Are Remainers brighter than Brexiteers? People who voted ‘Leave’ in the 2016 referendum have lower cognitive ability, study claims
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Why the Brexit referendum favored the Leave campaign on voting day – 23 June 2016 – may never have been clearer.
But a new study suggests that voters’ intelligence — and their susceptibility to misinformation — played a role.
Using a sample of Britons, the researchers looked at how accurately they voted, as well as their intelligence, as determined by performance on cognitive tasks.
They found a link between higher performance on tasks and voting to remain in the EU, suggesting that people who want to remain in the EU have higher intelligence.
However, the study’s method only looked at data from just over 6,000 voters in the referendum, a far cry from the 33.5 million who cast ballots that day.
The fact that the role of cognitive ability in explaining the referendum result has attracted so little attention from academics is “surprising”, researchers from the University of Bath say.
New research from the University of Bath’s School of Management has found that higher cognitive ability was strongly linked to voting to remain in the UK’s 2016 referendum on EU membership.
The new study was led by Chris Dawson, an associate professor at the University of Bath’s School of Management, who previously led the study he said on Twitter He is “extremely disappointed” by Brexit.
“The relationship between cognitive ability and referendum voting behavior has always emerged anecdotally in the UK, particularly on social media platforms,” Professor Dawson said.
“Given this account, we thought it would be interesting to see if there was any empirical evidence to support it.
“What our results suggest is that misinformation about the referendum can complicate decision-making, especially for people with low cognitive ability.”
Professor Dawson said much of the information provided to the public in the run-up to the Brexit vote – much of which was circulated extensively online – was “contradictory, false and often deceptive”.
He cited Boris Johnson’s claim that Brexit would save the NHS £350 million a week, which was later described as “false” and a “clear misuse of official statistics”.
Johnson’s demand was famously printed on large red election campaign buses which included the message “Let’s take back control”.
However, the claims made by the Remain campaign about Brexit – such as the immediate economic shock and threat to peace with EU countries on the continent – have also been controversial.
For the study, the researchers analyzed data from 3,183 heterosexual couples (6,366 individuals in total) collected as part of a large survey called Understanding Society.
For the survey, cognitive skills were assessed through five tasks related to memory, verbal fluency, flexible thinking, and numerical reasoning skills.
The Vote Leave campaign has been rebuked over the use of a £350m figure by the UK Statistics Authority
A person with higher cognitive ability is more likely to vote Remain in the Brexit vote, researchers have revealed. Pictured is an empty ballot box in Manchester on Thursday, June 23, 2016 – the day of the Brexit referendum.
For example, in one task, subjects were given one minute to name as many animals as possible, and scores were based on the number of unique correct answers.
In another task, participants had to remember several words as quickly as possible – either immediately or later.
By looking at overall performance on the five tasks, the researchers were able to make comparisons between cognitive ability and how participants voted on June 23, 2016.
According to the team, among those ranked lowest in terms of cognitive ability, only 40 percent voted to remain.
But a much higher proportion of those who achieved the highest level of cognitive ability – 73 per cent – voted to remain.
Furthermore, a one standard deviation increase in cognitive ability increased the probability of voting Remain by 9.7 percent.
The researchers statistically took into account other factors that could also be linked to voting decisions, such as income, personality, age, gender, education, political views, and which newspaper they read.
Professor Dawson admitted there was still a “considerable amount of overlap” in terms of the cognitive abilities of Remain and Leave voters.
For example, 36% of Remain voters were found to have higher cognitive abilities than the average Remain voters.
The academic said: “Depending on which side of the debate you fall on, reading this may fill you with anger or joy.”
“However, both of these sentiments are an error in judgment.”
The researchers looked at any links between performance on cognitive ability tasks and how participants voted on June 23, 2016. Pictured are voters in Reading, Berkshire
Brexit supporters applaud as the national result is announced at the announcement of the EU referendum at Manchester Town Hall on June 24, 2016.
Interestingly, having a partner with high cognitive ability and the highest cognitive ability of the couple increases the probability of voting Remain.
Professor Dawson said: “When we restricted our analysis to heterosexual couples who voted in a discordant way – i.e. one voted to remain and the other voted to leave – we still saw evidence that higher cognitive ability was associated with voting to remain.”
“Comparing the voting behavior of people within pairs is really useful because they are likely to have similar exposure to information or experiences of living in the UK – factors that are likely to be important in political decision making.”
The study’s authors blame social media platforms and mass media for the increased volume and accessibility of misinformation and disinformation.
They claim that taking the results into account, using tools such as online fact-checkers could limit the impact of misinformation in the run-up to future elections.
The study was published today in the journal One plus.
(tags for translation) Daily Mail