Quote:
Originally Posted by octothorp
Seems to me that this might have more than a little to do with education. Someone who's a creative thinker (as opposed to a structured thinker) is more likely to be drawn to an fine arts or communication or liberal arts degree, while structured thinkers are more likely to be drawn to programs such as business or engineering. Thus, the creative thinker is more likely to have studies, professors, and peers who are a liberal influence on them.
I'd say that any study would need to account for this: take two lawyers who had a similar education and are of differing political affiliations - is the liberal more likely to be a creative thinker? Probably not. Similarly, take two conservatives who hold similar beliefs, one of whom is an artist and one of whom is an accountant. Is the artistic conservative more likely to have more adaptive thought patterns? Probably.
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Good post--and a good suggestion.
In truth, I suspect that what such a study might find is two things:
1. Liberals and conservatives think through certain problems differently.
2. This difference reflects their values and not their intelligence.
But controlling for education and profession seems to me a minimal requirement, now that you mention it.