Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right
by Michael Brooks · 23 Apr 2020 · 88pp · 26,706 words
grown more complex. Possible explanations of the effect have to do with education, nutrition, and the presence of more stimulating environments. This is called “the Flynn Effect” and it led to a priceless moment in the otherwise laborious Harris/Klein debate. Harris, no doubt relying on his meditative psychic powers, told Klein
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
by David Epstein · 1 Mar 2019 · 406pp · 109,794 words
the average at 100. “As an outsider,” Flynn told me, “things strike me as surprising that I think people trained in psychometrics just accepted.” * * * • • • The Flynn effect—the increase in correct IQ test answers with each new generation in the twentieth century—has now been documented in more than thirty countries. The
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concepts.* Even recently, within some very traditional or orthodox religious communities that have modernized but that still block women from engaging in modern work, the Flynn effect has proceeded more slowly for women than for men in the same community. Exposure to the modern world has made us better adapted for complexity
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): 29–51; J. R. Flynn, “Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations,” Psychological Bulletin 101, no. 2 (1987): 171–91. For an excellent primer on the Flynn effect and response, see I. J. Deary, Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). tests that gauged material: In addition to interviews with
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‘Culture-Free’ Tests,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 142, no. 3 (2013): 979–1000. When a group of Estonian researchers: O. Must et al., “Predicting the Flynn Effect Through Word Abstractness: Results from the National Intelligence Tests Support Flynn’s Explanation,” Intelligence 57 (2016): 7–14. I first saw these results in St
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Constance Holden Memorial Address. Four attempts at getting a visa later, I arrived. The event was full of vigorous but civil debate, including over the Flynn effect, and was an excellent background resource. “The huge Raven’s gains”: J. R. Flynn, What Is Intelligence? Even in countries: E. Dutton et al., “The
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Negative Flynn Effect,” Intelligence 59 (2016): 163–69. And see Flynn’s Are We Getting Smarter? on, for example, trends in Sudan. Alexander Luria: Luria’s fascinating book
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Family Make You Smarter? provides peace of mind: S. Arbesman, Overcomplicated (New York: Portfolio, 2017), 158–60. “cognitively flexible”: C. Schooler, “Environmental Complexity and the Flynn Effect,” in The Rising Curve, ed. U. Neisser (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1998). And see: A. Inkeles and D. H. Smith, Becoming Modern: Individual Change
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may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader. abstract thinking and classification schemes, 44–45 and Flynn effect, 39 and language, 44–45 in math-skills acquisition, 79–81 and modern vs. premodern people, 39–44, 46–47 and Raven’s Progressive Matrices
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wilderness firefighting, 245–47, 248 Fischer, Bobby, 16 Fleisher, Leon, 76 flu predictions, 29–30 Flynn, James, 37–40, 44, 45, 47–50, 275, 277 Flynn effect, 37–40, 45–46 Flyvbjerg, Bent, 110–11 Foles, Nick, 8 food preservation, 173–74 Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute, 152 Freakonomics (Levitt), 131 Gaiman, Neil
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–96 inventors failures and breakthroughs of, 288 impacts of specialist vs. generalist, 9, 203–4, 205 See also innovation and innovators IQ scores and the Flynn effect, 37–40, 45–46 Israel Defense Forces, 19–20 Jackson, Kirabo, 132 Japan, 83–84, 281n jazz musicians, 68, 75–76 Jentleson, Katherine, 168–69
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money. Essentially, they had to move the light from upper left to bottom right. * Psychologists still hotly debate the contributions to and implications of the Flynn effect. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker characterized the gains as more than just a shift of thinking: “No historian who takes in the sweep of human history
Are We Getting Smarter?: Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century
by James R. Flynn · 5 Sep 2012
the University of Otago, New Zealand, and a recipient of the University’s Gold Medal for Distinguished Career Research. He is renowned for the “Flynn effect,” the documentation of massive IQ gains from one generation to another. Professor Flynn is the author of 12 books including Where Have All the Liberals
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148 150 153 155 164 181 Acknowledgments As stated in the text, Chapter 2 is a summary of my book, What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect (expanded paperback edition), Cambridge University Press (2009). An earlier version appeared in R. J. Sternberg and S. B. Kaufman (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of
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years in the ield: that psychology has somehow drifted away from sociology and suffered thereby. Five years ago I published What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect (2007) and updated it two years later in the expanded paperback edition (2009). I thought of updating it again. However, as indicated, my new
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took center stage. Within a decade, Herrnstein and 4 IQ and intelligence Murray (1994), the authors of The Bell Curve, called the phenomenon the “Flynn effect.” Nations with data about IQ trends stand at 31. Scandinavian nations had robust gains but these peaked about 1990 and since then, may have gone
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a memorandum. The memo urges that the report of a psychologist who wants to adjust the petitioner’s IQ scores in the light of the “Flynn effect” (IQ gains over time) should be precluded. It describes itself as a “Daubert motion” and argues that IQ adjustments do not qualify as reliable
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covers Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. All three appellate courts have taken a neutral stand, namely, that while altering IQ scores in the light of the Flynn effect is not mandatory, it is also not unreasonable. 84 Death, memory, and politics There are differences of nuance. Criticizing a prosecution case that the defendant
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not mentally retarded, the 11th Circuit said: “Moreover, all of the scores were on WAIS tests, which may have relected elevated scores because of the Flynn effect” (Holladay v. Allen, 2009, p. 1358; also see Thomas v. Allen, 2010). The 4th Circuit has held that lower courts must at least discuss
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whether the Flynn effect is relevant to the evaluation of the persuasiveness of expert testimony (Walker v. True, 2005, pp. 322–323; Walton v. Johnson, 2005, pp. 296
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use of their freedom and thus, the 11 that have weighed in thus far vary widely in terms of positive or negative attitudes toward the Flynn effect. Five are favorable. The Eastern District of Maryland “will, as it should, consider the Flynn-adjusted scores in its evaluation of the defendant’s
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said that: “a court should not look at a raw IQ score as a precise measurement of intellectual functioning. A court must also consider the Flynn effect … in determining whether a petitioner’s IQ score falls within a range containing scores that are less than 70” (Thomas v. Allen, 2009, p.
