Poll opinions on heritability of intelligence
This blog-post won’t contain every poll I know about. I know of many more such studies and will include more later. Some of them are a bit old though.
If someone knows how to make images work well on Medium on mobile and desktop then please tell me.
This blog-post has a list of intelligence expert opinion polls:
https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?p=8579
The politics of achievement gaps: US public opinion on race-based and wealth-based differences in test scores.
First poll is a study where the researchers tried to find a fair representation of the population in USA. So these answers are probably close to what the average American would answer a few years ago. But how you ask the question also has a lot to do with how people dare to answer it especially when the topic is ideological and controversial.
The note beneath is from a table in the article. It explains how they did the questionnaire. Basically, a big group is asked questions about the cause of education test score differences between 2 groups: Poor-Wealthy, Black-White or Hispanic-White.
How much does any one of the 4 specific variables cause them? Discrimination/injustice, Student motivation, Parenting or Genetic differences.
So a single question may be: “How much of the difference in test scores between White students and Black students occurs because of fundamental genetic differences between White students and Black students?”
Then you have 4 likert scale answers to choose from: None, A Little, Some, A Great Deal.
Beneath is the table from the article with percentages of picked answers for each group. So for example, among people who earn under $30.000 a year 15% answered that genetic differences play “A Great Deal” in the test score differences between Poor-Wealthy people. While among people who earn over $100.000 a year 0% said genetic differences played “A Great Deal” in the test score differences between the 2 groups. Makes you think.
My first 3 charts show all the data from the table, but I took the 4 questions and put them into 4 columns instead of 4 row groups as in the article table. Then I split the 3 group categories into 3 charts.
I also wanted to make a chart with only the generic differences question alone so that these numbers are easy to read.
Beliefs About Human Intelligence in a Sample of Teachers and Nonteachers.
Russell Warne and Jared Burton (2020) asked American K12 teachers and non-teachers various questions about intelligence. They also asked for me people’s race, gender, level of education and if they had a college psychology course — the most popular college course.
They uploaded all their data online so anyone can use it.
Data file I used: https://osf.io/vzr7s/
Survey document: https://osf.io/2wzdy/
I made a ton of charts from this data in Tableau Public. My charts are interactive so if you want to see the rest of the charts I made you can do that here.
This study is very fascinating as it reveals a lot of topics that any specific group may know less or more about than other groups. Even high education people don’t always answer questions more correctly than low education people.
Here are 2 tables from the article. You can see how K12 teachers vs. non-teachers answered the questions.
In this blog-post I’ll just post a few of my charts from the Tableau link. There are multiple categories of questions. The first chart group are questions from the “Biology & Genetics of Intelligence” category. In the 3 charts you can compare how men and women answered the question. How K12 teachers vs. non-teachers answered the question. And then how people with various education levels answered another question in the same group of questions.
Intelligence is in fact influenced by people’s genes so this question has a right answer. And people’s brain volume/head size correlates with IQ. So it’s a question that has a correct answer. This correlation is not a huge one though, so you may argue that answering a 4 out of 5 is still fine. But it’s still wrong to answer that the correlation is not there.
There is also a question asking if racial differences in intelligence are caused by genetic differences. You can compare their answers to the answers the intelligence experts give in another article. I have that chart a bit further down below.
Then a question from the “Education and Intelligence” category. School can in fact not eliminate intelligence differences. Nothing can. So it seems like the population overall get this one fairly right and teachers are more aware of this fact.
IQ is important for measuring success outside of school. It correlates with wages, job status and health. So this question has a correct answer.
There is no cultural bias in the intelligence tests we use to measure IQ. Such a bias would give the IQ test low validity and no one would use it.
This is also true. IQ predicts all school grades. Some more than others as some subjects are more intellectual than others. So this question also has a correct answer.
Just to be fair to well educated people. This chart in fact shows that they know more about IQ on this area than low educated people as of these interventions only 4 are found to possibly increase IQ long-term.
Survey of expert opinion on intelligence: Intelligence research, experts’ background, controversial issues, and the media.
This is the most interesting study overall because these are intelligence experts and are harder to get to than just regular people. These answers point to a more correct picture of reality than the other polls. 54% of these experts are politically left-leaning. 24% are right-leaning. So there may be some bias in one direction.
The chart I made is one appearing in the article too.
They asked experts how much of the IQ difference between Whites and Blacks in USA is caused by genetics. 0% to 100%. 16% of intelligence experts answered that this racial IQ difference is 0% caused by genetics ergo 100% caused by environment.
Anthropology’s science wars: Insights from a new survey.
This poll asks anthropology professors about various controversial topics. The same lead author has a similar poll article with sociology professors, but it’s with fewer questions so there are no questions directly about intelligence in it. Social science professors are very left-leaning and mostly share common biases. Among the 301 anthropology professors asked 2 said they were conservative and 3 said they were libertarian. 213 said they were liberal and the rest is split between radicals and moderates. Hence why only 3 political groups are included in the article. The study also divided professors into the 2 genders and into 3 anthropology fields as you see in the article tables beneath.
There are 2 questions that are relevant to this blog-post. “No genetics to “racial” behavioral differences” and “Intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews genetic component”. Unfortunately the liberal authors didn’t dare to ask about Black-White IQ differences directly as that answer reveals more about intelligence thinking than nearly anything else.
I didn’t include the area of expertise groups in my chart, but you can see their answers in my interactive Tableau chart.
