Libertarians are the most intelligent

[Occalgavia]

A study exploring the correlations between aspects of personal disposition, and political orientation, has found that libertarians (defined as socially liberal and economically conservative) perform slightly better than liberals and moderately better than conservatives when attempting tasks designed to measure intelligence, cognitive reasoning capacity, and the ability to suppress intuition in favour of a rational approach.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi ... ne.0042366

Cognitive Reflection Task

The Cognitive Reflection Task [66] is a set of 3 logic questions that have correct and intuitive answers. Correct answers on these questions is said not just to measure intelligence, but also to measure a person's ability to suppress an intuitive response in service of the cognitive reasoning required to solve these problems. The measure was completed by 9,721 participants (4,971 men; 7,384 liberals, 1,267 conservatives, and 1,070 libertarians).

Results.
Table 3 shows that libertarians find the correct answers to these questions at a slightly higher rate than liberals and moderately higher rate compared to conservatives (also see Figure 4).

Interpretation.
The cognitive reflection task provides a behavioral validation of the hypothesis that libertarians have a more reasoned cognitive style. In our dataset, this measure inter-correlates with both Need for Cognition (r = .30, p<.001) and Baron-Cohen Systemizer (r = .31, p<.001) scores, with libertarians scoring higher than both liberals and conservatives on all three measures. Taken together, a convergent picture of the rational cognitive style of libertarians emerges (Figure 4).

The study also reached several conclusions regarding temperaments typical of libertarians (and those of other political orientations) which suggest that libertarians are most prone to skepticism, detachment and rational thinking. In the past few decades much research has been geared towards examining how political opinion aligns with personality and other mental characteristics, and recently this research has begun to see significant use in political science, analysis and commentary. The findings are not entirely uncontroversial, as many object to the implied deterministic conception of their positions as undermining the need for reasoning in political discourse. However, if this study is anything to go by, libertarians have a strong tendency towards the use of reason, rather than emotion, in informing policy.

[Tubbsalot]

How convenient that this study reflects your preconceived opinions. I see no reason to view this skeptically at all (probably because I'm a thicko liberal, and not a clever-clogs libertarian like yourself).

recently this research has begun to see significant use in ... commentary

by people who are quite happy to take a single inherently dubious study and use it to pretend their views are the only reasonable views, yes.

I'm not sure why you've added that 'recently' in, though.

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

Oh look. Another attempt at trolling via 'proof' thread. There's plenty of Libertarian-based threads floating about for discussion regarding the mindset, methods, and aims without getting all shirty about it.