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v. Epps, 2009, pp. 894–895). The Southern District of Texas found that since the trial court had relied on a low estimate of the Flynn effect that could not be supported, the decision could be appealed (Butler v. Quarterman, 2008, pp. 815–817). Three federal district courts have been negative,
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, and Flynn is a political scientist” (Berry v. Epps, 2006, p. 35). The Northern District of Georgia was “not impressed by the evidence concerning the Flynn effect” (Ledford v. Head, 2008, pp. 8–9). The Northern District of Texas was also negative (Hall v. Quarterman, 2009). 86 Death, memory, and politics
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As for state courts, California is favorable. Both an appellate court and the Supreme Court upheld a trial court’s acceptance of the Flynn effect (People v. Superior Court of Tulare County, 2004, 2007). Ohio is guarded: the state Court of Appeals for the 10th District held that trial
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courts must consider Flynn effect evidence but that such evidence is not binding (State v. Burke, 2005, p. 13). Kentucky is negative. The Supreme Court said that the state
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important because the Supreme Court’s decisions bind all lower state courts. For example, in 2010, the Tennessee Appellate Court was favorably disposed to the Flynn effect but felt bound to ignore it thanks to its state Supreme Court (Coleman v. State, 2010, pp. 17–18). In Texas, the state Appellate
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Court held that the Flynn effect “does not provide a reliable basis for concluding that an appellant has signiicant sub-average general intellectual functioning” (Neal v. State, 2008, p. 275).
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However, it cites its own earlier decision, which is a bit softer: “This Court has never speciically addressed the scientiic validity of the Flynn effect. Nor will we attempt to do so now. Rather than try to extrapolate an accurate IQ by applying an unexamined scientiic concept to an incomplete
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and the result divided by 22 to get the rate in points per year. As Baxendale says (2010, p. 703): “It is unknown whether the Flynn effect is evident amongst patients with discreet pathologies that affect memory function, such as hippocampal sclerosis. For example, are the memory deicits associated with moderate hippocampal
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does not reduce within-black heritability estimates), while being totally absent among whites (thus having no effect on within-white heritability estimates). I used the Flynn effect to break this steel chain of ideas: (1) the heritability of IQ both within the present and the last generation may well be 0.
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can be as high as you please without robbing environment of its potency to create huge IQ gains over time. I never claimed that the Flynn effect had causal relevance for the black/white IQ gap. I claimed that it had analytic relevance. Jensen had argued that environment (at least between
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IQ gap between the generations. The race and IQ debate should focus on testing the relevant 137 Are We Getting Smarter? environmental hypotheses. The Flynn effect is no shortcut; the fact that the black/white performance gap expands with g-loadings or complexity is no shortcut. There are no shortcuts at
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conirm these IQ gains but the data as a whole pose problems for the external validity of black IQ (discrepancies with academic achievement). (7) The Flynn effect is irrelevant to showing that the racial IQ gap is environmental, but it was historically valuable in clarifying the debate. Some elaboration on the ifth
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by that task, they forget that understanding brains is only part of understanding human intelligence. Jensen (2011) is worth quoting at some length. “The term Flynn effect, however, will go down in history as a blind alley in psychometrics, viz., trying to answer a 159 Are We Getting Smarter? basic, nontrivial factual
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yrs. (SD = 3) (SD = 15) WISC to WISC-IV 1947.5–2001.75 Source: Adapted from J. R. Flynn, What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect, Cambridge University Press, 2007, Table 1 with permission of the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press. See that table for sources and a description of
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Batterjee, A. A., Khaleefa, O., Yousef, K., & Lynn, R. (in press). An increase of intelligence in Saudi Arabia, 1977–2010. Intelligence. Baxendale, S. (2010). The Flynn effect and memory function. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 32: 699–703. Benson, C., & Clay, E. with Michael, F. V., & Robertson, A. W. (2001). Dominica
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age and sex (selected years). Daley, T. C., Whaley, S. E., Sigman, M. D., Espinosa, M. P., & Neumann, C. (2003). IQ on the rise: The Flynn effect in rural Kenyan children. Psychological Science, 14: 215–219. Deary, I. J., Penke, L., & Johnson, W. (2010). The neuroscience of human intelligence differences. Nature Reviews
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of Intelligence (Novartis Foundation Symposium 233). New York: Wiley, pp. 202–227. (2006a). O efeito Flynn: repensando a inteligência e aquilo que a afeta [The Flynn effect: Rethinking intelligence and what affects it]. In C. Flores-Mendoza & R. Colom (eds.), Introdução à psicologia das diferenças individuais [Introduction to the psychology of individual
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-III and WAIS-IV: Daubert motions favor the certainly false over the approximately true. Applied Neuropsychology, 16: 1–7. (2009c). What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect (Expanded paperback edn.). New York: Cambridge University Press. 292 References (2010). Problems with IQ gains: The huge vocabulary gap. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 28:
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The Mind–Body Problem. New York: Penguin. Gorton, W. A., & Diels, J. (2010). Is political talk getting smarter: An analysis of presidential debates and the Flynn effect. Public Understanding of Science, 20: 578–594. Green v. Johnson, 2006 WL 3746138 (E.D.Va.) December 15, 2006. Green v. Johnson, 2007 WL 951686
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Gains in IQ and Related Measures, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, pp. 81–123. Gresham, F. M., & Reschly, D. J. (2011). Standard of practice and Flynn effect testimony in death penalty cases. Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 49: 131–140. Gurian, M. (2001). Boys and Girls Learn Differently! San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Hall
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Term Gains in IQ and Related Measures. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, pp. 183–206. Meisenberg, G., Lawless, E., Lambert, E., & Newton, A. (2005). The Flynn effect in the Caribbean: Generational change of cognitive test performance in Dominica. Mankind Quarterly, 46: 29–69. (2006). Determinants of mental ability on a Caribbean island
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, and the mystery of the Flynn effect. Mankind Quarterly, 46: 273−312. Mills, C. Wright (1959). The Sociological Imagination. London: Oxford University Press. Mintz, S. (2004). Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids:
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2006. Mosler, D., & Catley, B. (1998). America and Americans in Australia. Westport, CT: Praeger. Murphy, R., te Nijenhuis, J., & van Eeden, R. (2008, December). The Flynn effect in South Africa. Paper presented at the Ninth 297 References Annual Conference of the International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR), Georgia, United States of America
