Historical Variability In Heritable General Intelligence : its evolutionary origins and socio-cultural consequences / Michael A. Woodley and Aurelio José Figueredo.

By:

Woodley, Michael A

Contributor(s):

Figueredo, Aurelio José

Material type: Text

TextPublication details: Buckingham : University of Buckingham Press, 2013.Description: 1 online resource (83 pages)Content type:

text

Media type:

computer

Carrier type:

online resource

ISBN:

1789551366
9781789551365

Subject(s):

Genre/Form:

Additional physical formats: Print version:: Historical Variability In Heritable General Intelligence: Its Evolutionary Origins and Socio-Cultural Consequences.DDC classification:

153.9 23

LOC classification:

BF431

Online resources:

Click here to access online

Summary: It is easy for us to believe that as a society we are getting smarter, at least as measured by IQ tests. This supposed improvement, the Flynn Effect, suggests that each generation is brighter than the last. If this improvement in intelligence is real we should all be much, much brighter than the Victorians. However, the researchers of this ground-breaking study find the reverse to be true- the Victorians were cleverer than us! IQ tests may be effective at picking out the brightest, but they are not reliable benchmarks of performance over more than a century. Historical Variance records the exploration of the Flyyn effect hypothesis, which included the use of high-quality instruments to measure simple reaction times (a recognised predictor of intelligence) in a meta-analytic study. The conclusions are very sobering: far from speeding up, we are slowing down. A decline in general intelligence (a loss equivalent to about 14 IQ points) since Victorian times may have resulted from the presence of dysgenic fertility. These findings, as detailed in Historical Variance, strongly indicate that the Victorians were substantially cleverer than we are today ...

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It is easy for us to believe that as a society we are getting smarter, at least as measured by IQ tests. This supposed improvement, the Flynn Effect, suggests that each generation is brighter than the last. If this improvement in intelligence is real we should all be much, much brighter than the Victorians. However, the researchers of this ground-breaking study find the reverse to be true- the Victorians were cleverer than us! IQ tests may be effective at picking out the brightest, but they are not reliable benchmarks of performance over more than a century. Historical Variance records the exploration of the Flyyn effect hypothesis, which included the use of high-quality instruments to measure simple reaction times (a recognised predictor of intelligence) in a meta-analytic study. The conclusions are very sobering: far from speeding up, we are slowing down. A decline in general intelligence (a loss equivalent to about 14 IQ points) since Victorian times may have resulted from the presence of dysgenic fertility. These findings, as detailed in Historical Variance, strongly indicate that the Victorians were substantially cleverer than we are today ...