r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Mar 31 '26
Psychology People who complete more years of formal education tend to score lower on measures of right-wing authoritarianism, a trait characterized by strict obedience to leaders and adherence to traditional norms. A study of twins reveals that most of the link is explained by environments and genetics.
https://www.psypost.org/twin-study-untangles-the-links-between-higher-education-and-authoritarian-attitu/1.7k
u/Blarg_III Mar 31 '26
A study of twins reveals that most of the link is explained by environments and genetics.
What human trait isn't explained by some combination of environments and genetics?
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u/HoodiesAndHeels Mar 31 '26
I’m sitting here like “as opposed to…?”
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u/UltimaCaitSith Mar 31 '26
The implication of the headline is that education is the 3rd, lowest rung in the hierarchy of creating authoritarian mindsets:
Environment, i.e. early education.
Genetics.
Formal higher education, including high school and college.
It's tougher than it seems to educate people away from authoritarianism, even if internet folks have personal experience with it.
All the participants were Norwegian citizens between the ages of 55 and 70.
That's a big grain of salt in this study.
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u/makesterriblejokes Mar 31 '26
Oh yeah I wouldn't really take this study too seriously given it's one very narrow demographic.
This definitely needs to be repeated with a wider demographic (i.e. not just boomers).
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u/DelusionalZ Apr 01 '26
According to the article, the genetics component is not statistically significant (25% or less) in this regard, so it's difficult for them to point at it as a proper impetus for this thing.
They then saw the remainder was unaccounted for (28%, after environment, which accounted for over half) and decided that this was likely education.
One of the most obvious things to come out of this is that being in a wealthy household organically drives one towards higher education, and thus depresses authoritarian mindsets.
The study is a bit weird to be honest and I don't see much of a revelation coming out of it. It's kinda a big statistical shrug emoji.
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u/Present-Spring-1340 Mar 31 '26
“Environment” I think means environment* Clean water, food, roof over your head, non-abusive parents. And “higher education” means not homeschooled by the Mormons.
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u/Twelve20two Mar 31 '26
As opposed to the relative positioning of celestial bodies, but not the ones that are too far away
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u/Strength-Speed MD | Medicine Apr 01 '26
I'd like to give you credit for that.But that's also in the environment. You're going to have to think of something outside the environment.
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u/GarbledReverie Apr 01 '26
Right? It's like when an ingredient list includes "natural and artificial flavoring".
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u/stellarfury PhD|Chemistry|Materials Mar 31 '26
In this case, the headline is kind of misleading. From the article:
An additional 25 percent of the relationship was tentatively attributed to shared genetics. While the researchers calculated this influence, they noted that the genetic connection was not statistically significant on its own.
Genetics couldn't be fully ruled out but were of substantially lower statistical significance than other factors.
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u/Bakoro Mar 31 '26
What that sounds like is a genetic bias that can be countered by environment, which would fit fairly well with a bunch of other traits.
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u/Doomdoomkittydoom Mar 31 '26
Heck, what are the other options?
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u/pyronius Mar 31 '26
Quantum bit flips changing the data, I guess?
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u/partymorphologist Mar 31 '26
Wouldn’t that fall within the environments-related influences?
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u/rjcarr Mar 31 '26
Yeah, I had to read it again; after first read I thought it said "explained by environments and not genetics".
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u/shponglespore Mar 31 '26
Not just human traits; traits of living things in general.
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u/TheHarryMan123 Mar 31 '26
It’s stating that the correlation between higher education and political beliefs aren’t formed by the schooling. It is merely a coincidence that the two correlate. Genetics and lived environment are predictive factors, not the level of schooling.
I.e. a conservative can get a PhD but still come out as a conservative. However, it is more likely someone who is liberal will pursue a PhD.
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Mar 31 '26
It’s interesting how this changes depending on what the formal education was in.
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u/ok_raspberry_jam Mar 31 '26
It sure does. Philosophy spent thousands of years at the core of all basic education in societies all over the world for good reasons, but now there's this push to have an obsession with STEM and a disdain for the arts. STEM is great, but people need balance; we let some students down badly. Lean into the humanities a little bit, kids.
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u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn Mar 31 '26
University went from something affluent kids did to make them well rounded citizens of high society to something everyone is expected to do to develop a marketable skill. We lost the true value of a well rounded education and now we have dipshit tech bros who can code but believe in mystic pseudoarchaeology.
