Next time you call group of right-wing racists a bunch of idiots, you can back yourself up with one simple word: Science!

Researchers  from Ontario, Canada’s Brock University have been slaving over test  results to come to the conclusion that many  not-so-scientifically-inclined have said for ages — both right-wing  thinkers and racists alike are kind of dumb.

The conclusion  comes after spotting a correlation between children with low IQs and  their ideologies later in life. It turns out that those with limited  intelligence at a younger age are more likely to exhibit racist  tendencies and favor more conservative political thinking as adults.

Dr.  Gordon Hodson, a professor of psychology and primary author of the  findings, explains to Live Science that the, well, science of the issue  is rather simple.

“Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order,”  explains Dr. Hodson. Structure and order, of course, are much easier to  make sense of than, say, disarray and chaos. Given that, the less  intelligent will gravitate towards more manageable ideals and, as he  says, “Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice.”

The  study in its entirely was published this week in the journal  Psychological Science, and there Dr. Hodson and Michael A Busseri write  that after studying a data set of 15,874 persons from the UK, “we  found that lower general intelligence in childhood predicts greater  racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via  conservative ideology.”

Full Story