Racism has been so much present in areas of our lives that people were considering it as normal and finally nowadays we are new to discover the depth of the problem. Most of our society, however, is full of hate against someone outside of their racial group. The same is the case for homophobic people. Many people, especially teenagers, because of their different sexual orientation, they are not being accepted by their family and surroundings and consequently, they harm themselves or commit suicide. Just because of the lack of open-mindedness and ignorance of certain people, we are being the cause of why people with different sexual orientation and racial backgrounds are having psychological problems or end their lives. In this article, we are going to show the proofs that the problem is not having a different race or sexual orientation but juding and being against them are the real problems. At the same time, we are going to show you the shreds of evidence that conservatism is connected to low IQ, whereas liberalism is linked to higher intelligence and their connection with certain mental illnesses.
Racism, Conservatism, and Homophobia are linked to low IQ:
Hodson and Busseri (2012) concluded in a correlational study published in Psychological Science that people who score low on General Intelligence tests are more likely to develop greater prejudiced, racist beliefs and socially conservative politics in adulthood. The study was done on 15,874 kids. Kids who were tested with low IQ were more likely to obtain racist and conservative attitudes. Similarly, higher intelligence in childhood has been shown to predict less racism in adulthood. They also found that poor abstract reasoning skills were linked to homophobic attitudes. These support the idea that low intelligence brings up poor mental skills and especially ‘less effort thinking’ in which as a result children tend to show right-wing attitudes.
Another study was done on 1254 community college students and 1600 foreign students seeking entry to United States’ universities, this study too, especially agrees that Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated.
The studies above were done through longitudinal research that is one of the strongest evidence. For example, Hodson and Busseri looked at general intelligence in 10- and 11-year-old kids, and then re-studied those kids as adults two decades later—and finally found a clear connection between low intelligence and further racist, homophobic and gravitation towards conservative ideologies.
But does this mean all liberals are a genius, and conservatives are stupid? Of course not.
First of all, these studies were done on general intelligence tests, that there is still debate over its accuracy among psychologists as well as scientists. Secondly, these studies and those before it suggests is not necessarily that all liberals are geniuses and all conservatives are ignorant. Rather, it makes conclusions based on averages of groups. Because of course there are exceptions, you may know a racist whom you would consider as brilliant in cognitive functioning; Adolf Hitler, too, is believed to have an IQ between 140 to 150. However, if we speak in general or in average, the answer would be yes; racist, homophobic, conservative people are performing low on cognitive capacity.
Racism, Conservatism, and Homophobia can be a sign of mental illness:
The debate over racism, conservatism, and homophobia can continue to mental illness. According to The American Psychiatric Association, extreme racism can be a delusional symptom of psychotic disorders. So could another study support the idea that homophobia is associated with mental disorders, or, at least is a psychological symptom of certain mentail illnesses such as depression, psychoticism, attachment problems etc.
What is your opinion on this? Are you racist, homophobic, conservative or against them?