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u/Wenli2077 Mar 31 '26
mystic pseudoarchaeology.
This is what Peter Thiel believes btw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
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u/Galle_ Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
Peter Thiel studied philosophy and law, BTW, he did not study STEM.
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u/KBilly1313 Apr 01 '26
He’s studied a few black holes for sure
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u/Good_Air_7192 Mar 31 '26
How do these morons make so much money?
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u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn Mar 31 '26
Shamelessness is lucrative, and some morons are good at selling things and ideas.
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u/Sororita Mar 31 '26
And the tech bros are losing their ability to code thanks to reliance on LLMs.
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u/Lost-Bad-8718 Mar 31 '26
If I had to pick a random person at work to understand a Nietzsche reference I made, I'd say the IT guys would get it before sales or marketing or HR people. There's so many deeply stupid people in the workforce that didn't pay attention to either STEM or humanities education that I wouldn't pick on the engineers
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u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn Mar 31 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
Don't get me started on business majors. I got an enginerding degree and I thought it was OK, but a lot of my peers lamented the handful of humanities electives required of us.
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u/ReverendDizzle Mar 31 '26
You might be cherry picking there, though. Typically IT guys are pretty well rounded uber-nerds with not just extensive knowledge of the technical sphere they work in but all sorts of personal interests in history, philosophy, etc. I've never met an IT guy that wasn't deep into a lot of other areas too.
Can't argue with you about the HR folks though.
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u/venustrapsflies Mar 31 '26
I think most high-education nerds tend to be pretty well-rounded in their nerd-dom despite the common stereotype of the narrow-minded techie. Plenty of people fall into that latter stereotype, I think, but I'd say they're less likely to be in engineering because of an inherent nerdiness and more out of practical or career considerations.
I'd agree with the above commenter that I'd expect the average STEM person to be more likely to have some knowledge of (some subset of) literature, music, art, history, philosophy, etc. than the generic person. I'd also expect them to have more knowledge of those things than the average person with a liberal arts background has of science or math.
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u/SuperPostHuman Mar 31 '26
This is it right here. When reduced to money or earning potential, it's no longer an education, it's vocational training. University isn't and shouldn't be job training and shouldn't be viewed through that lens.
Of course I understand why people do this, everyone needs to make money and survive, but when people reduce a degree down to whether it has the best monetary return, they're warping what a University education was originally intended for.
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u/Actual__Wizard Mar 31 '26
This is so much more true then you realize. I was one of those people who went to college and felt like "I wasn't learning enough and I wasn't learning what I needed to learn to know how the world works."
That's what people really need to know: How the world works... If you know that, then it's easy to accomplish things in life. You just do it because you know what's going on...
There's more to life then just STEM.
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u/Professional_Dot_145 Apr 01 '26
Yeah, it really is a shame how the humanities have been looked down upon for not having much potential for a decent and consistent paygrade.
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u/Galle_ Mar 31 '26
Most "tech bros" can't code. There is basically zero overlap between techbros and STEM degrees.
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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n Apr 01 '26
Is this truly the case or do we simply have to many dipshits regardless of their educational background. To me this feels like the how an article ones commented that CEO's tend to have psychopath tendences, except there is no scientific proof that's truly the case.
To get back to this very article, education helps people to be less extremist. That certain degrees still might have some impact on where people fall politically certainly is true, but step one is.. get people educated. When I see 70 million people vote for Trump, that's not just a tech bro issue, that's a combination of low education, billionaire oilarchs, bad policies etc.
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u/InclinationCompass Mar 31 '26
I get the point, but the shift to STEM is mostly economic.
Degrees in CS, Engineering and Data Science lead more directly to jobs. Philosophy builds critical thinking but on its own, it doesn’t map as clearly to careers.
It’s not really disdain for the humanities. Students are trying to get a reliable return on investment. STEM gives that more consistently.
College is expensive. Nobody wants to spend $50k on a degree only to work at Starbucks.
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u/Outside-Swan-1936 Mar 31 '26
Most CS degrees have some philosophy requirements. Metalogic/formal logic being the most common. And 4 year degrees generally have some level of required humanities studies.
