indy100.com Scientists discover that less intelligent people voted for Brexit Harry Fletcher ~2 minutes
New scientific research has found that less intelligent people were more likely to vote for Brexit.
According to a new study, people who voted for the leave campaign are more likely to have had lower cognitive abilities.
This may have made them more susceptible to disinformation, the authors of the study claim.
The new research comes from the University of Bath. As the study found, 73 per cent of the UK voters in the top 10 per cent of cognitive performance were remain voters.
Only 40 per cent of the people in the bottom 10 per cent of cognitive performance voted to remain in the EU.
The findings were published in the academic journal PLOS One are were based on analysis of 3,181 couples in the UK from an longitudinal study called Understanding Society.
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The study was led by authors Chris Dawson and Paul Baker. The pair claim that the findings show “low cognitive ability makes people more susceptible to misinformation and disinformation”.
The pair list the rhetoric from leave campaign leaders claiming that the UK would be able to “take back control of our borders” as an example of disinformation, as well as the claim about the £350m Brexit windfall being used to fund the NHS.
Speaking to the Times, Dawson said: “It’s an uncomfortable thing to say, but I think it’s important to be said. We have increasing amounts of fake news and it’s getting more and more sophisticated.”
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Next you are going to tell me less intelligent people voted for Trump
The study assertion is funny, but I don’t really think it’s worth much in terms of proving anything.
The number of participants being 6,000 seems promising, but I question the value of the questions they asked.
Recall 10 words read to you immediately and then again after the interview.
Name as many animals as possible in an elotted amount of time.
Subtract 7 from 100. Then again. Up to five times.
Solve the missing numbers in two number sequences.
Answer 5 math word problems.
Depending on what mental state you’re in, whether you’re recently off work, high, coming back from a run, etc. I think you’re likely to have dramatically different test scores from these.
Furthermore, these seem much more relevant to the education quality of an individual - and they call it “cognitive performance” (how good you think at the time) in the study which is kind of correct, but the article is passing it off as the participants’ intelligence (how good you think period), which is fucked up IMO.
I overall don’t like it and don’t find it that persuasive.
Measures of “cognitive ability” are strongly correlated with social and economic success. If youre from a more wealthy family you go to a better school and have better nutrition etc. Also test taking is itself a skill and test taking ability improves significantly with more education, more education being strongly related to economic and social status.
Study finds that measures related to economic and social success correlated with maintaining the status quo.
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The same studies that say believing in Communism is the same as being a religious zealot
Brexit was stupid, but I think this sort of thing is unhelpful and masturbatory.
Liberal bullshit, half of labour voted leave, you know why? Because they correctly identified that the EU is an antidemocratic neoliberal farce designed to fuck over workers and siphon wealth from the poorer eastern member countries to their wealthier western neighbors, its purposefully complicated and has basically wrangled control of all member’s economic policy. Most communist parties in Europe advocate for an end to the EU for very good reasons, its not just a reactionary position, the end of the EU is vital to the emancipation of the working class, period.
our only hope is that mayos continue to be as stupid as they’ve reliably been for the last 400 years and fuck up their advantage even more
I’m sure just a little more condescension and you’ll win them over
I’d have more time for the people still on about this if they weren’t so bloody patrician about it all the time
Yea it makes sense that’s the kind of people that the message “were gonna tell all our trading partners to fuck themselves and do whatever we want and that will improve our trading relations” worked on.
They were the majority and they had the right to vote for themselves. If they thought Europe was a sinking ship (even before the recent wars at its borders) and decided to jump away before drowning, that seems legit.
Who cares. This reeks of classic 1800s high brow literacy test discrimination. Nobody should care about the level of education the population that voted.
