Something I always look at in these kinds of studies is what the sample group is. There's a statistical phenomenon called "explaining away" which often causes s

Something I always look at in these kinds of studies is what the sample group is. There's a statistical phenomenon called "explaining away" which often causes spurious correlations. For example: measure the athletic and intellectual abilities of American college students. You'll find a fairly strong negative correlation, even though in the general population there's no correlation or a weak positive correlation. Why? Admission to college has two possible (but non-exclusive) explanations, athleticism and intellect. These explanations "compete" to explain the fact that a given student got in. Roughly speaking, the presence in the general population of unintelligent non-athletes contributes a positive term to the (near-zero) correlation. These people are removed from the student population, so the total correlation is lower, and hence negative. Now, this experiment studied student applicants to American universities. If both intelligence and social conservatism in some way cause people to apply to American colleges, a negative correlation between these traits will be induced in the pool of applicants. Off the top of my head, one such cause might be that people with higher social status are more likely to apply to university, and high social status correlates positively with increased acceptance of the social order. I find this rather more plausible than the easy conclusion that "conservatives are dumb", even though it's a more complex causal chain.