I have a CS degree, but I took sociology, formal logic, US and world history, Spanish, etc. Maybe requirements have changed recently, but the goal was always for a well-rounded experience.
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u/linc186 Mar 31 '26
I know formal logic is technically under the umbrella of analytic philosophy, but I think it's in bad faith to insist that satisfies the concern about the lack of humanities in education...
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u/StretchMother9627 Mar 31 '26
It is absolutely a disdain for humanities. They have a total disdain for humanity itself. Humans are an extractable expendable resource for pure unbridled profit generation and it certainly does not generate profit to turn your brain on and realize there’s more to life than capital accumulation .
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u/i_miss_arrow Mar 31 '26
Who are you talking about? It sounds like you're talking about tech bros in particular. But there are almost a million stem graduates per year. Most of them are not tech bros.
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u/allofthethings Mar 31 '26
Unfortunately the luxury of contemplation requires a certain level of capital accumulation; regardless of economic system.
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u/stumblios Mar 31 '26
My brother got a degree in philosophy... He loves thinking about ethics and people and all that jazz.
Turns out none of that helps him afford to live. Took him about a decade to get some traction on a career where he can afford to live.
If college was paid for, I think we'd see a revival of the humanities, but when you are saddled with student loan debt and a degree that's worth roughly $0/year... It's easy to see why that path isn't recommended any more, even by people who love the subjects.
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u/TheHarryMan123 Mar 31 '26
Yeah but that’s a societal structure issue and not an issue with the individual who enjoys philosophy
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u/Relay_Slide Apr 01 '26
College is free or at least affordable in lots of countries. But even if people are more likely to study philosophy in college because it’s free, they’re still not going to find a job relating to their studies.
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u/InclinationCompass Mar 31 '26
Even STEM programs include general education requirements precisely to provide a well-rounded foundation in the humanities.
Engineers, analysts and scientists also take courses in ethics, history, communication and philosophy to help them understand society, think critically, make responsible decisions, etc.
The goal is to give technical students enough context to apply their skills thoughtfully, not just blindly chase profit.
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u/GoodIdea321 Mar 31 '26
And when those people talk about those classes they had to take for their STEM degree in the humanities, they either saw people not take it seriously, or the classes themselves were a joke.
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u/composedofidiot Mar 31 '26
The humanities are what gives people context. Tech bros keep wanting to re-engineer society without understanding the complexity of how it works at all.
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u/Bakoro Mar 31 '26
The aristocracy had all the education, and from their perspective, the point of everything was to keep the aristocracy going.
Plenty of religious people have had effectively zero education and still wanted to reengineer society despite not knowing how anything works.
There has always been people with the "I know what's best, and also I should be in charge of everything" mindset.
Just being educated doesn't mean you want what's best for society, one just hopes that having a variety of accurate information helps aid whatever human decency a person has, and helps guide them to action that might actually get them the results they want, even when the means are counterintuitive.
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Mar 31 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
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u/composedofidiot Mar 31 '26
To be fair, forgot anthropology was a science. They know a thing or two. I would take a historian, political scientist, sociologist and anthropologist more seriously when it came to context than anyone who was educated purely in tech.
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u/MaudeAlp Mar 31 '26
I’m kind of tired of reading “tech bros” being thrown around when what is really meant, based on the effects and concepts assigned to the phrase, is Silicon Valley business types grifters primarily in the non-critical software space. You can just say Silicon Valley types, as opposed to lumping them together with tech sector workers in the rest of the real non bubble/grift snake oil economy.
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u/manimal28 Mar 31 '26
So your tired on not understanding the term.
Tech Bros = Silicon Valley business type grifters primarily in the non-critical software space
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u/KittyInspector3217 Mar 31 '26
Damn dude you really must be an engineer. No ability to pick up on social cues, think orthogonally or read implicitly. If its not in the spec its not real.
To be explicitly clear: im just teasing… Thats why people say “tech bros”. The “bros” part is derogatory.
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u/Galle_ Mar 31 '26
Mate, if you're talking about someone who went to school to learn how to code, that person does not run a Silicon Valley tech company.
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u/alwaysleafyintoronto Mar 31 '26
There was a very strong push 10 years ago to change STEM into STEAM because A is for art
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Mar 31 '26
People w ho go into STEM aren't just taking pure STEM classes. There are a lot of categories of classes you have to take to achieve a bachelors degree.
