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Category: Project

Description: The relationship between cognitive ability and political opinions is contested in general (Carl, 2014a; Ganzach, 2016; Onraet et al., 2015; Solon, 2014). Several recent studies have examined the relationship between cognitive ability and two axes of political opinion: 1) personal liberty and economic liberty (non-interventionalism/free marketism). Prior studies have found positive relationships between both axes of freedom and cognitive ability, but negative correlations between the two axes (Carl, 2014b, 2015). These studies have been carried out in the UK and the US, and it is currently unknown whether the findings will hold in other countries such as Denmark. The present study aims to determine whether this is the case. Furthermore, the sample already contains self-reported levels of personal liberalism and economic liberalism and it is of interest to find out how well these correlate with the traits estimated from 10 questions. The study builds upon a previously used sample with N≈500 and many variables including a brief measure of cognitive ability (Kirkegaard & Bjerrekær, 2016), but with an unknown retention rate, but it is not expected to be below 60% thus giving a sample size of at least 300. The survey adds another 23 content variables to the dataset: 10 about each political axis and 3 additional cognitive items.