Who believes in evolution? Part II

Finally, my followup from Part I.

In Part II, I compare belief in evolution to score on the 10 question Wordsum vocabulary test. (I decided to ignore the few people who score below 4, because they tend to be too stupid to understand a lot of the GSS questions. As usual, I exclude people born outside the U.S. under the theory that an English vocabulary test is unfair to the foriegn born.)

This is the text of the question:

Now, I would like to ask you a few short questions like those you might see on a television game show. For each statement that I read, please tell me if it is true or false. If you don't know or aren't sure, just tell me so, and we will skip to the next question. Remember true, false, or don't know. i. Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals. (Is that true or false?)

Below are the results:

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Row percent -Weighted N		EVOLVED
		1 True	2 False	ROW TOTAL
WORDSUM	4	28.7 17	71.3 43	100.0 60
	5	44.3 53	55.7 67	100.0 121
	6	43.4 63	56.6 83	100.0 146
	7	49.9 73	50.1 73	100.0 146
	8	64.1 69	35.9 39	100.0 108
	9	73.3 43	26.7 16	100.0 59
	10	84.6 18	15.4 3	100.0 21
	COL TOTAL	51.0 337	49.0 323	100.0 660

Of course it's not surprising that smarter people are more likely to believe in evolution, but the difference is pretty extraordinary. Only 15% of people with Wordsum 10 disbelieve in evolution (although it's a pretty small sample size), while a whopping 57% of people with Wordum 6 (which is the average score) disbelieve in evolution.

While Wordsum does a great job of predicting belief in evolution, from the following chart you see that it does a very poor job of predicting wealth:

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Row percent -Weighted N		WEALTH
		less than $150,000	greater than $150,000	ROW TOTAL
WORDSUM	4	58.8 29	41.2 20	100.0 49
	5	59.6 60	40.4 41	100.0 101
	6	53.5 68	46.5 59	100.0 127
	7	54.2 70	45.8 59	100.0 130
	8	35.8 30	64.2 54	100.0 84
	9	42.0 24	58.0 33	100.0 57
	10	44.7 8	55.3 10	100.0 18
	COL TOTAL	51.1 290	48.9 277	100.0 566

The proportion of respondents with above-average wealth peaks at Wordsum 8 and then declines. Although the sample size is small, based on my previous analyses of the GSS, I believe that the dropoff in wealth for the smartest respondents is a real phenomenon and not merely an artifict of a small sample size.

Stay tuned for Part III.

Comments

[Vim]

Being in the top 10% of earnings probably takes as much devotion as being in the top 10% of IQ scorers. Whether nurture or nature, high IQ people are obsessed with learning. The kind of person that graduates at 12 or composes at 14 or knows 30 languages at 18 is a very, very driven individual.

All consuming obsessions oblige you to pick one.

[Peter]

It's curious that you have to get into the four top Wordsum categories (including the near 50-50 category 7 )before there's a majority who believe in evolution.

[SFG]

Actually, it's interesting. Until you get to WORDSUM 8, intelligence is a good thing.

Mercifully, it's a lot easier to work this out than before with their new interface, but 9 and 10 are the top 13.8% of the population, which means the upper boundary of WORDSUM 8 is 116 and the lower boundary (since it represents 10.4%) is 111. So an IQ in the low 110s is optimal.

This fits well with Roissy's optimum IQ for men of 120 and women of 110. Note, however, that Roissy has marketability declining steadily in both directions, with an IQ of 145 being as bad as an IQ of 85. This doesn't seem to be the case here; a WORDSUM of 10 is markedly better even than a WORDSUM of 7, the first in the negative direction from the optimum. So being smart doesn't hurt you financially as much as it does romantically.

[wilberforce]

vim, a real explanation for the difference would require more information. most high iq people do not, of course, know 30 languages or compose any music at all. (my brother, for instance, has a 140+ iq but is a tone-deaf monoglot. however, he has typical high iq strengths in programming, science and math).

better explanations are that a high iq might push you into professions that earn less money (college professor)than a middle-high iq would get you; or that high intelligence makes it hard for you to get along with lesser minds, thereby shrinking your social network or preventing you from getting higher paying upper management jobs. but as the robot says in short circuit, need more input!

