{"id":408269,"date":"2010-03-08T08:07:46","date_gmt":"2010-03-08T13:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.disinfo.com\/?p=24285"},"modified":"2010-03-08T08:07:46","modified_gmt":"2010-03-08T13:07:46","slug":"liberals-atheists-are-more-highly-evolved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/408269","title":{"rendered":"Liberals, Atheists Are More Highly Evolved?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Smarter people are more inclined to nontraditional values, a study suggests, reported by National Geographic<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Your apelike ancestors probably aren\u2019t top of mind when you enter the polling booth. But a new study suggests that human evolution may have a big influence on whether you\u2019re liberal or conservative\u2014not to mention how smart you are, whether you believe in God, or whether you\u2019ve got a cheatin\u2019 heart.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all linked to the evolution of intelligence, says author Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science.<\/p>\n

Kanazawa\u2019s theory is that intelligence\u2014particularly our ability for on-the-spot problem solving and reasoning\u2014arose as an adaptation to deal with the unusual and unexpected, such as a sudden forest fire.<\/p>\n

Since disasters like that are rare in daily life, responding to them wouldn\u2019t likely be something our ancestors were hard-wired to \u201cknow\u201d how to do. Surviving the fire required both the ability to think up a new behavior, and the willingness to try it out.<\/p>\n

Passed down via genetics, those two traits are still the calling cards of an intelligent brain\u2014expressed as a tendency toward adopting nontraditional social values and preferences, Kanazawa says in his new study, published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As a result of their iconoclastic ancestry, he suggests, people with higher levels of intelligence are more likely to adopt social values and behaviors that are relatively new to human life\u2014liberalism, atheism, staying up late, and (for men) monogamy, for example.<\/p>\n

This tendency toward iconoclasm stems from smart people\u2019s brains being better adapted to dealing with new situations, according to Kanazawa\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

[continues at National Geographic<\/a>]<\/p>\n

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