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. Must, O., Must, A., & Raudik, V. (2003). The secular rise in IQs: In Estonia, the Flynn effect is not a Jensen effect. Intelligence, 31: 461–471. Neal v. State, 256 S.W.3d 264 (Tex.Crim.App. June 18, 2008). Neisser, U
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Term Gains in IQ and Related Measures, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Nijman, E., Scheirs, J., Prinsen, M., Abbink, C., & Blok, J. (2010). Exploring the Flynn effect in mentally retarded adults by using a nonverbal intelligence test for children. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 31: 1404–1411. Nisbett, R., Aronson, J., Blair, C
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E., (2009). European and American WAIS-III norms: Cross-national differences in performance subtest scores. Intelligence, 38: 187–192. Rönnlunda, M., & Nilsson, L-G. (2009). Flynn effects on sub-factors of episodic and semantic memory: Parallel gains over time and the same set of determining factors. Neuropsychologia, 47: 2174–2180. Rosenau, J
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and Human Behavior: A Life History Perspective. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Rushton, J. P., & Jensen, A. R. (2010). Editorial: The rise and fall of the Flynn effect as a reason to expect a narrowing of the black/ white IQ gap. Intelligence, 38: 213–219. Rushton, J. P., & Skuy, M. (2000). Performance on
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Saudi Gazette, August 15, 2011. Schneider, D. (2006). Smart as we can get? American Scientist, 94: 311–312. Schooler, C. (1998). Environmental complexity and the Flynn effect. In U. Neisser (ed.), The Rising Curve: Long-Term Gains in IQ and Related Measures. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, pp. 67–79. Shayer, M
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., Coe, R., & Ginsburg, D. (2007). 30 years on – a large anti-‘Flynn effect’? The Piagetian test Volume and Heaviness norms 1975–2003. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 77: 25–41. Shayer, M., & Ginsburg, D. (2009). 30 years on
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– a large anti-‘Flynn effect’? (II): 13 and 14 year olds. Piagetian tests of formal operations norms 1976–2006/7. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 79: 409–418. Shi, H
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). Data from Census, March 31, 2000: Gender cohorts ages 12–18 by ethnic group. Steen, R. G. (2009). Human Intelligence and Medical Illness: Assessing the Flynn Effect. New York: Springer. Sternberg, R. J. (1988). The Triarchic Mind: A New Theory of Human Intelligence. New York: Penguin. (2006). The Rainbow Project: Enhancing
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The Contributions of Heredity and Early Environment. San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass. Sundet, J. M., Barlaug, D. G., & Torjussen, T. M. (2004). The end of the Flynn effect? A study of secular trends in mean intelligence test scores of Norwegian conscripts during half a century. Intelligence, 32: 349–362. Sundet, J. M., Eriksen
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, W., Borren, I., & Tambs, K. (2010). The Flynn effect in sibships: Investigating the role of age differences between siblings. Intelligence, 38: 38–44. Sundet, J. M., Tambs, K., Harris, J. R., Magnus, P., & Torjussen
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year secular trends in cognitive abilities. Intelligence, 28: 115–120. 301 References te Nijenhuis, J., Cho, S. H., Murphy, R., & Lee, K. H. (2008). The Flynn effect in South Korea. Paper presented at the Ninth Annual Conference of the International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR), Georgia, United States of America. te Nijenhuis
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, J., Murphy, R., & van Eeden, R. (2011). The Flynn effect in South Africa. Intelligence, 39: 456–467. Thomas v. Allen, 2009 WL 0912869 (N.D.Ala.) April 21, 2009. Thomas v. Allen (11th Cir.) May
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D. J., Oosterveld, P., van Baal, G. C. M., Boomsma, D. I., & Span, M. M. (2004). Are intelligence test measurements invariant over time? Investigating the Flynn effect. Intelligence, 32: 509–538. Wiley v. Epps, 668 F.Supp.2d 848 (N.D.Miss.) November 5, 2009. 303 References Williams v. Campbell, 2007 WL
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27, 2010. Wright, Quincy (1955). The Study of International Relations. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Young, G. W. (2012). Understanding Flynn and honoring Atkins: The Flynn effect should apply in capital determinations of mental retardation or intellectual disability. Vanderbilt Law Review, March 2012. Zhong, H., Shi, H., Qi, X.-B., Duan, Z
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
by Steven Pinker · 24 Sep 2012 · 1,351pp · 385,579 words
533 8–6 Apologies by political and religious leaders, 1900–2004 544 9–1 Implicit interest rates in England, 1170–2000 610 9–2 The Flynn Effect: Rising IQ scores, 1947–2002 652 10–1 The Pacifist’s Dilemma 679 10–2 How a Leviathan resolves the Pacifist’s Dilemma 681 10
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every sample: IQ scores increased over time.229 In 1994 Richard Herrnstein and the political scientist Charles Murray christened the phenomenon the Flynn Effect, and the name has stuck.230 The Flynn Effect has been found in thirty countries, including some in the developing world, and it has been going on ever since IQ
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tests were first given en masse around the time of World War I.231 An even older dataset from Britain suggests that the Flynn Effect may even have begun with the cohort of Britons who were born in 1877 (though of course they were tested as adults).232 The gains
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she would have had an IQ of 130, besting 98 percent of his or her contemporaries. Yes, you read that right: if we take the Flynn Effect at face value, a typical person today is smarter than 98 percent of the people in the good old days of 1910. To state it
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of 50 today, which is smack in the middle of mentally retarded territory, between “moderate” and “mild” retardation.233 Obviously we can’t take the Flynn Effect at face value. The world of 1910 was not populated by people who today we would consider mentally retarded. Commentators have looked for ways to
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make the Flynn Effect go away, but none of the obvious ones work. Writers on the egalitarian left and on the lift-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps right have
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on IQ and its various subtests in the United States since the late 1940s. FIGURE 9–2. The Flynn Effect: Rising IQ scores, 1947–2002 Source: Graph from Flynn, 2007, p. 8. The Flynn Effect was a scientific bombshell, because if one were to focus only on the improvement in the Matrices and Similarities
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many genes, each of which affects brain functioning in a small way. The bombshell is that the Flynn Effect is almost certainly environmental. Natural selection has a speed limit measured in generations, but the Flynn Effect is measurable on the scale of decades and years. Flynn was also able to rule out increases in
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nutrition, overall health, and outbreeding (marrying outside one’s local community) as explanations for his eponymous effect.241 Whatever propels the Flynn Effect, then, is likely to be in people’s cognitive environments, not in their genes, diets, vaccines, or dating pools. A breakthrough in the mystery of
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the Flynn Effect was the realization that the increases are not gains in general intelligence.242 If they were, they would have lifted the scores on all the