[Vim]

Peter:

I think belief in evolution is a schooling issue. People who are indocrinated/educated well enough, early enough will believe in evolution. The less academic they are, the more likely they are to accept whatever the party line is for their community.

[Vim]

wilberforce:

Would you say he spends a large amount of time (hours) doing techy things just for the sake of doing techy things? (This basically amounts to unpaid labor.) A money minded person thinks: I could be making money right now almost all the time.

It seems to be reasonably easy to get geeky people to obsess over silly puzzles for no profit, a fact that many in the business world have found ways of exploiting.

The other thing I'd say, and maybe it's relevant and maybe it's not, it's sort of middle class thinking, to think 'who can I work for'. Your response didn't even take into account working for yourself, although this activity has the highest potential earnings. (I think running one's own business would probably give the highest return per IQ point.)

I think a highly intelligent people tend to follow their own desires in terms of activities and not respond as much to external cues like higher pay.

[Turambar]

The less academic they are, the more likely they are to accept whatever the party line is for their community.

The party line for the academic community is evolution so you didnt need to qualify the sentence.

Vim is killing on this thread.If HS ever goes to rep points you will have dug yourself out of a hole ;-)

[Vim]

Turambar:

I had to google to figure out what 'rep points' were. I suppose yet another post isn't going to make the situation any better. Today is a slow day, the president and all. Besides one of the great joys of academic life is finding new ways to waste time on the internet.

"The party line for the academic community is evolution ... "

It just so happens that the more you know about biology, the more self evident evolution is. The academic concensus that there is evolution is much like the adult concensus that there is no Santa Claus. I mean you know you haven't really done any experiments and you haven't really taken the thing to a 14-decimal place certainty ... but you just can't work up the energy to really take it seriously.

[GS]

I would say that optimum intelligence is actually closer to 140 than 120. Does the set control for people who are still in grad school / doctaral progams - because these would drive down the wages of very smart people. Also, from the AFQT I found that intelligence was directly correlated with income even into the 99th percentile.

Vim, being someone with a professionally tested verbal IQ of 152, I can tell you that being smart does not make you a prodigy, even if you are driven. People who graduate HS at 14, etc, are very rare.

GS

[wilberforce]

vim:

yeah, my brother does techy things for fun but he also does non-techy things for fun. but nobody will pay him for those things.

"The other thing I'd say, and maybe it's relevant and maybe it's not, it's sort of middle class thinking, to think 'who can I work for'. Your response didn't even take into account working for yourself, although this activity has the highest potential earnings. (I think running one's own business would probably give the highest return per IQ point.)"

do you know of any studies showing a correlation between iq and entrepreneurial success? again, we'd imagine there'd be some connection but it might be the curvilinear sort we see in the wordsum-income correlation: that, after a point, you could be too smart for your own good, and have trouble managing people.

"I think a highly intelligent people tend to follow their own desires in terms of activities and not respond as much to external cues like higher pay."

balderdash. the only plausible connection is that highly intelligent people are more likely to be educated middle or upper class whites, which means they either don't want to be seen as money-grubbing, or they have enough money that they don't need to grub it.

[Turambar]

What percentage of academics do you think you even mount a half way coherent defense of evolution? Maybe 10%?

It more likely that its a classism thing- they dont want to be on the wrong side of casting of "Inherit the Wind".

[Armed and Dangerous]

Would you say he spends a large amount of time (hours) doing techy things just for the sake of doing techy things? (This basically amounts to unpaid labor.)

Vim, this is what is called a "hobby." Most people don't get paid for "hobbies". It is usually done for personal enjoyment, not monetary gain.

[SFG]

Vim, this is what is called a "hobby." Most people don't get paid for "hobbies". It is usually done for personal enjoyment, not monetary gain.
Yes, but some hobbies (sailing, tennis) can have positive effects in the rest of one's life whereas others (World of Warcraft, D&D) do not.

Also, hobbies are part of the executive's personality presented to the world; it would be unlikely one would read for pleasure unless he worked for, say, a publishing company.

