Intelligence predicts progressive views, but only after college

People with higher childhood intelligence scores tend to express more socially progressive attitudes as adults, but this connection depends heavily on whether they attend college. A new study reveals that advanced education acts as a catalyst, prompting those with superior academic abilities to abandon conventional societal norms during their twenties. These findings were published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Past research has consistently linked enhanced cognitive ability with non-traditional social beliefs. Adults who score higher on intelligence tests generally show a greater willingness to question traditional social hierarchies. They also tend to resist dogmatism, which is the unyielding adherence to a strict set of beliefs without considering evidence or alternative opinions.

The developmental timeline of this relationship has remained unclear. Researchers wanted to know if highly intelligent children are inherently more open-minded from a young age. Alternately, outside experiences during early adulthood might be responsible for broadening their perspectives over time.

University of South Alabama psychologist Joshua Isen led a research team to investigate how these attitudes evolve. Isen and his colleagues suspected that exposure to higher education might serve as a moderating factor. In statistics, a moderating condition is a variable that influences the strength or direction of a relationship between two other concepts.

The investigators contrasted this idea against a mediating relationship. If education was simply a mediator, it would mean that intelligence causes people to go to college, and college then causes them to become more progressive. Under a moderation framework, the researchers proposed that intelligent individuals must be placed in a specific academic environment to fully realize their progressive leanings.

The researchers hypothesized that college environments actively encourage students to critically evaluate the existing social order. Students who possess stronger cognitive skills might process these lessons more deeply. These individuals represent the students who most effectively internalize the designated material of their professors. This enhanced capacity for academic absorption might predictably lead to a broader shift in worldview.

The researchers first looked at a cross-sectional sample of 3,291 middle-aged parents. These individuals were participating in the Minnesota Twin Family Study, a large project tracking the health and development of local families. The team gathered data on the parents’ intelligence scores, overall educational attainment, and adherence to conventional societal values.

The parents completed a questionnaire designed to measure their preference for strict moral standards and their respect for traditional authority. The questions asked participants about their views on obscenity, religious authority, and strict parental discipline. Higher scores on this assessment indicated a more conventional, rigid worldview. The researchers mapped these survey responses against the parents’ educational backgrounds and cognitive assessments.

In this older group, more years of schooling amplified the link between intelligence and progressive attitudes. Among parents who had attended college, higher cognitive ability strongly predicted a rejection of traditional norms. For parents who ended their education after high school, the connection between intelligence and their social attitudes was relatively weak.

To understand exactly how this ideological divergence happens, the team conducted a second study tracking 2,769 offspring from the same families. The researchers assessed the youth at age 17, before most had started college. They followed up with the participants twice more, at ages 24 and 29.

At each stage, the participants answered questions about their social beliefs and reported their educational progress. The researchers used statistical modeling to observe how each individual’s attitudes shifted across emerging adulthood. This strategy allowed them to capture actual developmental changes rather than relying on a single snapshot in time.

By tracking these developmental trajectories, the researchers observed varying personal outcomes based on educational pathways. Some individuals experienced rapid ideological shifts over a short duration, while others maintained steady beliefs throughout the entire testing period. This numeric variation provided the optimal data set to isolate the distinct impacts of academic exposure.

To guarantee that the survey questions carried the exact same meaning for teenagers as they did for adults, the researchers analyzed the psychological structure of the survey responses across different age brackets. They found that the questionnaire reliably measured a consistent set of beliefs regarding moral strictness at every stage of the timeline. This statistical consistency gave the research team confidence that they were tracking genuine ideological shifts.

At age 17, the association between intelligence and progressive attitudes was completely absent. In fact, teenagers who eventually enrolled in a four-year university started out slightly more aligned with traditional values than their peers. The researchers suggested that conventional teenagers might be more willing to conform to the expectations of teachers and parents, smoothing their path to college admission.

Attitudes began to diverge sharply as the participants moved through their twenties. For those who never attended college, traditional beliefs actually increased slightly as they aged into full adulthood. Their childhood intelligence scores had no measurable impact on how their social views changed over time.

The developmental trajectory looked very different for the college-educated participants. Those who pursued higher education became progressively less traditional between the ages of 17 and 29. The size of this ideological shift was tightly linked to their cognitive ability.

Students with higher intelligence scores experienced the vast majority of declines in conventional attitudes during their college years. The researchers found that the combination of college exposure and high intelligence predicted a robust shift toward progressive ideology. This effect scaled with educational attainment. The phenomenon appeared strongest among those who went on to graduate or professional schools.

The researchers considered whether this change resulted from faculty instruction or peer influence. They reasoned that if peer conformity were the primary driver, highly intelligent students would be less likely to align with their classmates. Prior cognitive research indicates that individuals with stronger intellectual abilities tend to show more resistance to peer persuasion. Because the brightest students exhibited the largest shifts, the social environment created by professors and college curricula likely played a direct role.

Alternatively, the researchers noted an explanation based on cultural institutions. In modern academic settings, advocating for social change carries immense cultural prestige. Intelligent individuals might simply be better equipped to recognize these ascendant cultural norms and adjust their surface beliefs accordingly.

The observational nature of the research means that the results cannot definitively establish that college attendance causes progressive attitudes. Intelligence shapes the specific type of college environment a student experiences. Highly capable students might select themselves into more rigorous academic programs or attend institutions with a more pronounced progressive campus culture.

Other major life events occurring in a person’s twenties could also influence social attitudes. People who skip college often marry and have children at a younger demographic age. These early family responsibilities might independently foster an adoption of more conventional social values.

An additional detail of the research concerns the specific terminology used by the testing materials. The assessment of traditionalism focused heavily on private conduct rather than public policy or state coercion. Because the questions evaluated personal rule-following rather than political hostility, the results might shift if researchers applied a varied measure of ideological intolerance in future testing.

The study also focused heavily on a single region of the United States. The participants were predominantly white individuals from the Upper Midwest. Future investigations will need to replicate the findings using more ethnically and geographically diverse populations.

The researchers plan to explore how emotional abilities factor into ideological development during college. Traits like delayed gratification might help capable students engage more consistently with challenging coursework. Additional data on specific college majors could also help clarify which academic environments most effectively reshape social perspectives.

The study, “Is Progressive Ideology on the Test? Education and Intelligence in the Development of Nontraditional Attitudes,” was authored by Joshua D. Isen, Steven G. Ludeke, Timothy F. Bainbridge, Matt K. McGue, and William G. Iacono.