People with higher childhood intelligence scores tend to have more socially progressive attitudes as adults, but this relationship is highly dependent on whether they attended college. A new study shows that advanced education acts as a catalyst, encouraging people with excellent academic ability to abandon traditional social norms in their 20s. These findings were published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Past research has consistently associated improved cognitive abilities with nontraditional social beliefs. Adults who score high on intelligence tests generally demonstrate a greater willingness to question traditional social hierarchies. They also tend to resist dogmatism, which is dogmatic adherence to a rigid set of beliefs without consideration of evidence or alternative opinions.
The timeline for the development of this relationship remains unclear. Researchers wanted to know whether children with higher intelligence are inherently more open-minded from an early age. Alternatively, outdoor experiences in early adulthood may play a role in broadening horizons over time.
Joshua Eisen, a psychologist at the University of South Alabama, led a team of researchers to examine how these attitudes evolve. Eisen and his colleagues suspected that exposure to higher education might act as a moderating factor. In statistics, a moderating condition is a variable that affects the strength or direction of the relationship between two other concepts.
Investigators contrasted this idea with an intermediary relationship. If education were just an intermediary, it would mean that intelligence gets people into university, and university makes people more progressive. Under the moderation framework, researchers proposed that intelligent individuals must be placed in specific academic environments to fully realize progressive learning.
The researchers hypothesized that the university environment actively encourages students to critically evaluate the existing social order. Students with stronger cognitive skills are likely to process these lessons more deeply. These individuals represent the students who most effectively absorb the professor’s assigned content. This increase in academic absorptive capacity may predictably lead to broader changes in worldview.
The researchers first examined a cross-sectional sample of 3,291 middle-aged parents. These people were participating in the Minnesota Twin Families Study, a large-scale project that tracks the health and development of local families. The researchers collected data on parents’ intelligence scores, overall educational attainment, and adherence to traditional social values.
Parents completed a questionnaire designed to measure their preference for strict moral standards and respect for traditional authority. Questions asked participants about their opinions on indecent behavior, religious authority, and strict parental discipline. Higher scores on this assessment indicate a more traditional and strict worldview. The researchers mapped these survey responses against parents’ educational background and cognitive ratings.
For this older group, more years of schooling amplified the link between intelligence and progressive attitudes. Among parents who attended college, higher cognitive ability strongly predicted rejection of traditional norms. For parents who finished their education after high school, the association between intelligence and social attitudes was relatively weak.
To understand exactly how this ideological difference arises, the researchers conducted a second study that followed 2,769 descendants of the same families. The researchers evaluated 17-year-olds, most of whom had not yet entered college. They followed up the participants two more times, at ages 24 and 29.
At each stage, participants answered questions about their social beliefs and reported their educational progress. The researchers used statistical modeling to observe how each individual’s attitudes changed as they reached adulthood. This strategy allowed us to capture real developmental changes rather than relying on a single snapshot in time.
By tracking these developmental trajectories, researchers observed that individual outcomes differed based on educational pathway. Some experienced rapid ideological changes over a short period of time, while others maintained stable beliefs throughout the testing period. This numerical change provided an optimal dataset to isolate the distinct effects of academic exposure.
To ensure that the survey questions had exactly the same meaning for teens as they did for adults, researchers analyzed the psychological structure of survey responses across different age groups. They found that the questionnaire reliably measured a consistent set of beliefs about moral rigor at every stage of the timeline. This statistical consistency gave the research team confidence that they were tracking true ideological change.
At age 17, there was no correlation between intelligence and progressive attitudes. In fact, the teens who ended up enrolling in four-year colleges started out with slightly more traditional values ​​than other students. The researchers suggested that traditional teens may be more willing to follow the expectations of teachers and parents, smoothing the path to college admissions.
As participants entered their 20s, attitudes began to differ sharply. For those who did not attend college, traditional beliefs actually increased slightly as they entered adulthood. Their childhood intelligence scores had no measurable impact on how their social views changed over time.
Developmental trajectories appeared to be significantly different for college-educated participants. Those who pursued higher education became progressively less traditional between the ages of 17 and 29. The magnitude of this ideological change was closely related to their cognitive abilities.
Students with higher intelligence scores experienced most of the decline in traditional attitudes during their college years. The researchers found that the combination of college education and high intelligence predicted a strong shift toward progressive ideology. This effect expanded with educational attainment. This phenomenon was most noticeable among those who went on to graduate school or vocational school.
The researchers considered whether this change was due to faculty guidance or peer influence. They reasoned that if peer conformity was the main factor, highly intelligent students would be less likely to conform to their classmates. Previous cognitive research has shown that people with stronger intellectual abilities tend to be more resistant to persuasion by colleagues. The social environment created by professors and university curriculum likely played a direct role, as the best students showed the greatest changes.
Alternatively, the researchers looked at explanations based on cultural institutions. In the modern academic environment, advocating for social change carries immense cultural prestige. Intelligent individuals may simply be better able to recognize these prevailing cultural norms and adjust their superficial beliefs accordingly.
The observational nature of the study means that the results cannot conclusively prove that college attendance causes progressive attitudes. Intelligence shapes the particular type of university environment that students experience. Highly talented students may choose to participate in more rigorous academic programs or attend institutions with more pronounced progressive campus cultures.
Other major life events that occur in your 20s can also impact your social attitudes. People who drop out of college often marry and have children at a younger demographic age. These early family responsibilities may independently promote the adoption of more traditional social values.
Further details of the study concern the specific terminology used in the test materials. Traditionalist evaluations focused on individual action rather than public policy or state coercion. Because the questions assess personal rule-abiding rather than political hostility, the results may change if researchers apply different measures of ideological intolerance in future tests.
This study also focuses on a single region of the United States. Participants were primarily Caucasians from the Upper Midwest. Future research should replicate the findings using more ethnically and geographically diverse populations.
The researchers plan to investigate how emotional competence influences ideological development during college. Traits such as delayed gratification may help talented students tackle difficult coursework more consistently. Additional data on specific college majors could also help reveal which academic environments most effectively reshape social perspectives.
The study, “Does Progressive Ideology Stand the Test? Education and Intelligence in the Development of Nontraditional Attitudes,” was authored by Joshua D. Eisen, Stephen G. Ludeke, Timothy F. Bainbridge, Matt K. McGue, and William G. Iacono.
