband, while about one-third believe husbands should have the final say in major household decisions.
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On the opposite side of the spectrum, Gen Z women are leaning even more to the left than their male counterparts. According to a recent 19th News/SurveyMonkey poll, only 26% of Gen Z women approve of the job President Trump is doing compared with 47% of Gen Z men. The distinction between how Gen Z men and Gen Z women are voting shows that the growing political divide is getting harder to ignore.
More than that, intelligence itself influences the way people process the world around them. It's why education that teaches critical thinking at an academic level has been villainized within this current administration. Questioning challenges the status quo, and that should always be encouraged.
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor's degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.