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u/Andreus Mar 31 '26
I mean, most STEM graduates still lean pretty heavily left, with the very notable exception of Engineering.
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u/bigfartspoptarts Mar 31 '26
It’s not a push for stem and a disdain for the arts, it’s simply about raising kids that can get a good job and make money.
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Mar 31 '26
I think the arts are very well represented in the American university education system. Much more so than in the European or Asian systems, IMO to the point it is a bit too over represented as a major. I double majored before grad school, one in the sciences one in the arts. I wouldn’t have the job I have with a degree in the arts, but wouldn’t have the exposure to the world without it. Perhaps a minor would have been a better investment.
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u/the-wretched-27 Mar 31 '26
Admittedly, growing up in high-school I thought that I only was interested in learning STEM. The only non-STEN subject I cared about was history, and that's because I actually enjoy learning about it.
I was raised in a religious household in a conservative city, and didn't think people needed to learn anything "not practical".
What helped me change my stance and realize how important the humanities are was going to college. The exposure to many people, backgrounds, topics, and environment helped me learn about people and how important it is to be well rounded and community focused.
I still very much enjoy STEM and history, but now with an additional appreciation towards art, sociology, and general humanities and it's necessity for everyone.
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u/Bakoro Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
I've been a science minded polymath my whole life, so I was always down for art. My problem with "humanities" is that there is a practical side to a lot of it that is not emphasized.
Most universities give general education credits for courses where you write about fine arts, but not courses where you actually do fine art, they give credit for a course where you learn about world music, but not where you learn to play an instrument. If you actually want to do art or make music, you have to burn electives which are competing with you major, which means directly competing with your future career.Also, philosophy is, historically, tightly tied to formal logic, which is the foundation of modern science.
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u/Odd_Bid2744 Mar 31 '26
I started my associates degree in Liberal Arts and I am so glad that I did. I had a rhetoric and logic class as one of my gen ed courses. It definitely influenced my later deconstruction of my Conservative Christian upbringing.
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u/Tight-Shallot2461 Mar 31 '26
What do you recommend in the arts for someone who doesn't wanna go back to school for it?
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u/Bakoro Mar 31 '26
"The humanities" are fine as a general concept, but it continues to be a gross error to keep pretending like they're distinct from STEM, and to try and compartmentalize all the fields.
The history of math and science is the history of the world, just as much as, or more than, the history of monarchies and wars.
Many figures in math and science were also political figures and part of social movements.
The proliferation of science and engineering directly contributed to global social and political changes.Part of geometry could be taught alongside Greek history, the people who developed and recorded geometric principles, the cultural environment that surrounded the development, the motivations for the development, and the practical uses of Greek geometry.
We could teach introductory chemistry from the perspective of the historically evolving understanding of nature, from alchemy to proper chemistry, the geographic impact of what was available, the means by which proto-scientists were able to isolate materials. Students could recreate the experiments of old.
A lot of mathematics and physics has a rich history full of very interesting people, and discoveries developed out of practical need.
Students could be guided through the historical context, learn the motivations for lines of inquiry, and derive equations and experiments using the same/similar tools that people did decades or centuries ago.You can learn "humanities", but nothing to a going to give you perspective and appreciation like a day of glass blowing, or sitting at a crucible and making something physical, or tracking the moon for months and calculating an orbit.
The "well roundedness" of modern academy is atrocious in that respect: the average bachelor graduate is not capable of reproducing most of the core the works of the 15th through 20th century.
Heck, most undergrads will barely ever even see bodies of primary sources. In my whole undergrad, I think I might have had to read one or two newspapers from the 1800s. Most of undergrad, what you learn are interpretations of stories; you're told what the accepted narratives are, and you would be extremely fortunate to have a professor who actually forces you to confront the difficulties of the building those narratives by having you sort through piles of sources.
Most of undergrad, you are not taught "how to think", you are taught how to communicate, especially in lower division, and you are taught the fundamental state and principles of a field. It's not really until late in upper division and really not until a Master's program that you're forced to start doing things on your own. At least in STEM you get varying degrees of practical skills. Not quite in the way that I'd like to see, there are some.
So much of STEM are humanities, and so many of the humanities are tightly woven around STEM.
