Higher cognitive abilities are linked to actions that benefit society, such as charitable giving, voting and owning eco-friendly cars, according to a major Swedish study. The research, published in The Economic Journal, analysed nationwide records to determine whether objective measures of intelligence predict real-world prosocial behaviour. The study draws on data covering more than 1.2 million Swedish men and about 3,000 women who took a standardised cognitive test at military enlistment between 1969 and 1997.
Researchers then linked test scores to tax data from 2012 to 2015, electoral rolls for the 2009 European Parliament election, and a national vehicle database to identify households owning environmentally friendly vehicles.
Among men, those with the highest cognitive scores were more than five times as likely to donate to charity as those with the lowest scores; a one standard deviation rise in intelligence corresponded to a 40 per cent relative increase in charitable giving. The same increase predicted a 31 per cent higher likelihood of voting and a 14 per cent rise in eco-friendly car ownership. Women showed similar positive trends for charity and voting.
When examining types of intelligence, logical and verbal reasoning were the strongest predictors of prosocial action, consistent with the idea that these traits reflect general fluid intelligence.
To account for family background, the researchers studied 5,786 twin pairs. In pairs where one twin scored higher on enlistment tests, that twin was more likely to vote and donate. The associations were roughly halved in size compared with the full population: a one standard deviation increase in cognitive ability among twins corresponded to a 26 per cent rise in charitable giving and a 13 per cent rise in voting, with eco-friendly car ownership up 13 per cent.
A third analysis considered lifestyle factors such as education, total income, marriage status, children and municipality. Education explained a noticeable portion of the link between cognitive scores and civic behaviour, while income did not act as a major mediator. After accounting for these factors, the direct link between intelligence and owning an eco-friendly car was not statistically significant, but the direct connections to voting and charitable giving persisted.
A separate sample of around 600 men provided self-reported altruism data; higher cognitive abilities were associated with a higher degree of personal altruism, with a one standard deviation rise in cognitive ability linked to a 0.16 standard deviation increase in self-reported altruism. This pattern aligns with the behavioural records and supports the view that cognitive ability may influence prosocial behaviour through ethical reasoning and altruism.
The researchers emphasise that, while the twin analysis controls for many background factors, the findings do not establish causation in every scenario. The study focuses on Swedish men born between 1951 and 1979, and the exact percentages may vary across cultures, age groups or time periods. It also notes that prosocial behaviour might manifest in forms not captured by tax data or vehicle registrations, such as volunteering or neighbourly help. Further work is needed to explore how other cognitive functions, including empathy and the ability to read emotions, interact with general intelligence to shape cooperation.
The study, “An inquiry into the relationship between intelligence and prosocial behaviour: Evidence from Swedish population registers,” was authored by Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixson.
