TY - JOUR
T1 - Education, intelligence, and attitude extremity
AU - Makowsky, Michael D.
AU - Miller, Stephen C.
N1 - Funding Information:
Michael D. Makowsky is an assistant professor in the Center for Advanced Modeling in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA. Stephen C. Miller is an associate professor of economics in the College of Business at Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC, USA. The authors wish to thank Chris Cooper, Bryan Caplan, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions. This work was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health [DP1OD003874 to Joshua Epstein]; and the Western Carolina University College of Business Summer Research Grant [to S. C. M.]. *Address correspondence to Michael D. Makowsky, Center for Advanced Modeling, Department of Emergency Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, 5801 Smith Ave, Suite 3220, Davis Building, Baltimore, MD 21209, USA; e-mail: mmakowsky@jhu.edu.
Publisher Copyright:
© © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
PY - 2014/12/1
Y1 - 2014/12/1
N2 - Education and general intelligence both serve to inform opinions, but do they lead to greater attitude extremity? The potential civic returns to education include not only the sophistication of citizen opinions, but also their moderation. We use questions on economic policy, social issues, and environmental issues from the General Social Survey to test the impact of education on attitude extremity, as measured by deviation from centrist or neutral positions, while controlling for intelligence. We use quantile regression modeling to identify effects on both the most extreme beliefs as well as the most ambivalent. We find that intelligence is a moderating force across the entire distribution in economic, social, and environmental policy beliefs. Completing high school strongly correlates to reduced extremity, particularly in the upper quantiles. College education increases attitude extremity in the lower tail, while postgraduate education increases extremity in the upper tail. Results are discussed in the context of enlightenment and motivated-reasoning theories of beliefs and education. The relevance to political party core and swing voters is briefly discussed.
AB - Education and general intelligence both serve to inform opinions, but do they lead to greater attitude extremity? The potential civic returns to education include not only the sophistication of citizen opinions, but also their moderation. We use questions on economic policy, social issues, and environmental issues from the General Social Survey to test the impact of education on attitude extremity, as measured by deviation from centrist or neutral positions, while controlling for intelligence. We use quantile regression modeling to identify effects on both the most extreme beliefs as well as the most ambivalent. We find that intelligence is a moderating force across the entire distribution in economic, social, and environmental policy beliefs. Completing high school strongly correlates to reduced extremity, particularly in the upper quantiles. College education increases attitude extremity in the lower tail, while postgraduate education increases extremity in the upper tail. Results are discussed in the context of enlightenment and motivated-reasoning theories of beliefs and education. The relevance to political party core and swing voters is briefly discussed.
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U2 - 10.1093/poq/nfu041
DO - 10.1093/poq/nfu041
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84928743138
SN - 0033-362X
VL - 78
SP - 832
EP - 858
JO - Public Opinion Quarterly
JF - Public Opinion Quarterly
IS - 4
ER -