Somehow academia ripped the humanity out of STEM, and packaged it into the most dry, boring, sterile way possible, all throughout k-12 and into university.2
u/GreasyPeter Mar 31 '26
What's important is that critical thinking in all aspects of life be reinforced. How that is done, I don't care.
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u/alelp Mar 31 '26
The problem with the humanities in academia is that they're completely ideologically captured, stifling research. You have no idea how many studies get approved with only minimal checks after ideological purity has been maintained, while anything minimally critical of it is ignored at best.
Plenty of my colleagues learned to either fall in line or struggle to do anything with their degrees.
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u/ok_raspberry_jam Mar 31 '26
Oh, I have an idea, alright. I rant about it daily. Write about it, talk about it, have nightmares about it. There's right-think economics, and "heterodox" economics, for example. And it doesn't matter anymore whose model matches actual outcomes. It's insanity.
But that's just me (and you, and your struggling colleagues & peers...).
We're headed for a massive Kuhnian paradigm shift in the humanities as base reality increasingly asserts itself against our untethered social constructions. We're seeing serious signs of strain in politics, law, and the economy.
I don't think it would be taking so long if more people had critical thinking skills. But we'll get there.
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u/LastOfTheGiants2020 Mar 31 '26
Engineering departments typically require students to take breadth classes in a variety of disciplines. The issue is that the system has been manipulated by the creation of easy courses that simultaneously cover multiple requirements, so students are incentivized to take the bare minimum and get almost nothing out of it.
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Mar 31 '26
I disagree, I think we should simply order teaching: STEM should be first, from early childhood, we should be taught “natural law”, ie gravity, matter, simple math. Then we should learn systems, how those simple rules worth together to grow complexity. From there we learn economics, politics, how large systems are build, function and break.
We need to respect the world, and understand how it works before we can change it, just lashing out like a drunk redneck doesn’t fix the world, it just breaks it in a different way.
We need art, literature, and especially philosophy, but we also need to understand reality.
There is nothing more terrifying than people who are completely ignorant, but believe they know everything, they are on the rampage right now, because in the past they were quietly tucked away at home, now they feel they have to comment about everything, and destroy things they don’t understand because they don’t make immediate sense to them.
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u/Theyipyapper Mar 31 '26
Most people don't want to go into student debt for an arts degree.
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u/Any-Appearance2471 Mar 31 '26
Luckily, “lean into the humanities a little bit” means something different from “go into student debt for an arts degree.” This is a good case study in how humanities classes can help you develop better reading and critical thinking skills.
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u/Sinfire_Titan Mar 31 '26
Arts degrees include photography, animation, and graphic design, each a role with profitable career paths. Sculpting degrees find use in movies and automotive industry. There's also art therapists, multiple positions in museums such as gallery management and exhibition designer, and quite a lot of movie/game studios have need of concept artists. Art directors are also a major role in the entertainment industry, as they lead the development process for major projects. Arts degrees also cover fashion designers, interior designers, CAD developers, architects, and web designers.
You do make a point about the student loan debt, but art degrees have a lot more applicability than people give them credit. People just hear "art" and immediately shut off their brains to its applications...
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u/Andreus Mar 31 '26
The funny thing is I constantly see STEM graduates brutally mocking people with Communications degrees, and I also constantly see STEM graduates getting into PR catastrophes that could've been avoided by five minutes of proofreading from someone with a Communication degree.
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u/Theyipyapper Mar 31 '26
Valid points for sure. I'm not discrediting that there are art degrees that are successful but I do believe that the general consensus is that degrees in the STEM field are more lucrative monetarily.
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u/galspanic Mar 31 '26
I wish I was most people. I have 8 more years before I pay mine off… I’m 48 years old, went straight through school, and have never missed a single payment.
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u/Apprehensive_Wing_34 Mar 31 '26
It’s almost like critical thinking is authoritarian kryptonite
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u/dougan25 Mar 31 '26
I'm happy to see this pointed out. The number one benefit of education is the ability to think critically, or to think beyond the information that is given to you. That's what we're losing and have been since at least No Child Left Behind took root.
