Conceptual Flexibility, Ideology, and Intelligence We saw in recent months several articles purporting to show a link between intelligence and political ideology. Specifically, the claim was that IQ was inversely correlated with political conservatism. What might account for such a correlation? Consider the following excerpt from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn, and the questions that follow: Bruner and Postman asked experimental subjects to identify on short and controlled exposure a series of playing cards. Many of the cards were normal, but some were made anomalous, e.g., a red six of spades and a black four of hearts. Each experimental run was constituted by the display of a single card to a single subject in a series of gradually increased exposures. After each exposure the subject was asked what he had seen, and the run was terminated by two successive correct identifications. Even on the shortest exposures many subjects identified most of the cards, and after a small increase all the subjects identified them all. For the normal cards these identifications were usually correct, but the anomalous cards were almost always identified, without apparent hesitation or puzzlement, as normal. The black four of hearts might, for example, be identified as the four of either spades or hearts. Without any awareness of trouble, it was immediately fitted to one of the conceptual categories prepared by prior experience. One would not even like to say that the subjects had seen something different from what they identified. With a further increase of exposure to the anomalous cards, subjects did begin to hesitate and to display awareness of anomaly. Exposed, for example, to the red six of spades, some would say: That’s the six of spades, but there’s something wrong with it – the black has a red border. Further increase of exposure resulted in still more hesitation and confusion until finally, and sometimes quite suddenly, most subjects would produce the correct identification without hesitation. Moreover, after doing this with two or three of the anomalous cards, they would have little further difficulty with the others. A few subjects, however, were never able to make the requisite adjustment of their categories. Even at forty times the average exposure required to recognize normal cards for what they were, more than 10 percent of the anomalous cards were not correctly identified. And the subjects who failed often experienced acute personal distress. One of them exclaimed: “I can’t make the suit out, whatever it is. It didn’t even look like a card that time. I don’t know what color it is now or whether it’s a spade or a heart. I’m not even sure now what a spade looks like. My God!” (1) If you had to guess, not having any other knowledge about the studys participants, would you say that the subjects who failed to recognize the anomalous cards, and who experienced discomfort/stress upon viewing the longer exposures, likely had a higher or lower IQ than the average participant? Why? (2) Again, not knowing anything else about the participants, would you guess that those who failed to identify the anomalous cards, and who experienced discomfort/stress upon viewing longer exposures, were likely more liberal or more conservative than the average participant? Why?
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 23:23:09 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015