{"id":13964,"date":"2025-03-12T11:32:44","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T10:32:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/?p=13964"},"modified":"2025-03-12T11:32:44","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T10:32:44","slug":"the-us-congress-is-also-an-intelligence-meritocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/2025\/03\/the-us-congress-is-also-an-intelligence-meritocracy\/","title":{"rendered":"The US congress is also an intelligence meritocracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Shiftant\/status\/1899546594720063811\">S. Lant had a good idea over on Twitter<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13965\" src=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/congress-tweet.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1214\" height=\"2436\" srcset=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/congress-tweet.png 1214w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/congress-tweet-150x300.png 150w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/congress-tweet-510x1024.png 510w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/congress-tweet-768x1541.png 768w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/congress-tweet-765x1536.png 765w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/congress-tweet-1021x2048.png 1021w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1214px) 100vw, 1214px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Fellow poaster Jerome Sneed Democrat had a second good idea:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There was that IQ study that showed that Episcopalians were the one religious group with higher IQ than Jews.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/helmuthnyborg.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Publ_2009_The-Intellligence-Religiosity-Nexus.pdf\">Indeed there was! It was Helmuth Nyborg&#8217;s 2009 study<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I compiled the congress data from Pew from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/religion\/2021\/01\/04\/faith-on-the-hill-2021\/\">117th<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/religion\/2023\/01\/03\/faith-on-the-hill-2023\/\">118th<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/religion\/2025\/01\/02\/faith-on-the-hill-2025\/\">119th<\/a> congress to stabilize the numbers slightly (didn&#8217;t help much because people rarely change). I also threw in a replication based on another Pew research survey that measured intelligence in the form of science knowledge. Grouping the 1000+ Christian variaties into the Pew religious categories in the congress table was done by regex best of my (quick) ability. Then we get this table:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13966\" src=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/religion-iq-congress.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1808\" height=\"1108\" srcset=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/religion-iq-congress.png 1808w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/religion-iq-congress-300x184.png 300w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/religion-iq-congress-1024x628.png 1024w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/religion-iq-congress-768x471.png 768w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/religion-iq-congress-1536x941.png 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1808px) 100vw, 1808px\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>IQ data from NLSY 1997, only for the Whites, whereas congress can be non-white. It&#8217;s a mismatch but I don&#8217;t want to download NLSY and redo this.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/377215887_Race_and_Sex_Differences_in_Science_Knowledge_Results_from_Pew_Research_Science_Surveys\">Sci knowledge from my study of Pew research&#8217;s 2015 survey.<\/a> They had questions about own religion and family religion in childhood.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The correlations:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13967\" src=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/correlations.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"3000\" height=\"1950\" srcset=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/correlations.png 3000w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/correlations-300x195.png 300w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/correlations-1024x666.png 1024w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/correlations-768x499.png 768w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/correlations-1536x998.png 1536w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/correlations-2048x1331.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 3000px) 100vw, 3000px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Beware the sample sizes were often bad (e.g. 11 Hindus with science scores) and the overlap in religious categories was not optimal either, and some groups are aggregates (&#8220;Christian&#8221;). Anyway, if we use the older larger sample size for Whites:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13968\" src=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/nlsy97.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"3000\" height=\"1950\" srcset=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/nlsy97.png 3000w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/nlsy97-300x195.png 300w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/nlsy97-1024x666.png 1024w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/nlsy97-768x499.png 768w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/nlsy97-1536x998.png 1536w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/nlsy97-2048x1331.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 3000px) 100vw, 3000px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And with the partial replication:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13969\" src=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/pew2015fam.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"3000\" height=\"1950\" srcset=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/pew2015fam.png 3000w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/pew2015fam-300x195.png 300w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/pew2015fam-1024x666.png 1024w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/pew2015fam-768x499.png 768w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/pew2015fam-1536x998.png 1536w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/pew2015fam-2048x1331.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 3000px) 100vw, 3000px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>p = 0.055, because of Buddhists (finally, something to blame them for: not being worldly enough to enter politics in sufficient numbers), p = 0.009 without them.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m pretty sure that if one compiled some more data to reduce the sampling error (e.g. NLSY79, GSS, ANES, other Pew studies, older congress compositions), one could improve upon these results. Looks like the US congress is also roughly speaking a meritocracy. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/371695470_A_Genetic_Hypothesis_for_American_RaceEthnic_Differences_in_Mean_g_A_Reply_to_Warne_2021_with_Fifteen_New_Empirical_Tests_Using_the_ABCD_Dataset\">Recall that in our study of the ABCD study<\/a>, we also found this result using polygenic scores and measured IQ, though the groups don&#8217;t match up so well with the congress groups.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13970\" src=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/abcd-groups-IQ-pgs.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1242\" height=\"1092\" srcset=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/abcd-groups-IQ-pgs.png 1242w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/abcd-groups-IQ-pgs-300x264.png 300w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/abcd-groups-IQ-pgs-1024x900.png 1024w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/abcd-groups-IQ-pgs-768x675.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1242px) 100vw, 1242px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>S. Lant had a good idea over on Twitter: Fellow poaster Jerome Sneed Democrat had a second good idea: There was that IQ study that showed that Episcopalians were the one religious group with higher IQ than Jews. Indeed there was! It was Helmuth Nyborg&#8217;s 2009 study. I compiled the congress data from Pew from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":13968,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2591],"tags":[3647,2273],"class_list":["post-13964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-intelligence-iq-cognitive-ability","tag-congress","tag-religion-filosofi","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13971,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13964\/revisions\/13971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}