An alternative interpretation of climate data: Intelligence

Abstract

The CLASH model proposed in the target article is plausible but less than parsimonious. I suggest that statistical analysis probably would find slower life history strategy, greater focus on the future, and greater self-control to be highly correlated and perhaps unifactorial, because they are all manifestations of a single underlying variable, namely, intelligence. I suggest how intelligence as a state variable plausibly could explain the differences observed by the authors.

Likely Electromagnetic Foundations of Gender Inequality

“…Salahodjaev and Azam (2015) cited literature suggesting that intelligent individuals are more likely to provide greater freedom to less represented social groups and that intelligence leads to liberalism, prosociality, and a wider outlook. Sternberg (2017) noted that intelligence underlies time orientation and self-control; the higher the IQ, the greater the future orientation and self-control (Beran & Hopkins, 2018; Meldrum et al, 2017; Zajenkowski et al, 2016). These and other variables should be considered in future atmospheric-GI studies.…”

County-level USA: No Robust Relationship between Geoclimatic Variables and Cognitive Ability

“…For example, 80 authors replied to Van Lange et al's [19] target article on the Climate, Aggression, and Self-control in Humans model. Moreover, there has been increased interest in light of possible effects of climate change (e.g., [16], [18] ). Despite this, most research with cognitive ability as the criterion has used global or national samples where evolutionary history and geography are strongly confounded.…”

“…In line with this paradigm, geoclimatic variables have been offered to explain differences in cognitive outcomes (e.g., cognitive ability, future orientation, innovation, state intelligence, educational attainment). Specific latitude-associated causal factors include cold weather ( [16][17] ; see, relatedly, [18,19,13,20] ), latitude-dependent infectious disease ( [21][22][23] ), and ultraviolet radiation (UVR) ( [21,[24][25][26][27] ; also [13] ). These variables may share overlapping causal pathways.…”