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it is enhancing: not raw brainpower, but the abilities needed to score well on the subtests of abstract reasoning. The best guess is that the Flynn Effect has several causes, which may have acted with different strengths at different times in the century. The improvements on visual matrices may have been fueled
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knowledge of one’s own little world and explore the implications of postulates in purely hypothetical worlds. If Flynn is right that much of the Flynn Effect is caused by an increasing tendency to see the world through “scientific spectacles,” as he puts it, what are the exogenous causes of the availability
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, the Negroes, or the rich peasants. We can now put together the two big ideas of this section: the pacifying effects of reason, and the Flynn Effect. We have several grounds for supposing that enhanced powers of reason—specifically, the ability to set aside immediate experience, detach oneself from a parochial vantage
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documented declines of violence in the second half of the 20th century: the Long Peace, New Peace, and Rights Revolutions? Could there be a moral Flynn Effect, in which an accelerating escalator of reason carried us away from impulses that lead to violence? The idea is not crazy. The cognitive skill that
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is most enhanced in the Flynn Effect, abstraction from the concrete particulars of immediate experience, is precisely the skill that must be exercised to take the perspectives of others and expand the
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, thinking about proportions. Flynn notes that proportionality questions are surprisingly difficult for many adolescents, and are among the skills that rose as part of the Flynn Effect.254 As we have seen, the mindset of proportionality is essential to calibrating the just use of violence, as in criminal punishment and military action
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toward criminal justice, even after taking into account their age, sex, race, education, income, and political orientation.255 Before we test the idea that the Flynn Effect accelerated an escalator of reason and led to greater moral breadth and less violence, we need a sanity check on the
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Flynn Effect itself. Could the people of today really be that much smarter than the people of yesterday? Flynn himself, in an early paper, noted incredulously that
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era: “This appalling sentence leaves out of account, we notice, the effect of evil on its victims.” 263 The idea that the changes behind the Flynn Effect have also expanded the moral circle passes a sanity check, but that does not mean it is true. To show that rising intelligence has led
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general intelligence in the sense of raw brainpower, but the cultivation of abstract reasoning, the aspect of intelligence that has been pulled upward by the Flynn Effect. The two are highly correlated, so measures of IQ will, in general, track abstract reasoning, but it’s the latter that is relevant to the
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” but from the exercise of logic, clarity, objectivity, and proportionality. These habits of mind are distributed unevenly across the population at any time, but the Flynn Effect lifts all the boats, and so we might expect to see a tide of mini- and micro-enlightenments across elites and ordinary citizens alike. Let
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who share these understandings.277 These competencies require a modicum of abstract reasoning, and they overlap with the abilities that have risen with the Flynn Effect, presumably because the Flynn Effect itself has been driven by education. But the Boston Public Library theory of democracy-readiness has not, until recently, been tested. It’s
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and real-world studies, Tetlock suggests that both dynamics are in play.288 Has the integrative complexity of political discourse been pulled upward by the Flynn Effect? A study by the political scientists James Rosenau and Michael Fagen suggests it may have.289 The investigators coded the integrative complexity of American congressional
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not to get too nostalgic for the political discourse of decades past. In one arena, however, politicians really do seem to be swimming against the Flynn Effect: American presidential debates. To those who followed these debates in 2008, three words are enough to make the point: Joe the Plumber. The psychologists William
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: Flynn, 1984; Flynn, 2007. 229. Rising IQ around the world: Flynn, 2007, p. 2; Flynn, 1987. 230. Naming the Flynn Effect: Herrnstein & Murray, 1994. 231. Thirty countries: Flynn, 2007, p. 2. 232. Flynn Effect began in 1877: Flynn, 2007, p. 23. 233. Adult of 1910 would be retarded today: Flynn, 2007, p. 23. 234
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, 2001; Gottfredson, 1997a; Neisser et al., 1996. Intelligence as a predictor of life success: Gottfredson, 1997b; Herrnstein & Murray, 1994. 235. Flynn Effect uncorrelated with testing fads: Flynn, 2007, p. 14. 236. Flynn Effect not in math, vocabulary, knowledge: Flynn, 2007; Greenfield, 2009. See also Wicherts et al., 2004. 237. Slight declines in SAT: Flynn
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and the brain: Chiang et al., 2009; Deary, 2001; Thompson et al., 2001. 241. Flynn Effect not from hybrid vigor: Flynn, 2007, pp. 101–2. Flynn Effect not from gains in health and nutrition: Flynn, 2007, pp. 102–6. 242. Flynn Effect not in g: Flynn, 2007; Wicherts et al., 2004. 243. Visual complexity and IQ
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. Nunberg, Language commentary segment on Fresh Air, National Public Radio, 2001. 253. Concrete operations in Flynn’s father: J. Flynn, “What is intelligence: Beyond the Flynn effect,” Harvard Psychology Department Colloquium, Dec. 5, 2007; see also “The world is getting smarter,” Economist/Intelligent Life, Dec. 2007; http://moreintelligentlife.com/node/654. 254
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and democracy: Rindermann, 2008. 279. Democracy and violence: Gleditsch, 2008; Harff, 2003, 2005; Lacina, 2006; Pate, 2008; Rummel, 1994; Russett, 2008; Russett & Oneal, 2001. 280. Flynn Effect in Kenya and Dominica: Flynn, 2007, p. 144. 281. Education and civil war: Thyne, 2006. 282. Pacifying effect of education: Thyne, 2006, p. 733. 283
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the world child by child. New York: Experiment. Gorton, W., & Diels, J. 2010. Is political talk getting smarter? An analysis of presidential debates and the Flynn effect. Public Understanding of Science (March 18). Gottfredson, L. S. 1997a. Mainstream science on intelligence: An editorial with 52 signatories, history, and bibliography. Intelligence, 24, 13
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, P., Van Baal, G. C. M., Boomsma, D. I., & Span, M. M. 2004. Are intelligence tests measurement invariant over time? Investigating the nature of the Flynn effect. Intelligence, 32, 509–37. Wicker, B., Keysers, C., Plailly, J., Royet, J.-P., Gallese, V., & Rizzolatti, G. 2003. Both of us are disgusted in my
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filicides Fine Madness, A (film) Finkelhor, David Fisher, David Hackett fishing Fiske, Alan fisticuffs; see also face-to-face violence Flavius Josephus flogging Flynn, James Flynn Effect Fogel, Robert forgiveness formal operations, Piagetian stage Fortna, Virginia Page forward panic (rampage) fossil hominids Fox, James Alan France: Albigensian Crusade and Algeria book production
