Musical aptitude and ability to handle emotions are hypothesized to be important predictors of creative work. The associations between musical aptitude, alexithymia, and having a creative occupation were assessed with linear multiple regression for men and women separately. Participants in the Swedish Twin Registry participated in an online survey, including musical tests for rhythm, pitch and melody discrimination, an IQ test and a test for alexithymia (inability to handle emotions). They also provided a job description, which was coded according to the O*NET system. The level of creativity for each occupation was defined by the O*NET mean rating of “thinking creatively.” Musicians (n = 43) were excluded. For men (n = 1,327), pitch predicted having creative work. This independent contribution was significant when controlling for age, education, and intelligence although the magnitude of the association decreased when the intelligence score was included. For women (n = 1,908), alexithymia and rhythm predicted having creative work, controlling for age and education. With intelligence score, the independent contribution of rhythm score became nonsignificant while the contribution of alexithymia remained significant. For men, a high pitch score is associated with having creative work, regardless of education and general intelligence. For women ability to handle emotions is associated with creative work. Since subjects working professionally as musicians were excluded from the analyses the associations are not confined to musical creativity but seem to have a more general nature, suggesting that musical aptitude taps into domain-general factors of importance for real life creative engagement.

Quotas are employed or proposed in several European countries as a means to decrease differences in outcomes across groups. Quotas belong to a family of biased selection and treatment measures based on group membership, rather than individual ability. The effects of such measures depend on the underlying model of the relevant variables and their relationships, but this model is not explicit in the political discourse. Here, thematic analysis is applied to statements that argue for legislated sex quotas in Sweden, issued by leading politicians and government officials. The most common, recurrent themes are that: (a) Women are at least as able as men; (b) less able men are currently selected over more able women; (c) the proportion of women should be increased to at least 40%, which (d) will increase organizations' quality and productivity; (e) this should be achieved by means of quotas but (f) not through improved meritocratic assessment. It is shown that these claims are inconsistent, as (1) improved meritocratic assessment was not proposed, although that would more effectively select the more able than would quotas, and (2) quotas will lead to lower rather than higher quality and productivity, as it demands that the less able be appointed if they are female. This suggests that the purpose of quotas is to increase the influence of the favored group even if it is currently less able.

Numerous studies have found a negative relationship between religiousness and IQ. It is in the region of - 0.2, according to meta-analyses. The reasons for this relationship are, however, unknown. It has been suggested that higher intelligence leads to greater attraction to science, or that it helps to override evolved cognitive dispositions such as for religiousness. Either way, such explanations assume that the religion-IQ nexus is on general intelligence (g), rather than some subset of specialized cognitive abilities. In other words, they assume it is a Jensen effect. Two large datasets comparing groups with different levels of religiousness show that their IQ differences are not on g and must, therefore, be attributed to specialized abilities. An analysis of the specialized abilities on which the religious and non-religious groups differ reveals no clear pattern. We cautiously suggest that this may be explicable in terms of autism spectrum disorder traits among people with high IQ scores, because such traits are negatively associated with religiousness.