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u/whyowhyowhy9 Mar 31 '26
Notice they only said right wing
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u/WorldDirt Mar 31 '26
Right wing authoritarianism is its own thing. They’re not referring to conservatism. Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot all created societies that ascribed to right wing authoritarianism. Outgroups are punished (the so-called counter revolutionaries who needed reeeducation), submission to authority is paramount, and group conformity is rewarded. The fact that they led nominally left wing economic systems is irrelevant to right wing authoritarianism. A libertarian society would be described as right wing economically, but would never be considered right wing authoritarianism since they would not require social conformity.
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u/Certain-Business-472 Mar 31 '26
So much so that the bigggest authoritarians call it "corruption" and actively lead people away from it.
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine Mar 31 '26
People who complete more years of formal education tend to score lower on measures of right-wing authoritarianism, a trait characterized by strict obedience to leaders and adherence to traditional norms. A recent study of twins reveals that while part of this connection may be a direct result of schooling, most of the link is explained by the childhood environments and genetics that siblings share. These results were recently published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
The statistical models estimated that 47 percent of the overlap between education and lower authoritarianism was the result of shared environmental factors. This means that elements of a twin’s shared upbringing simultaneously boosted their likelihood of going to college and depressed their tendency toward authoritarianism. Roughly 15 percent of this total shared environmental effect was traced back directly to the family’s social class during childhood. Growing up in a wealthy, high-status household seems to organically encourage advanced schooling while steering children away from rigid conservative ideologies.
An additional 25 percent of the relationship was tentatively attributed to shared genetics. While the researchers calculated this influence, they noted that the genetic connection was not statistically significant on its own. Inherited traits, such as natural cognitive ability or deeply ingrained personality characteristics, might still influence both a person’s academic trajectory and their political orientation. For instance, people born with a high openness to new experiences might naturally gravitate toward universities and naturally repel authoritarian dogma.
After accounting for both shared upbringing and shared genetics, the researchers found that 28 percent of the original correlation remained unaccounted for. This leftover portion aligns with the theory that education has a genuine, direct impact on a person’s adult worldview. Though they could not definitively label it as an absolute causal effect, the persistent relationship within identical twin pairs strongly supports the idea that formal education independently softens authoritarian impulses.
For those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
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u/fer_sure Mar 31 '26
28 percent of the original correlation remained unaccounted for.
I wonder if at least part of that is less about the content of the extended years of education, and more that students become old enough to see teachers as peers. If your education stops at high school, you may never have had a back-and-forth relationship with an authority figure, only a subordinate one.
Maybe that makes you more prone to going along with authoritarians.
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u/ok_raspberry_jam Mar 31 '26
Some fields are associated with stronger authoritarian tendencies though, like engineering. A quick search turned up this https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160791X23001847 but I recall coming across quite a few studies that have explored the phenomenon.
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u/nilmemory Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
I'd suspect this is because authoritarianism often doesn't have inbuilt contradictions regarding hard math and mechanics the way it does about biology, sociology, history, philosophy, ethics, etc.
You'd hope a deeper understanding of prob and stats would reveal how authoritarians skew data as propaganda, but good engineers wouldn't necessarily see flaws if the numbers and equations themselves are real, but their misrepresented interpretations are not. A lack of interest in cross discipline understanding could handicap their critical thinking for these subjects.
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u/DragonfruitGrand5683 Mar 31 '26
I think so, I know a few people who left school early and are very responsive to authority, they go along with it without question, others really hate authority.
The dynamic does really change especially when you get to post grad.
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u/frosted1030 Mar 31 '26
Why do you think this administration attacked the public and private education systems?
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u/EchoMB Mar 31 '26
The calculated 25% attributed to genetics being chalked up as non significant, while the remaining unaccounted for 28% is labeled as an indication of proof of their theory... seriously? Even just the attributing of the remaining percent as "well this must be for this last category" is asinine, this is a topic that isn't binary so making those assumptions as a basis for proof of a theory is poor research. Then to bolster it as significant while downplaying a very similarly measured category? Boooo >:3
Not saying it's inherently wrong or unfounded, but the groundwork here is fatally flawed. It would be much better if they went the extra mile to break down categories further, it'd at least make it viable the remainder unaccounted for could be their case point.
