Does intelligence explain the association between generalized trust and economic development?

The Cynical Genius Illusion: Exploring and Debunking Lay Beliefs About Cynicism and Competence

Cynicism refers to a negative appraisal of human nature-a belief that self-interest is the ultimate motive guiding human behavior. We explored laypersons' beliefs about cynicism and competence and to what extent these beliefs correspond to reality. Four studies showed that laypeople tend to believe in cynical individuals' cognitive superiority. A further three studies based on the data of about 200,000 individuals from 30 countries debunked these lay beliefs as illusionary by revealing that cynical (vs. less cynical) individuals generally do worse on cognitive ability and academic competency tasks. Cross-cultural analyses showed that competent individuals held contingent attitudes and endorsed cynicism only if it was warranted in a given sociocultural environment. Less competent individuals embraced cynicism unconditionally, suggesting that-at low levels of competence-holding a cynical worldview might represent an adaptive default strategy to avoid the potential costs of falling prey to others' cunning.

The process of deforestation in weak democracies and the role of Intelligence

This article examines the interconnection between national intelligence, political institutions, and the mismanagement of public resources (deforestations). The paper examines the reasons for deforestation and investigates the factors accountable for it. The analysis builds on authors-compiled cross-national dataset on 185 countries over the time period of twenty years, from 1990 to 2010. We find that, first, nation's intelligence reduces significantly the level of deforestation in a state. Moreover, the nations' IQ seems to play an offsetting role in the natural resource conservation (forest management) in the countries with weak democratic institutions. The analysis also discovered the presence of the U-shaped relationship between democracy and deforestation. Intelligence sheds more light on this interconnection and explains the results. Our results are robust to various sample selection strategies and model specifications. The main implication from our study is that intelligence not only shapes formal rules and informal regulations such as social trust, norms and traditions but also it has the ability to reverse the paradoxical process known as "resource curse." The study contributes to better understanding of reasons of deforestation and shed light on the debated impact of political regime on forest management.

IQ AND SOCIOECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ACROSS REGIONS OF THE UK

Cross-regional correlations between average IQ and socioeconomic development have been documented in many different countries. This paper presents new IQ estimates for the twelve regions of the UK. These are weakly correlated (r=0.24) with the regional IQs assembled by Lynn (1979). Assuming the two sets of estimates are accurate and comparable, this finding suggests that the relative IQs of different UK regions have changed since the 1950s, most likely due to differentials in the magnitude of the Flynn effect, the selectivity of external migration, the selectivity of internal migration or the strength of the relationship between IQ and fertility. The paper provides evidence for the validity of the regional IQs by showing that IQ estimates for UK nations (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) derived from the same data are strongly correlated with national PISA scores (r=0.99). It finds that regional IQ is positively related to income, longevity and technological accomplishment; and is negatively related to poverty, deprivation and unemployment. A general factor of socioeconomic development is correlated with regional IQ atr=0.72.