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predatory violence integrative complexity intelligence: and cooperation and democracy and economic literacy general (g) heritabity of IQ tests and liberalism and reason rise in, see Flynn Effect and self-control and sophistication of political discourse and violence intercommunal conflict interest: compound and self-control Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Intermale Aggression circuit
Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Popular Culture Is Making Us Smarter
by Steven Johnson · 5 Apr 2006 · 250pp · 9,029 words
reflect only part of the spectrum of human intelligence. But those objections-true as they may be-do not undermine the trend described by the Flynn Effect in any way. In fact, they may make i t more interesting. Clearly there are multiple forms of i ntelligence, only some of which are
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measured by I Q tests: emotional intelli gence, for one, is entirely ignored by all traditional I Q met rics. And the Flynn Effect offers what many consider incontrovertible evidence that IQ is profoundly shaped by environment, since genetics alone can't explain such a dra matic rise in
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solving, abstract reasoning, pattern recog nition, spatial logic. Psychologists and social scientists and other experts in psychometrics have now had twenty years to study the Flynn Effect; whi le much debate remains about the ultimate causes behind the IQ increase, the existence of the trend itself is un contested. IQs have been
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Y T H I N G B A D I S G O O D F O R Yo u I4 � again . Thanks to the Flynn Effect, h e would be i n the bot tom third for IQ scores today. Yesterday 's brainiac is today's simpleton. A small part of
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the Flynn Effect may be attri butable to increased famili arity with intelligence tests themselves. But as Flynn points out, even if you take the exact same I
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rty years, the rise in IQ scores has been accelerat ing, even as the administration of IQ tests has become less common. Nor is the Flynn Effect likely to be the product of better nutrition. Adult height is famously sensitive to early diet, and indeed average heights have been on the rise
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been fladining or worse for much of the past 1 44 STEVEN JOHNSON forty years. This suggests that improved education cannot be responsible for the Flynn Effect. For decades now, the re curring story about the u.s. educational system has long been its lagging test scores, numbers that are cited again
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for Circuit City one day, but rather because there's a commendable structure to this kind of thinking. The social psychologist Carmi Schooler sees the Flynn Effect as a reflection of environmental complexity : 146 STEVEN JOHNSON The complexity of an individual's environment is defined by its stimulus and demand characteristics. The
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, more c o mpl ex than rural ones, and so the i ndustri al-age migration to the cities may play a role in the Flynn Effect. But most of the i ndustri alized world underwent that mi- E V F R Y T H I N G B A D I
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IQ scores-the one witnessed over the past thirty yea rs-is most likely being driven by something else. TH E LIN K between the Flynn Effect and popular medi a i s a hypothesis, b u t there are a number of reasons to think that more than a casual connection
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exists. As research into the Flynn Effect has deepened, three i mportant tendencies have come to light, all of which parallel the developments in popular culture I 've descri bed over the
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historical increase grew more dramatic the further the tests ventured from skills-l i ke mathematic or verbal apti tude-that reflect educational background. The Flynn Effect i s most pronounced on tests that assess what psycho metrici ans call g, the index that of fers the best approximation of "fluid" intelligence
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you to fill the blank space with the correct shape from the eight options below : 6 8 The centrality of the g scores to the Flynn Effect is telling. If you look at i ntelligence tests that track skills influenced by the classroom-the Wechsler vocabulary or arithmetic tests, for instance-the
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ass. They were kids who played Tetris. One other tendency in the history of IQ mirrors the trends in popular culture we've explored . The Flynn Effect is most pronounced in the low-to-mid range of intelligence scores. 1 52 STEVEN JOHNSON At 'the very high end of I Q-the
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positive cognitive im- 1 54 ST E V E N J O H N S O N pact, beyond the macro trend o f the Flynn Effect. My hope is that we are beginning to appreciate some of these virtues, and that we will soon see research into the impact of gam
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years, the next logical question is: What has changed in the environment over that ti m e ? In the industria lized wo rld , where the Flynn Effect has been most pronounced , the answer is simple: Media and tech nology. Our diets haven't improved; our schools are E V E R Y
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the dozens of new media forms-games, hypertext, instant messaging, TiVo-that constitute main stream culture today. Yet Flynn has a twist. He sees the Flynn Effect under mining not only the genetics of IQ, but also the correlation between IQ and real-world intell igence . "Ju st a s an elite
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renaissance , Flynn is looking at the outer edge of the bell curve, among the savants and v i s ionaries. As we've seen , the Flynn Effect is most pro nounced in the middle regions: the average person has seen the most dramatic IQ increase over the past decades. And the average
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of electric speed increase. Proj ect that data over a hundred years, a nd you will have a chart that looks re markably like the Flynn Effect. PoP C U LT U R E 's race to the top ove r the past decades forces us to rethi nk our assumpti ons
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media has not been examined: It's instructive to look at Marie Winn's 1977 book The Plug-In Drug in the context of the Flynn Effect. Winn's book-updated in 2002 with additional material critical of the new electronic media-was one of the key original sources of the "television
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. 67) . Technically, of course, this is true. There are no signs of a downward trend be cause there is, in fact, an upward trend. (The Flynn Effect goes unmentioned in the book . ) Winn's primary evidence for the " brain drain" of T V a n d com puters is the long-term
Hive Mind: How Your Nation’s IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own
by Garett Jones · 15 Feb 2015 · 247pp · 64,986 words
best reason is because they already have. In the rich countries, IQ scores have consistently risen over the twentieth century, a phenomenon known as the Flynn Effect, after the philosopher—the philosopher, mind you—who discovered it. We’ll talk about Flynn’s world-shaking research in Chapter 3, but keep the
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Flynn Effect in mind when people tell you that IQ can’t be changed. Collective Intelligence: Each Nation as Hive Mind Animal researchers, computer scientists, and occasionally
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scientist Charles Murray and psychologist Richard Herrnstein called this long-term rise in IQ scores The Flynn Effect, and the name has appropriately stuck. A few researchers prefer to call it the Lynn-Flynn effect or even the FLynn effect (sic) since, as we saw, Lynn made his own contribution on the topic. But Flynn’s