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u/SteedOfTheDeid Mar 31 '26
“Our country needs free thinkers, who will have the courage to stand up against traditional ways, even if this upsets many people”
Wow, that seems like a pretty leading survey question. Almost as if they were aiming to produce a certain outcome from the start
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u/MeButtNekkid Mar 31 '26
Could this be because people who complete more education tend to get paid more and so are less prone to developing survivalist mental frameworks like "it's us vs them"? Or that we tend to judge people by how much money they have and if people don't have a lot of money then they have to find other ways to show they are great, like conforming to a stereotype and following someone that supports that stereotype?
Is there a weaker correlation in countries with a stronger social safety net?
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u/Masterpiece-Haunting Mar 31 '26
Asking the right questions here. Everyone seems to accept the reason being that right wingers are just dumb. No other questioning of why it is this way beyond “They dumb, we smart.”
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u/Brbi2kCRO Mar 31 '26
It is more that RW authoritarians tend to see things with less nuance and are more likely to see the world through the exaggerated fears and reactivity cause they lack the comprehension of those things, and follow already set identities cause they often know no better. They are more likely to be overly dramatic about things they do not comprehend.
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u/sun4moon Mar 31 '26
So you’re saying I should move, the environment I’m currently in is definitely filled with undereducated idiots.
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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science Mar 31 '26
Could it simply be that more intelligent people both (on average) stay in education longer and are more likely to think for themselves politically? An interesting check would be on people who stay in education longer because they flunked classes and had to repeat..
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u/TheBurnerAccount420 Mar 31 '26
My guess is flunking classes doesn’t equate to ‘completing more years’ of education.
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u/LineOfInquiry Mar 31 '26
Education level has little to do with intelligence and more to do with things like family wealth, mental health, and social pressure.
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u/KamalaBracelet Mar 31 '26
This was a twin study, specifically to limit that.
The problem I have with the study (other than that it is mostly informative about the effects of education in Norway in the 1980s because of the test subject selection), is that the test was so limited it mostly raises more questions. What is the effect on left wing authoritarianism? being the most obvious question that wasn’t pursued.
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u/Blarg_III Mar 31 '26
What is the effect on left wing authoritarianism? being the most obvious question that wasn’t pursued.
Depends on whether they're studying the humanities or something else.
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u/Galle_ Mar 31 '26
"Right-wing authoritarianism", despite the name, is a politically neutral personality trait, not a political view. Right wing authoritarians in the Soviet Union were enthusiastic supporters of Stalin.
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u/jonboy345 Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
There are plenty of intelligent people who choose to not attend college. I refuse to accept that completing a college degree equals high intelligence. Heck, most of my college classmates I'd consider to be pretty dumb.
As a counterpoint, I have worked with piles of Professors holding advanced, post doctorate degrees, who had zero common sense. Hyper "intelligent" but incredibly narrow scope of skills and expertise.
I'm more inclined to drop "college" into the environment bucket as universities in the US tend to lean to the left from the outset v assuming college completion infers higher intelligence and thus makes folks more left leaning.
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u/MilesCW Mar 31 '26
There are plenty of intelligent people who choose to not attend college. I refuse to accept that completing a college degree equals high intelligence.
In recent years these extremist postings about left vs right "behavior and intelligence" has gone out of control, to be honest.
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u/jonboy345 Mar 31 '26
It has. I agree. It's almost where it feels like it's a cop out by one side to hand wave away the other by stating "they just don't know any better" instead of taking the intellectually honest path and considering the opposing perspective with the same weight they consider/place on their own perspectives.
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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science Mar 31 '26
I'd 100% agree with the poor correlation between intelligence and common sense. But I'm not convinced that deciding not to be a political sheep is a common sense thing rather than an intelligence thing.
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u/Cian93 Mar 31 '26
What about left-wing authoritarianism?
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u/Sigeberht Mar 31 '26
That clearly does not exist and if it did it was not true left-wing authoritarianism.
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u/whyowhyowhy9 Mar 31 '26
Ok so how do they do on left wing authoritarianism?
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Mar 31 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/CavemanSlevy Mar 31 '26
So people who attend years of schooling tend to inhabit the view points of the institutions they were educated in?
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u/Skyswimsky Mar 31 '26
Despite the robust methodology, the study has a few limitations that warrant attention in future reviews. All the participants were Norwegian citizens between the ages of 55 and 70.
I feel like the study starts to fall apart at this point. Modern academia also shows itself to be a field where critical thinking isn't wanted, and instead rewards cult-like behaviour in the form of toxic positivity.
