ISSN 1556-3723 (print) Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion __________________________________________________________________ Volume 10 2014 Article 1 __________________________________________________________________ Intelligence and Religious and Political Differences Among Members of the U.S. Academic Elite Edward Dutton* Department of Cultural Anthropology University of Oulu Oulu, Finland Richard Lynn School of Psychology University of Ulster Coleraine, Northern Ireland *
[email protected] Copyright © 2014 Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. The Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion is freely available on the World Wide Web at http://www.religjournal.com. Intelligence and Religious and Political Differences Among Members of the U.S. Academic Elite Edward Dutton Department of Cultural Anthropology University of Oulu Oulu, Finland Richard Lynn School of Psychology University of Ulster Coleraine, Northern Ireland Abstract Many studies have found inverse correlations between intelligence and religiosity, intelligence and political conservatism, and intelligence and political extremism. Other studies have found that academics tend to be significantly less religious and more liberal than the general population. In this article, we argue that interdisciplinary differences in religiosity and political perspective among academics are predicted by interdisciplinary differences in intelligence between academics. Once personality factors correlating with religiosity have been substantially controlled for, physi- cists, who have higher average intelligence, are less religious than are social scientists, who have lower average intelligence. Physical scientists are also less politically extreme than are social sci- entists.