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for a revolution in IQ research. Once psychologists knew that these national IQ gains were big and were everywhere, the search for explanations began. The Flynn Effect: The Fruit of Free Inquiry Later work has shown that the IQ gains tended to be larger on tests that were more abstract and less
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use their brains differently from in the past.5 Flynn sees some possible role for nutrition and health improvements, but at least when discussing the Flynn Effect in rich countries, he prefers to discuss—in two fascinating books and elsewhere—how we humans are, on average, using our brains differently from how
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our ancestors did.6 Flynn’s favored explanation for most of the Flynn Effect deserves our attention, but explanations by other scholars deserve attention as well. What are they saying? At this point, about three decades after the
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Flynn Effect was first conclusively documented, it’s safe to say that there are too many explanations for it. At least a dozen stories have at least
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free to ask the most provocative of questions in the academic arena. As he has written more than once, the only reason he discovered the Flynn Effect is because he was trying to refute Berkeley psychologist Arthur Jensen’s claim that IQ differences across demographic groups are difficult if not impossible to
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, and IQ Let’s return to a question that might be possible to answer, the question of what causes the Flynn Effect. In fact there are if anything too many explanations for the Flynn Effect, an embarrassment of theories. And aside from a few short-run experiments, we overwhelmingly have to rely on mere
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might help IQ, to the mind of a psychologist or a medical doctor, so we chalk that trait up as a possible driver of the Flynn Effect, and a possible path toward raising national average IQ around the world. Let’s first turn to a promising set of channels: nutrition and health
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be to take the average: a child’s peers probably matter a little. The Many Possible Sources of the Flynn Effect Education and health are the two most concrete, policy-relevant explanations for the Flynn Effect, and they deserve the most attention. But there are other channels that might matter. Some might be hard
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IQ test. In recent decades, students do appear to guess more often rather than leaving an item blank, so this could be part of the Flynn Effect—though only a small part, since IQ tests that aren’t multiple choice show similar increases in scores. Giving similar IQ tests to the same
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very different from the maps of most of our ancestors. Much has been written on the Flynn Effect, most of it speculative, and I hope I haven’t broken any new ground in the discussion here. The Flynn Effect proves that big IQ gains are possible, it strongly suggests that at least some of
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the hope that nations with the lowest average scores can raise their scores through practical policy reforms. But the question of how much of the Flynn Effect is a real increase in key cognitive skills and how much is a merely nominal increase in narrow test-taking abilities is still an open
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. 3. Flynn, “Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations.” 4. Flynn, Are We Getting Smarter? Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century, 12. 5. Flynn, “The ‘Flynn Effect’ and Flynn’s Paradox,” 857. 6. Flynn, What Is Intelligence? See also Flynn, Are We Getting Smarter? 7. Nisbett and others, “Intelligence: New Findings and
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Peer Effects and Student Achievement,” 52. 19. A special 2013 issue of Intelligence focused on the Flynn Effect; many of the hypotheses listed here are noted throughout that issue and particularly in Williams, “Overview of the Flynn Effect.” 20. McNeil, “In Raising the World’s IQ, the Secret’s in the Salt.” 21. Gorman
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53, no. 1 (2015). Flynn, James R. Are We Getting Smarter? Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. . “The ‘Flynn Effect’ and Flynn’s Paradox.” Intelligence 41, no. 6 (2013): 851–857. . “Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations: What IQ Tests Really Measure.” Psychological Bulletin 101
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, no. 2 (1987): 171. .What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Gates, Bill. “Annual Letter from Bill Gates: 2011,” Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, January 2011. Georgas, James, Fons van
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. Dolan, Jerry S. Carlson, and Han L. J. van der Maas. “Raven’s Test Performance of Sub-Saharan Africans: Average Performance, Psychometric Properties, and the Flynn Effect.” Learning and Individual Differences 20, no. 3 (2010): 135–151. Wicherts, Jelte M., Conor V. Dolan, and Han L. J. van der Maas. “The Dangers
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. “A Systematic Literature Review of the Average IQ of Sub-Saharan Africans.” Intelligence 38, no. 1 (2010): 1–20. Williams, Robert L. “Overview of the Flynn Effect.” Intelligence 41, no. 6 (2013): 753–764. Wittman, Donald A. The Myth of Democratic Failure: Why Political Institutions Are Efficient. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
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, 57, 58–59 Flynn, James: on abstract thinking and IQ tests, 51–52, 58–59, 62; on academic freedom, 52; on economic equality, 52–53; Flynn Effect, 12, 51, 51–53, 60–64, 167–68, 175n18; on Ice Ages hypothesis, 53; on IQ gaps across demographic groups, 52–53; on Jensen, 52
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, 23; relationship to IQ scores, 23–24, 25, 35 Heinlein, Robert, 91–92 Hendricks, Lutz, 47, 48, 174n17 Herrnstein, Richard: The Bell Curve, 51; on Flynn Effect, 51 Hobbes, Thomas, 106 Hochschild, Jennifer: on democratization, 136 Hoddinott, John, 174n12 home country bias, 79 homo economicus, 66, 67, 68 Hong Kong: average cognitive
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-spatial scores vs. verbal scores, 23. See also national average IQ IQ test scores, raising of, 10, 11–12, 38, 41, 43, 49–64, 163; Flynn Effect, 12, 51–53, 60–64, 167–68, 175n18; government policies regarding, 5, 50, 56, 58–59, 60, 62–64, 167; by improving education, 50, 58
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, 56–57 multinational corporations, 75–76 multiple regression, 11, 79, 117, 124 multiplier effect, 7, 131, 148, 168 Murray, Charles: The Bell Curve, 51; on Flynn Effect, 51 national average IQ: cross-country comparisons, 38–44, 46, 48, 117–18, 169, 170; vs. individual IQ, 4–5, 6–7, 167; policies regarding
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
by Steven Pinker · 13 Feb 2018 · 1,034pp · 241,773 words
reverse journey, they would outsmart 98 percent of the befrocked and bewhiskered Edwardians who greeted them as they emerged. Yet surprising as it is, the Flynn effect is no longer in doubt, and it has recently been confirmed in a meta-analysis of 271 samples from thirty-one countries with four million
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New Zealand in 1970. Not surprisingly, the rise in IQ scores obeys Stein’s Law: Things that can’t go on forever don’t. The Flynn effect is now petering out in some of the countries in which it has been going on the longest.32 Though it’s not easy to
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, with lower levels of lead and other toxins. Food, health, and environmental quality are among the perquisites of a richer society, and not surprisingly, the Flynn effect is correlated with increases in GDP per capita.33 But nutrition and health can explain only a part of the
