Study: Conservative, Racist People Who Hate Liberals Are Dumb

The Type Of People You Hate Depends On How Smart You Are, Study Says
Who you hate is linked to your overall intelligence level.

• Christine Schoenwald

Last updated on Sep 07, 2025

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It's easy to link intelligence with kindness, but let's be real here. We're all humans. Humans are judgmental and sometimes hateful. It's just part of our nature. What that means when it comes right down to it is that no matter where you fall on the I.Q. scale, we all have moments of weakness that make us just dislike certain people. As it turns out, that dislike might actually reflect your intelligence, and it's all about who you hate, not the fact that you feel the way you do.

A study from Tilburg University, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, has found that prejudice may have to do with our overall intelligence. This basically reaffirms the theory that it may be human nature to dislike people who are different than us, especially those who don't look or think like us.

A study found that the type of people you hate reflects how smart you are.

For the study, researchers Mark Brandt and Jarret Crawford had 5,914 participants (a representative sample of the United States). The researchers first ascertained the subjects using a wordsum test (which is thought to be a good indicator of intelligence). Once the intelligence levels were determined, the participants were asked a series of questions that corresponded to two tests.

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The first test was "Who are the targets of prejudice?" The researchers grouped the targets into two categories: liberal / unconventional and conservative / conventional.

"We replicate prior negative associations between cognitive ability and prejudice for groups who are perceived as liberal, unconventional, and having lower levels of choice over group membership," the authors said. "We find the opposite (i.e., positive associations), however, for groups perceived as conservative, conventional, and having higher levels of choice over group membership."

The second test was "Who shows intergroup bias?" The researchers found that "people with both relatively higher and lower levels of cognitive ability show approximately equal levels of intergroup bias but toward different sets of groups."

Researchers found that the smartest people were more likely to hate those more conservative.

It all sounds a bit confusing, but it actually makes a whole lot of sense. If you find yourself disliking someone, examine the reasons why you dislike them. Is it because of a trait or status that they have no ability to change, like their culture or sexual orientation?

Or, is it because they have an opinion or a belief system that they have the capacity to alter, but choose not to, like believing that women shouldn't have the right to vote? Obviously, these are extreme examples, but they help clarify the study findings.

In a nutshell, people who have lower cognitive ability tend to be prejudiced against non-conventional or liberal groups, as well as groups who have no choice in their status, such as people who are defined by their race or gender. On the other hand, individuals of higher intelligence were likely to be prejudiced against groups considered conventional and groups thought to have a choice in their associations, such as conservatives.

Everyone, regardless of intelligence, engages in prejudiced behavior towards others.
"People dislike people who are different from them," Brandt and Crawford told Broadly. "Derogating people with different worldviews can help people maintain the validity of their own worldview."

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Brandt and Crawford referenced previous research that has shown that less intelligent people often essentialize or see different groups as being distinct from each other with clear boundaries and less of a threat.

"On the flipside, people high in cognitive ability express more prejudice against high-choice [conservative] groups," Brandt and Crawford said. "They may be especially angered by groups that they think should be able to change their minds."

Hate obviously has strong connotations of negativity, but it's also a fact of life. Human behavior makes us hardwired to dislike some people, whether they wronged us personally or their beliefs and mere existence make us feel threatened in some way. What this study ultimately proves is that before blindly fueling that hateful emotion, the better option is to take a moment and really think about why you feel the way you do. Then put yourself in the other person's shoes and try to understand their motivations. It might not make you suddenly like them, but if we can begin to understand the why behind this negative emotion, it's certainly a step in the right direction.