John Emerson, I’m thinking Philip Converse on moderates. The general public tends not to understand what those ideological terms even mean, and the dim may not have a strong enough grasp to identify with any ideology.

I’m thinking in particular of my own college experience. I’m somewhat conservative now, but I was considerably more liberal in college. I never felt any obvious pressure, it’s just that liberalism was in the air, something that was assumed. I gave up my religion in college. It didn’t take much of a push really, but I can think of a particular professor who gave me support. I might have had a far more difficult time of it at a conservative Catholic institution! Do we have any good information about the political leanings of college freshmen verses seniors?

Wow, an ad hominem attack. Classy. Not sure where you even get TV news from my post, either.

Please demonstrate how my lack of “emotional equilibrium” has anything to do with my statement that the very terms “liberal” and “conservative” are vague and imperfect descriptors of people? Is that not similar to what you just said?

So then I sit with this stupid fucking linear scale, and pick a number. As with all scales like this, I think a large component of what’s being measured is how different groups of people approach scales.

Zerodash, you should watch less TV news until you achieve some emotional equilibrium. Which was the coherent part, Razib?

Strong atheists have the highest writing ability while centrist protestants have the worst.

there you go again, veering between coherency and total question begging crap.

#1, yeah, good point. since i think most people are dull, i just stated in that way.

#2, i provided links so you can do the analysis yourself with those filters. i don’t you’ll do it though, you’re probably a lazy fuck

http://www.truth-out.org/america-not-politically-conservative-you-think66915

http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/149561/americans_are_far_less_conservative_than_the_right_wing_claims/?page=entire

One sort of conservative is someone who firmly believes the basic truths they were taught when they were young, does not feel the need for new truths, and is angry when they are challenged.

The less educated would tend to cluster in these groups, I would think, which would be 4 to 6.

To end up at 1 or 7 you’d need some mix of self-confidence, aggression, and dissatisfaction. Right now they look like they’re no more than 10% combined, which suggests that our system is still fairly stable. As I understand, in 1932 about 45% of Germans were at one extreme or the other (Communist or Nazi).

I would rather see (if this study even has value in the first place- politics is still a nebulous concept) the distinction made between more specific political leanings. Where do religious young-earth conservatives fare compared to hippie holistic liberals on the intelligence scale? Likewise, where do conservative businessmen (business success requires smarts) fare against liberal college professors (again, requires smarts)? These groups all fall within the crude definition of conservative and liberal, and yet likely represent different levels of intelligence.

If you want to find the inverse conditional, you need to use Bayes’ theorem; or, just do the other data analysis.