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Flynn effect.34 For one thing, their benefits should be concentrated in pulling up the lower half of the bell curve of IQ scores, populated by the
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by poor food and health. (After all, past a certain point, additional food makes people fatter, not smarter.) Indeed, in some times and places the Flynn effect is concentrated in the lower half, bringing the duller closer to the average. But in other times and places the entire curve crept rightward: the
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healthy and well-fed. Second, improvements in health and nutrition should affect children most of all, and then the adults they grow into. But the Flynn effect is stronger for adults than for children, suggesting that experiences on the way to adulthood, not just biological constitution in early childhood, have pushed IQ
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reason that health and nutrition aren’t enough to explain the IQ rise is that what has risen over time is not overall brainpower. The Flynn effect is not an increase in g, the general intelligence factor that underlies every subtype of intelligence (verbal, spatial, mathematical, memory, and so on) and is
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, some subtest scores have risen more rapidly than others in a pattern different from the pattern linked to the genes. That’s another reason the Flynn effect does not cast doubt on the high heritability of IQ. So which kinds of intellectual performance have been pushed upward by the better environments of
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), and academic concepts that trickle down into common parlance (supply and demand, on average, human rights, win-win, correlation versus causation, false positive). Does the Flynn effect matter in the real world? Almost certainly. A high IQ is not just a number that you can brag about in a bar or that
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the West in its adoption of smartphones and of applications for them such as mobile banking, education, and real-time market updates.41 Could the Flynn effect help explain the other rises in well-being we have seen in these chapters? An analysis by the economist R. W. Hafer suggests it could
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estimated, would accelerate a country’s growth rate enough to double well-being in just nineteen years rather than twenty-seven. Policies that hurry the Flynn effect along, namely investments in health, nutrition, and education, could make a country richer, better governed, and happier down the road.42 * * * What’s good for
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the teachings of religion.”84 We have already seen that better-educated countries have lower rates of belief, and across the world, atheism rides the Flynn effect: as countries get smarter, they turn away from God.85 Whatever the reasons, the history and geography of secularization belie the fear that in the
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the second one postdates it by a decade, the gain cannot simply be attributed to the 2001 NATO invasion that deposed the regime. 28. The Flynn effect: Deary 2001; Flynn 2007, 2012. See also Pinker 2011, pp. 650–60. 29. Heritability of intelligence: Pinker 2002/2016, chap. 19 and afterword; Deary 2001
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; Plomin & Deary 2015; Ritchie 2015. 30. Flynn effect not explained by hybrid vigor: Flynn 2007; Pietschnig & Voracek 2015. 31. Flynn effect meta-analysis: Pietschnig & Voracek 2015. 32. End of the Flynn effect: Pietschnig & Voracek 2015. 33. Evaluating candidate causes of the Flynn effect: Flynn 2007; Pietschnig & Voracek 2015. 34. Nutrition and health explain only
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part of Flynn effect: Flynn 2007, 2012; Pietschnig & Voracek 2015. 35. Existence and
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heritability of g: Deary 2001; Plomin & Deary 2015; Ritchie 2015. 36. The Flynn effect as an increase in analytic thinking: Flynn 2007, 2012; Ritchie 2015; Pinker 2011, pp. 650–60. 37. Education affects the Flynn components of intelligence (though
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. IQ as a tailwind: Deary 2001; Gottfredson 1997; Makel et al. 2016; Pinker 2002/2016; Ritchie 2015. 39. The Flynn effect and the moral sense: Flynn 2007; Pinker 2011, pp. 656–70. 40. The Flynn effect and real-world genius: con, Woodley, te Nijenhuis, & Murphy 2013; pro, Pietschnig & Voracek 2015, p. 283. 41. High
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States. Social Science and Medicine, 114, 151–60. Pietschnig, J., & Voracek, M. 2015. One century of global IQ gains: A formal meta-analysis of the Flynn effect (1909–2013). Perspectives in Psychological Science, 10, 282–306. Piketty, T. 2013. Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pinker, S
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numbers in italics indicate a graph or table. abortion, 74, 224, 363, 387, 439, 449 Abrahms, Max, 196–7 abstract thinking, 26–7. See also Flynn effect Abt, Thomas, 174, 175–6 academia left-wing tilt of, 372–4, 388, 484n61 right-wing dismissal of, 374 See also university and college education
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fire (1942), 183 cognition combinatorial/recursive power of, 27 evolution of, not adapted to modernity, 25 language and, 27 See also abstract thinking; cognitive biases; Flynn effect; identity-protective cognition; intelligence cognitive behavioral therapy, 175, 282 cognitive biases, 25–6, 353, 354–5, 403–4 adulthood mistaken for harsher world, 48 autobiographical
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Fischer, Claude, 274–5, 475n46 fisheries, 325 Flanders & Swann, 15 Flannery, Tim, 465n76 Flaubert, Gustave, 284 Fleming, Alexander, 63 flood control, 188 Florey, Howard, 64 Flynn effect, 240–45, 241 atheism and, 438 Flynn, James, 240, 243, 244 Foege, William, 64, 65 Fogel, Robert, 68–9 Follett, Chelsea, 93 Fonda, Jane, 147
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. See homosexuality and homophobia GDP (Gross Domestic Product), 85, 95–6, 461n7 carbon emissions per dollar of, 143, 143 emancipative values as correlated with, 228 Flynn effect as increasing, 242, 244–5 and global well-being, 245–6, 246, 473n45 happiness as increasing with, 269–71, 269, 272 information technology invisible in
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attacks, 219 Hathaway, Oona, 163–4 Hawking, Stephen, 296, 308 Hayek, Friedrich, 5, 365 health, 62–7 cancer, 61, 146 dementia/Alzheimer’s, 59 and Flynn effect, 241–2 happiness of nations with good, 271 and life expectancy, 59 See also food and food security; infectious disease; life expectancy; mental health health
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misperception about, causing fear of AI, 296–8 networks of neurons and, 21 subtypes of, 242 See also Flynn effect; knowledge; reason Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, 367–8 Intelligence Quotient (IQ), rise in. See Flynn effect international community advantages of, 450–51 foreign aid, 95 nuclear war and importance of, 312, 315 outlawry
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, 83, 94–5 delay in productivity growth due to, 330 dematerialization and, 135, 136, 332 democratization of platforms for, 332 demonetization and, 332–3 digital, Flynn effect and mastery of, 244 donated as foreign aid, 95 doomsday prophecies and, 293–4 for environmental protection, 124, 128–30, 132–6, 134–6 future
Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Over-Rewarded, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect
by David Goodhart · 7 Sep 2020 · 463pp · 115,103 words
modern, technologically advanced societies simply need more clever people—especially in software and computer science—than ever before. Moreover, they may add, the so-called Flynn effect (named after the New Zealand academic James Flynn) shows that everyone is getting brighter—that average IQ levels have been rising throughout the twentieth century
