“Does intelligence signal goodness? An implicit association between intelligence and morality?”

Abstract

Although there is research that investigates the correlation between intellect and morality in explicit behavior, no research examines the implicit attitudes participants exhibit between these two concepts. This study 1) looks at the degree of implicit association college students display between intellect and morality and 2) examines how ingroup and outgroup membership influences this degree of association. This study primed Princeton University students think of an academic ingroup or academic outgroup before taking an implicit association test that measured the degree of this association. As hypothesized, Princeton University students displayed a moderately strong association between the concepts, intellect and morality. However, the degree of association between these two concepts did not significantly differ between the priming of one’s academic ingroup/outgroup. In addition to these findings, we discovered ethnicity to significantly affect the degree of association between intellect and morality independently—and through a main interaction with the given primes within this study.