[Vim]

Turambar:

Origially I didn't agree with you but yes, I think you are right. The party line of academia is that evolution is correct. Ten percent actually sounded about right to me.

GS:

My example was ill chosen. My point was that making money is time consuming and having a full intellectual life is time consuming. One has to compromise and the skill sets and attitudes you need for each pursuit do not overlap very well.

wilberforce:

Intelligence can make a big difference in a business and you don't actually need people skills if you set things up correctly. A business = money + manager + employees. The bank doesn't have to like you, they just have to believe you will consistently deliver on their investment. The employees don't have to like you, they just have to like the manager. The customers don't have to like you, they just have to like the employees. The only person you have to deal with is the manager and he's probably the most agreeable employee you have. If one is really all that smart one can work around the dealing with people issues. If on the other hand you have actual deep antisocial personal issues then I suppose it might be impossible. Merely being charismatically challenged can be overcome.

[Peter]

Yes, but some hobbies (sailing, tennis) can have positive effects in the rest of one's life whereas others (World of Warcraft, D&D) do not.

It could just be that the sort of people who are attracted to sailing or tennis have more success-oriented personalities than those drawn to WoW or D&D.

[Statsquatch]

HS,

You could run a logistic regression with dependent variable wealth (150K YES, No) as a function of wordsum score as a linear, quadratic and cubic effect. You probably have enough data and if the quadratic is sig. you can verify the plateu.

[Jack]

I think the smartest people probably care about things other than being rich, look at people like college professors - high status but not superrich. Or PhD's. These people could become retail managers and make more "money".

[trumwill]

I think the smartest people probably care about things other than being rich, look at people like college professors - high status but not superrich. Or PhD's. These people could become retail managers and make more "money".

Could they? It's been my experience that people don't excel at jobs that bore them and often do worse than people not quite as smart but more enthusiastic.

[lowrads]

Wealth is a product of continuous obsession with self-promotion. Intelligent people tend to be dilettantes, and quickly grow bored with the simplicity of securing their own welfare. When you gaze down on the problems in life from a mile up, one does not invent a new challenge to them, but simply invents new ways to frame the conflicts.

For example, the very simplicity of the principle of compound interest tends to reveal its less virtuous characteristics.

[Turambar]

An interesting test of this: Chris Langan was on the game show 1 vs 100 and adopted a conservative approach of maximizing his expected gain.

He used up his lifelines and to be sure that he had the correct answers rather than conserve them so he'd positioned for the 1 Million dollar attempt. When he got to a question he wasnt sure about he took the money and left. $250K.

http://www.nbc.com/1vs100/video/index.shtml#mea=210624

Maybe the smartest people work the system for well paid secure positions where they dont hit a homerun but do set themselves up pretty well. Why take chance at a million when you can nail the $250K on a game show. Why start a business when you can be a tenured professor?

[shortcut]

Does anyone have a link for taking the wordsum test on-line ?

[Vim]

This guy has a 195 IQ and believes in creationism. Go figure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Michael_Langan

Something to think about.

[ogunsiron]

vim,

Langan seems more like a theistic evolutionist. He is quoted explicitely as saying so , in that wikipedia article .

[shortcut]

IQ is a confusing thing. By that I mean that say a Wilt Chamberlain who is capable of extraordinary things on the basketball court (skills that emanate from the mind as it should be obvious that one's arms cannot think for themselves but must be controlled by a cognitive process) could be considered extremely intelligent in regards to these particular skills but would be lacking in the skills necessary to compete in logical thinking. Langan also may possess certain skills which enable him to score very well on IQ tests but his intellect may be lacking when challenged by thought processes that require other skills. Although it may seem painfully obvious to many of us that belief in a god or other magical beings that may be responsible for our existence is logically absurd, other beings, who may have inherited (as Dan Dennett points out) genes that pre-dispose them to illogical conclusions regarding various aspects of the mystery of life come to completely different conclusions. It seems that these differences in human construct will be the source of unending debate with regards to those things that cannot be proven to every one's satisfaction.