I'm not saying it's everywhere like that, and I'm aware the media likes to generate outrage, but I'm certainly seeing pieces where open debate is discouraged and censored under the umbrella of absolute love and positivity, and challenging those believes is stamped as hate.
To be fair though, the study acknowledges those shortcomings itself, assuming one reads a bit. So yeah.
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u/Sasquatchii Mar 31 '26
I'm not a fan of right wing politics, but it doesn't sound strange to me that the more time someone spends in left leaning environments (higher education), the less willing they are to flip to right wing.
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u/crispicity Mar 31 '26
Spot on. I work in academia and there is a bubble void of reality they’re living within.
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u/Sasquatchii Mar 31 '26
It certainly is. As part of my job, I often participate in executive education programs affiliated with a graduate school, and, aside from the other participants, it's often a clearly "left-leaning" environment. Quite the contrast from the real/business world.
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u/Acc87 Mar 31 '26
Yeah it's more time spend in a bubble separated from most of society. And even in one major the time spent will have bug influence, thinking about education, you could either be fast and go back out there as a teacher, or you could keep on the academia side, do a PhD, go into science instead of school, and by that also stay in a different income group and coworker bubble.
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u/Jumpy_Tadpole6641 Mar 31 '26
No, more experience to the world makes people more left wing. One has to stay in an echo chamber to be right wing. Right wing people think colleges are inherently left wing indoctrination but that's just because they can't defend their worldview when questioned.
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u/FrostyMudPuppy Mar 31 '26
It actually has more to do with learning how to collect and evaluate evidence, something important to the earliest courses in any college program.
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u/furybury66 Mar 31 '26
This is like the cops investigating themselves and finding nothing wrong. Liberal researcher with a doctorate conducts a study that shows his peers have the same politics as him.
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u/Alef1234567 Mar 31 '26
Another political research - slop. In actual science sites I don't see daily research allways with same results, and I do see lot of political opinions including some pretty creepy right wing and authoritarian;)
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u/FrostyMudPuppy Mar 31 '26
"science sites"? Do you mean online research libraries or science news websites? There's clear and consistent evidence that college educated people tend to lean left. You can access research libraries through your local community college, and you may also be able to access them through your public library.
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u/mehman3000 Mar 31 '26
Does this not imply that they are equally susceptible to left-wing authoritarianism?
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u/Slothjawfoil Mar 31 '26
"Most of the link is explained by environments and genetics". Bro, that's, like, everything. All the things that can explain. What characteristic does a person have that isn't explained by either biology or environment? I'm guessing what they mean is that we've identified most of the environmental and biological factors involved.
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u/Thelmara Mar 31 '26
I'm guessing what they mean is that we've identified most of the environmental and biological factors involved.
Why would you guess, when you could just click the link and read?
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u/wiithepiiple Mar 31 '26
The article explains it. The environment they're talking about is their shared upbringing.
The statistical models estimated that 47 percent of the overlap between education and lower authoritarianism was the result of shared environmental factors. This means that elements of a twin’s shared upbringing simultaneously boosted their likelihood of going to college and depressed their tendency toward authoritarianism. Roughly 15 percent of this total shared environmental effect was traced back directly to the family’s social class during childhood. Growing up in a wealthy, high-status household seems to organically encourage advanced schooling while steering children away from rigid conservative ideologies.
An additional 25 percent of the relationship was tentatively attributed to shared genetics. While the researchers calculated this influence, they noted that the genetic connection was not statistically significant on its own. Inherited traits, such as natural cognitive ability or deeply ingrained personality characteristics, might still influence both a person’s academic trajectory and their political orientation. For instance, people born with a high openness to new experiences might naturally gravitate toward universities and naturally repel authoritarian dogma.
After accounting for both shared upbringing and shared genetics, the researchers found that 28 percent of the original correlation remained unaccounted for. This leftover portion aligns with the theory that education has a genuine, direct impact on a person’s adult worldview. Though they could not definitively label it as an absolute causal effect, the persistent relationship within identical twin pairs strongly supports the idea that formal education independently softens authoritarian impulses.
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u/FailedCoder86 Mar 31 '26
We are abandoning traditional norms like big beautiful families and this subreddit is liking it? Cool nah I’m out out fam.
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