Scientists had trouble sorting all this out. That is, it could have been these things, and not intelligence per se, that led to prejudice. One of the problems plaguing the early research was that the results were confounded by other possible causes, like financial status and class and education. It’s important, when dealing with such a controversial topic, to get down into the evidentiary weeds a bit. The short answer is yes-there is a clear, predictable and causal link between low intelligence and prejudice, including racism. Two of these researchers-Kristof Dhont of Ghent University, Belgium, and Gordon Hodson of Brock University, in Canada-have been studying the idea and synthesizing the work of others, and they summarize the fruits of this ongoing project in a forthcoming issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. A small cadre of psychological scientists have continued over the years to explore the controversial connection between low intelligence and prejudice, and at this point they have overcome most of the methodological barricades, allowing them to rigorously analyze and answer this important societal question. But there were some knotty methodological and statistical problems that hampered this early line of study, not to mention a huge wave of political correctness, and it was largely abandoned.īut not entirely. Early theorists suggested a link between low mental ability and prejudicial thinking, and gathered some strongly suggestive evidence to support that view. And interestingly, this connection between stupidity and prejudice once seemed obvious to social scientists as well.
Intelligence is a scientific concept, something scientists can measure, and have for a long time.
The Ferguson racists may be a lot of other things-hateful, insecure-but let’s not sugar-coat what most fair-minded thinkers believe in their hearts: A person of intelligence cannot embrace such authoritarian and racist views. I’m talking about low intelligence, lack of mental ability, cognitive rigidity. I think that a lot of us are shying away from an obvious truth, that the kind of blatant racial prejudice we are witnessing in Ferguson, Missouri, has everything to do with stupidity.
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