Being more clever has been "strongly linked" to voting to Remain in the EU in the 2016 Brexit referendum, a study has shown.
Researchers from the University of Bath looked at whether cognitive skills including memory, verbal fluency and numerical reasoning were linked to how people decided to vote. It found that only 40% of people with the lowest cognitive ability voted Remain, while 73% of those with the highest cognitive ability voted remain.
Lead study author Dr Chris Dawson said: “Depending on which side of the debate you fall, reading this may fill you with anger or joy. However, both these emotions are an error of judgement." He warned the findings are based on "average differences", adding there is a "huge amount of overlap" between the spread of Remain and Leave cognitive abilities. "Indeed, we calculated that approximately 36% of Leave voters had higher cognitive ability than the average (mean) Remain voter,” he said.
Dr Dawson, from the University of Bath’s School of Management, said the study added to existing academic evidence showing that people with low cognitive ability are "more susceptible to misinformation and disinformation". "People with lower cognitive ability and analytical thinking skills find it harder to detect and discount this type of information," he added.
“We know that evidence has been put forward that information provided to the public in the months leading up to the referendum was contradictory, false and often fraudulent, especially regarding the pro-Leave campaign, and that this information proliferated on social media platforms.”
Brexit architect Nigel Farage has been grilled over his rhetoric during referendum on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! On Wednesday's episode of the ITV1 reality show, YouTuber Nella Rose said to Mr Farage "apparently you're anti-immigrants", which she said she read about on the internet.
As they both stood in the bath area of the camp, Ms Rose asked: "Why don't black people like you? Mr Farage said: "You'd be amazed, they do," to which Rose replied: "So everyone hates you for no reason?" The GB News presenter said: "You can disagree with somebody, but to chuck around accusations the way they've been chucked around is grossly unfair. Anti-immigrant, right? No, no, all I've said is we cannot go on with the numbers coming to Britain that are coming."
Ms Rose pressed Mr Farage on the "problem" of immigration because "I'm one of those numbers" - to which he said the pressure of the number of people was affecting GP appointments. She told the former politician: "I'm stopping you getting a GP appointment? You're not getting an appointment because the NHS is lacking funding. I bet you anything if every single immigrant or from immigrant descent was to leave the UK, all your doctors gone, most of your doctors are Asian right? Most of your nurses are African women, right? You want us gone, that's all I understood." Mr Farage said Ms Rose was not listening to him, before adding: "We can agree to disagree."
Mr Farage had previously been criticised by fellow jungle campmate Fred Sirieix about a poster, used by Mr Farage when he was campaigning for the UK to leave the European Union during the 2016 referendum, as "shameful". On Monday's episode, First Dates star Mr Sirieix added that he felt it was about "demonising migrants", to which Mr Farage replied: "In your view it was, but it wasn't."
The University of Bath study used a nationally representative sample of 6,366 individuals. The data came from Understanding Society, the largest longitudinal study of UK households.