The cultural-mediation hypothesis:

"... situational factors might play a significant role in mediating the direction of the correlation between IQ and political attitudes. This is the basis of the cultural-mediation hypothesis (Woodley 2010), which is based on the dual processing theory of culture (MacDonald,2009, 2010). The hypothesis is predicated upon the idea that humans possess explicit processing mechanisms such as general intelligence and effortful control — the Conscientious-ness associated capacity to regulate emotional states and action tendencies (MacDonald 2008), which gives them the ability to rationally and creatively imagine possible worlds in conformity with a moral ideal and to override spontaneous implicit orientations (MacDonald 2010) — such as the moral intuition mechanisms which are likely at the root of heritable individual differences in political orientation (Haidt 2001). High-IQ aids individuals in the identification of the normative center of gravity of a group or society, furthermore it permits individuals to realize the benefits associated with acquiescing to a set of culturally constructed norms (i.e. adopting a particular set of political attitudes or embracing/rejecting religious values),such as acquiring social status. Effortful control permits individuals to overcome the cognitive dissonance that arises from explicating attitudes that are at variance to implicit moral intuitions at an emotional level, through the use of mechanisms such as self-deception (MacDonald 2008).

The cultural-mediation hypothesis therefore predicts that where the normative center of gravity of a culture could be described as rightist (such as in the case of South Africa in the 1980s, Australia in the 1960s or certain contemporary US States), intelligent and flexible individuals will explicitly process rightist ideologies and attitudes. Where the normative center of gravity is leftist (such as in the case of modern day post-materialist Australia and the UK), such individuals will come to explicitly process leftist ideologies and attitudes."

Problematic constructs and cultural-mediation
Michael A. Woodley (2011)