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   From: xeton2001@yahoo.com   
      
   Trump's Appeal to the Cognitively Challenged   
   New research reports Trump voters were more likely to perform poorly on a   
   test of intellectual ability.   
      
       Tom Jacobs   
       Oct 4, 2018   
      
   Mark Searles waits for the arrival of President Donald Trump at his Make   
   America Great Again Rally at the Florida State Fair Grounds Expo Hall on   
   July 31st, 2018, in Tampa, Florida.   
      
   (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)   
      
   During the 2016 election, Donald Trump famously proclaimed "I love the   
   poorly educated!" Well, if "poorly educated" is a euphemism for   
   "cognitively challenged," new research finds they loved him right back.   
      
   It reports Trump voters, on average, performed more poorly than Hillary   
   Clinton supporters on a standard test widely regarded as a good indicator   
   of intellectual ability.   
      
   "Intellectual factors played an important role in the 2016 election,"   
   writes a research team led by Yoav Ganzach of Tel Aviv University. "These   
   results suggest that the 2016 U.S. presidential election had less to do   
   with party affiliation, income, or education, and more to do with basic   
   cognitive ability."   
      
   In the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, Ganzach and   
   his colleagues analyzed data from the American National Election Studies,   
   which included 5,914 participants in 2012 and 4,271 in 2016.   
      
   Besides expressing their attitudes toward that year's presidential   
   candidates, participants took a standard test of verbal ability.   
   Specifically, they were presented with 10 sets of words, and asked "to   
   identify the word or phrase in a set of five that was the closest to the   
   target word."   
      
   While hardly comprehensive, the test "is considered a good indicator of   
   general cognitive ability," the researchers note.   
      
   After taking into account participants' party affiliation, the researchers   
   found intellectual ability was a strong predictor of attitudes toward the   
   two major candidates in 2016. Specifically, they found "clear negative   
   relationships of verbal ability and education with attitude toward Trump."   
      
   In contrast, they found "weak, nonsignificant relationships of verbal   
   ability and education with attitude toward [Mitt] Romney" in his failed   
   2012 campaign. In both elections, higher levels of education and verbal   
   ability were associated with support for the Democratic candidate [Barack   
   Obama or Hillary Clinton].   
      
   "Support for Trump was better predicted by lower verbal ability than   
   education or income," the researchers add. "Our analyses indicate that   
   support for Trump was less about socioeconomic standing, and more about   
   intellect."   
      
   Ganzach and his team note that Trump, on the campaign trail, expressed his   
   opposition to both socially liberal beliefs (such as support for abortion   
   rights and opposition to racism) and fiscally conservative beliefs (such   
   as free trade). Both sets of beliefs have been linked in past research   
   with higher cognitive ability, so it makes sense that their appeal would   
   be largely limited to those who score lower on such measures.   
      
   This research adds to the rapidly growing list of findings attempting to   
   explain why the American voters (although not a majority) supported a   
   candidate widely viewed as lacking the qualifications or temperament to be   
   president.   
      
   While economic anxiety has been largely ruled out as a likely explanation,   
   studies have pointed to whites' fear of declining social status in a   
   rapidly changing society, as well as racist and sexist beliefs, tribalism,   
   possessing an authoritarian mindset, and even being prone to anxiety, and   
   thus susceptible to Trump's fear-based appeals.   
      
   Ganzach's findings align with those of another recent study that found   
   Democrats who crossed over to vote for him were the least likely   
   demographic to engage in analytical thinking. This may be because, in many   
   cases, they just aren't good at it.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)