Are You Smarter Than an Average American?
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in General Politics, MediaQuick, answer these three questions.
Which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives?
Who is the U.S. Secretary of State?
Who is the British Prime Minister?
Easy, right? Well, if you got all three correct, you scored better than 82% of your fellow American who took the quiz. The questions were part of a Pew Research Center for the People & the Press study that also matched up people’s success on the quiz with the media sources they most use for information.
Interesting factoid: Hannity and Colmes viewers did only 2% worse than NPR listeners.
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October 16th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Okay try this quiz. Get the answers right and you’re probably smarter than 99% of Americans.
1. Who is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee?
2. Who is current the Chancellor of Germany?
3. What party controls the British House of Commons?
October 16th, 2008 at 10:15 am
1. Patrick Leahy
2. Angela Merkel
3. Labour Party
October 16th, 2008 at 11:24 am
as a test of how informed people are those questions are pretty pathetic. that npr listeners are that uniformed is moderately disappointing. it just proves that people in this country are generally uniformed. there are some other surprising numbers there
Just 44 percent of BBC viewers identified the prime minister correctly.
CNN: 59 percent, 48 percent, 29 percent
people who watch cnn are second only to the national inquirer in missing these questions. what does that say about the media in this country?
October 16th, 2008 at 11:35 am
1. What is your name?
2. What is your favorite color?
3. What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
October 16th, 2008 at 11:46 am
1. I don’t know HALP MEH NOE MY NAME!
2. Ummmmm…
3. Don’t care, but obama’s a socialist and McCain’s a fascist OMGZ!!!
The findings are troubling. The media’s a whole is a shell of it’s former self, dissolved to sound bites, sensational and repetition type propaganda, thanks to 24 hour news cycles. it also doesn’t help that logic and critical thinking is completely out the window these days. Really frightening.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Some people are more informed than others about politics, others are more curious. “Smartness” isn’t directly tied to those two things. Lots of smart people never read a newspaper: they’re too busy trying to figure out how to make their kids happy for example. Picasso knew nothing of politics but he was a genius. (He joined the Communist Party when he was older, courted by the Communists. He said they made him feel young and wanted. When he gave a speech at one of their meetings he talked about color. Everyone fell asleep!)
You know, all this “smartness is knowing the stuff I know about” is just so much snobbery.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Yes.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
What is really sad is the percentage of Americans that don’t know the first line in our national anthem but know the first line in Canada’s.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
I can see why people don’t know that. They have given up on our politicians, and for good reason. There is more to life than politics. Most people also don’t follow politics for a living.
Also, those questions are not a measure of intelligence, although saying it is may be…..
December 1st, 2008 at 3:03 am
I’d say they don’t know for this simple reason:
No one ever tells them (they have to find out for themselves).