Maggie's Farm

Ah Ha! So what the Journal article title calls Right Wing Ideology and the article and press headlines call Conservative ideology was really a measure of authoritarianism. And another variable was the ability to think with "integrative complexity".
So the more you are able to see things from another's viewpoint, the less likely you are to be want to make rules for other people and the less likely you are to be prejudiced.
"Right wing" has nothing to do with it except that it has become a term of art amongst academic psychologists who cite Bob Altemeyer. It refers to psychological preferences and personality (preference for established authorities rather than insurgent ones), not to politics.
http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/chapter1.pdf

So as usual, once you remove the technical language and the bias from the reporting, an academic paper just tells us what we already know anyway.

I'm not sure what is most appalling thing about Ace's "Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice" link.

Is it the un-ironic echo of the "scientific racism" of Wilson's era? One would think that journalists concerned about prejudice would be a bit more careful not to be seen as so blatantly mimicking the discredited prejudices of the past.

Is it the article title, which clearly is meant to leave a false impression on readers who don't actually read the article? The caveats in the writing make clear that the headline isn't supported.

Is it the article itself, which exhibits a failing I find all too often in science reporting: Where is the link to the published research? In fact, even with the name of the lead researcher and his institution I can't find anything that is obviously the research upon which they are reporting. They have managed to obscure things really well, if that was their intention.

Or is it the research itself. It is clear to me that they are using a pre-existing long-term longitudinal study of a group of people in the UK from childhood through to adulthood. And then they are using a some rubric to convert the answers to survey questions into quantification of political ideology and attitudes to race. Is that rubric appropriate for UK people, or is it something developed in a different culture?

If we follow back thru Ace to Yahoo News to LiveScience, we get some of the original survey questions.
Thinking that full-time work for Mum will negatively affect family life is a sign of conservatism.
Thinking that schools should teach children to be respectful is a sign of conservatism.
I would really like to see more of the questions, because the responses would fairly obviously be multidimentional on other factors. After Murray, when I think of my low-IQ, low-skill neighbors in the council estate where I lived in the UK, the decision between work or dole is not one where I would have pegged "dole" as the conservative response. And with the constant news about the ever rising numbers of even young children being given "anti-social behaviour orders" by the police, (a Labour government innovation) perhaps the thought of teaching respect for authority in primary schools is equally prevalent across the political spectrum. And when the UK decided that citizens of the former soviet EU states could enter and work freely, my neighbors who worked in the building trades were very upset at the policy because they were being underbid, and no longer had any work or income. Is that a racist attitude? Or a protectionist one? How would it appear on this survey?