Cognition and IQ, prejudice patterns study

Science Daily, your source for the latest research news, 7/29/16, "Cognitive ability varies, but prejudice is universal." 

"When it comes to prejudice, it does not matter if you are smart or not, or conservative or liberal, each group has their own specific biases. In a recent study, psychologists show that low cognitive ability (i.e., intelligence, verbal ability) was not a consistent predictor of prejudice. Cognitive ability, whether high or low, only predicts prejudice towards specific groups. The results are published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. 'Very few people are immune to expressing prejudice, especially prejudice towards people they disagree with,' says lead author Mark Brandt (Tilburg University, Netherlands). Brandt and Jarrett Crawford (The College of New Jersey) analyzed data from 5914 people in the United States that includes a measure of verbal ability and prejudice towards 24 different groups.

Analyzing the results, the researchers found that people with both relatively higher and lower levels of cognitive ability show approximately equal levels of intergroup bias, but towards different sets of groups. People with low cognitive ability tended to express prejudice towards groups perceived as liberal and unconventional (e.g., atheists, gays and lesbians), as well as groups of people perceived as having low choice over group membership (e.g., ethnic minorities). People with high cognitive ability showed the reverse pattern. They tended to express prejudice towards groups perceived as conservative and conventional (e.g., Christians, the military, big business).

Therefore, this study indicates Donald Trump
is just a scammer/predator- that's a relief!

'There are a variety of belief systems and personality traits that people often think protect them from expressing prejudice,' says Brandt. 'In our prior work we found that people high and low in the personality trait of openness to experience show very consistent links between seeing a group as 'different from us' and expressing prejudice towards that group. The same appears to be true for cognitive ability. '
'Whereas prior work by others found that people with low cognitive ability express more prejudice, we found that this is limited to only some target groups,' says Brandt. 'For other target groups the relationship was in the opposite direction. For these groups, people with high levels of cognitive ability expressed more prejudice. So, cognitive ability also does not seem to make people immune to expressing prejudice.'  The authors would like to see if their findings will replicate in new samples, with new target groups, and additional measures of cognitive ability. "We used a measure of verbal ability, which is essentially a vocabulary test," says Brandt. 'Although this measure correlates pretty well with other measures of cognitive ability it is not a perfect nor a complete measure.'" 
Reference, from article.  "Story Source: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference: Brandt, Mark and Crawford, Jarrett. Answering Unresolved Questions about the Relationship between Cognitive Ability and Prejudice. Social Psychological and Personality Science, July 29, 2016 DOI: 10.1177/1948550616660592."

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Related, cognition (processing) vs. IQ (capacity) definition.  Sharp Brains, tracking health and wellness applications of brain science.  Question:  "Are cognitive abilities the same thing as intelligence?  Key Points:  Cognitive abilities can be trained and improved. Intelligence is a score on a test that stays relatively static in adulthood. Cognitive processes dealing with novelty (fluid intelligence) are just as important as acquired knowledge (crystallized intelligence). It takes both to keep your mental edge. "

Related, cognition vs. IQ lab findings. Quora/Jennifer Wright, Clinical Neuropsychologit, 3/22/16. "What is the difference between intelligence and cognition?" "Cognition comes from the Latin word "cognito" which means "to think". ... Cognition relates to any activity of the brain involving conscious thought or basic neurological processes. In cognitive testing, or what is also called neuropsychological or neurocognitive testing, we ascribe virtually any activity of the brain to "cognition," with the exception of the things the brain does that regulate autonomic functions (heart beat, breathing, metabolism, sleep). So, we include activities of: Attention, problem solving, planning, arithmetic, reading, memorizing, facial recognition, short-term/long-term/spatial/visual/auditory/working memory, inference, verbal or constructional fluency (how fast you can make stuff up), language, language comprehension, speech motor abilities, visual motor abilities, visual spatial abilities, motor activities, sensory perception, constructional abilities (drawing), organizing, decision making. Other types of tasks are also "cognitive" but they are not necessarily evaluated clinically, such as musicality, artistic abilities, comprehension of humor and creating humor, color perception, athletic abilities.As neuropsychologists we sometimes refer to qualities of those abilities as "cognitive" (although they really are just descriptors), such as "processing speed," or "information processing." 
IQ, which is a measure of native intellectual abilities is actually not a cognitive ability. IQ is a combination of certain types of tasks that are quite varied and include vocabulary, common knowledge or common sense, spatial problem solving and visual problem solving, comparative analysis, coding or pattern recognition, and a few others. These skills are selected to be part of IQ testing because they are shown to be correlated to later life success academically and occupationally.

Intelligence is really undefined. ..." When the word was first used by Galton in the 1800s, intelligence was considered to be what we would now consider to be athletic and physical prowess. Over time, starting in the early 1900s in westernized nations, that term came to be associated with traits of being "smart" because that is what was believed to be predictive of later life successes.  There are as many definitions of "intelligence" in the world as their are people in the world... but in the field of neuropsychology, we more typically use the term "IQ" rather than intelligence. We use IQ scores to help us diagnosis certain impairments to the brain, and assist with questions about a person's ability to work, go to school, live alone safely, or to get an idea of how severe a person's difficulties may be. We pretty much never use IQ to determine how smart a person is... except if that information is needed to get a person with high skills into an advanced learning environment."

Note photograph/graphic. Donald Trump,7/11/15 comment from Sad and Useless, the most depressive humor site on the internet, "Quotations from Chairman Trump." 

Posted by Kathy Meeh