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creative intelligence; and Carol Dweck’s ideas about mindsets—focus on widening the meaning of intelligence rather than on assaulting the idea of IQ. The “Flynn effect” accepts that IQ tests have some utility but stresses the influence of the environment on test scores both for individuals and whole populations. Those who
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an increase of 14 points over forty-six years (1932 to 1978) in the United States.10 There is some debate as to whether the Flynn effect has halted or even reversed in recent decades, but no conclusive evidence. The defenders of the innateness and heritability of IQ do not in general
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deny the reality of the Flynn effect, but they have a simple answer. IQ, they say, is like height: average height has been increasing around the world in recent centuries partly due
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cognitive aptitude, 78–82, 83–84 family policy, 161, 163 Fidoe, Ed, 300 Fletcher, Jason, 83 Florida, Richard, 224n Flynn, James, 6, 63, 67–68 Flynn effect, 6, 63, 67–68 Fortnite (computer game), 195 France: apprenticeships in, 117 baccalauréat and, 35, 117–18 decline of skilled workers, 139, 198 elite selection
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–60, 95–96, 98, 105, 108–10, 124, 141, 192 criticism of, 66–67, 253–55 eleven-plus (UK), 20, 65–66, 82, 100, 196 Flynn effect, 6, 63, 67–68 general intelligence (g), 56–71 human virtue and, 55 innate vs. learned abilities and, 71–75 introduction of concept, 64 job
She Has Her Mother's Laugh
by Carl Zimmer · 29 May 2018
that a majority of our ancestors were mentally retarded,” Flynn wrote in his 2007 book, What Is Intelligence? Yet this trend—now known as the Flynn effect—has been confirmed many times over. As we’ve gotten taller, we’ve gotten smarter. Now the challenge is to figure out what’s driving
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this increase. As in the case of height, the Flynn effect has been too big and quick to pin on genetic change. For that to be the case, people who scored high on intelligence tests would
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in part by better food, sanitation, medicine, and—in some places—greater economic equality. Some of the same factors may be at play in the Flynn effect. Better childhood health and nutrition makes the body grow quickly and the brain develop well. Government regulations have also helped. Feyrer has argued that the
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push to give people iodine played a part in the worldwide Flynn effect. Exposure to lead can be toxic for the brain, and up until the 1970s, American children were exposed to high levels of lead in paint
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50 percent. By 1960, it reached 90 percent. American students went from an average schooling of 6.5 years to 12. To Flynn himself, the Flynn effect doesn’t mean that people in the nineteenth century were intellectually disabled, nor does it mean that people today have neurons that fire signals to
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with dogs, children today are more likely to pass their free time on a smartphone. Flynn’s argument is also bolstered by the way the Flynn effect spread over the world. It started in the United States and Europe, but as developing countries became more modernized, their intelligence test scores started their
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. Nor does the failure of Head Start serve as proof that the 1960s gap in intelligence test scores was some unalterable fact of heredity. The Flynn effect did not leave behind American blacks, for example. In fact, their intelligence test scores have risen dramatically, while American whites had a more modest improvement
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2016. an educational psychologist named Arthur Jensen: Jensen 1967. have rejected them: Colman 2016; deBoer 2017; Lewontin 1970; Nisbett 2013; Nisbett et al. 2012. The Flynn effect did not leave behind American blacks: Nisbett 2013; Rindermann and Pichelmann 2015. Dorothy Roberts: Roberts 2015. When education researchers test out new programs: Cesarini and
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J. Eslinger, Martin Benavides, Ellen Peters, Nathan F. Dieckmann, and Juan Leon. 2015. “The Cognitive Impact of the Education Revolution: A Possible Cause of the Flynn Effect on Population IQ.” Intelligence 49:144–58. Baker, Katharine K. 2004. “Bargaining or Biology—The History and Future of Paternity Law and Parental Status.” Cornell
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: Part 2. Neuropathology Suggests a Disorder of Cellular Lineage.” Journal of Child Neurology 18:776–85. Flynn, James Robert. 2009. What Is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ford, Edmund Brisco. 1977. “Theodosius Grigorievich Dobzhansky, 25 January 1900–18 December 1975.” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society
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–6, 478–80 Feyrer, James, 307–9 fireflies, 406, 467 Fischbach, Ruth, 391 Fisher, James, 457 Fisher, Ronald, 262–63, 334 flower-suppressing proteins, 493 Flynn effect, 308–10, 316 Fogel, Robert, 267–68 Følling, Asbjørn, 115, 126, 129, 131 Fortenberry, Jeff, 519 fossil and fossilized DNA and Asian nursery theory, 235
The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise Your Thinking and Make Wiser Decisions
by David Robson · 7 Mar 2019 · 417pp · 103,458 words
with their lives,’ Feldman concluded. The interpretation of general intelligence as an all-powerful problem-solving-and-learning ability also has to contend with the Flynn Effect – a mysterious rise in IQ over the last few decades. To find out more, I met Flynn at his son’s house in Oxford, during
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a steady rise in IQ over time. Our minds have been forged in Terman’s image.41 Other psychologists were sceptical at first. But the Flynn Effect has been documented across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South America (see below) – anywhere undergoing industrialisation and Western-style educational reforms. The results suggest
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that help us to think more abstractly. ‘Society makes highly different demands on us over time, and people have to respond.’ In this way, the Flynn Effect shows that we can’t just train one type of reasoning and assume that all the useful problem-solving abilities that we have come to
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critical for truly insightful decision making. We do not live in the utopian future that Terman might have imagined, had he survived to see the Flynn Effect.44 Clearly, the skills measured by general intelligence tests are one important component of our mental machinery, governing how quickly we process and learn complex
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-our-iqs-have-never-been-higher-but-it-hasnt-made-us-smart 41 Clark, C.M., Lawlor-Savage, L. and Goghari, V.M. (2016), ‘The Flynn Effect: A Quantitative Commentary on Modernity and Human Intelligence’, Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives, 14(2), 39–53. In line with the idea of scientific spectacles
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, recent research has shown that the Flynn Effect can largely be accounted for in the time people take to answer the questions. Younger generations do it more rapidly, as if abstract thinking has
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been automated and become second nature: Must, O. and Must, A. (2018), ‘Speed and the Flynn Effect’, Intelligence, 68, 37–47. 42 Some modern IQ researchers have in fact suggested that training in these abstract thinking skills could be a way of
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closing the social divide between low- and high-IQ individuals. But the Flynn Effect would suggest that this would be of limited benefit for things such as creative thinking. See, for instance, Asbury, K. and Plomin, R. (2014), G
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