Are We Getting Smarter? Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century
by James R. Flynn .
Cambridge University Press, 2012 ($22)

The average person today scores 30 points higher on IQ tests than his or her grandparents did. This observation is the starting point of the new book Are We Getting Smarter? by Flynn, an emeritus professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

Best known for documenting the eponymous Flynn effect—the tendency for standardized intelligence testing scores to increase over many decades across the world—Flynn is the right man for the job. Based on analyses of current IQ data, he speculates that we are not born with more mental potential than our ancestors; however, because our modern brain is expected to handle higher-level cognitive tasks from a very young age, our mental capabilities have changed. In particular, we have become more adept at learning theoretical concepts in science and technology.

The gains in IQ are not evenly distributed across populations. Flynn makes predictions about which countries' scores will rise the most and shares recent data showing that women now outshine men.

Yet there is a catch to this IQ trend, one that Flynn calls a “bright tax.” The more intelligent the person, the steeper the decrease in IQ score as a person ages, sometimes by more than 20 points. The cause of this decline, however, remains a puzzle. Flynn reasons that our modern brains require more maintenance to stay sharp, so as we age and use our analytical skills less, our IQ may drop quite steeply.

In fact, interpreting IQ scores can mean life or death. Flynn argues that the U.S. Supreme Court needs to reconsider how it uses IQ scores when determining a person's fate. Convicts who have scores below a certain number cannot be put to death, but with this IQ inflation over time more convicts will face the death penalty unless IQ scores are standardized across different tests and time frames.

Though fascinating, Are We Getting Smarter? often reads like a transcript of a lecture. Flynn tends to explain his ideas with charts and statistics rather than examples. Despite this flaw, the book remains valuable for grasping our changing capacity for learning over time—and our room for growth.

This article was originally published with the title Brightest Bulb.

3 Comments

1. 1. rshoff 12:54 PM 12/7/12

   Na, this is skewed. Perhaps other things are at play such as people are simply performing better on the tests, the tests are written differently, there is less cultural bias within the tests, or people's brains are more focused or processing more superficially while losing the ability to view relationships between concepts, think in real world terms, or think outside of the box. In other words, people are becoming better, more focused drones. Not more intelligent. That's what I think.

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2. 2. dubina 03:28 PM 12/13/12

   Flynn is right. We are getting smarter. We are smarter than our ancestors because we know more. Unfortunately, the meaning of what it is to be smart is undermined by the fact that we have become highly compartmentaized in our knowledge and personal experience and now know a lot of really trivial stuff. (Flynn has lamented "middle class decadence".)
   
   Reciprocal effects theory predicts increasing variance in IQ. That prediction is observed.
   
   Dickens, 2002: "Rowe and Rodgers are correct that increasing the effect of IQ on environment in a model with reciprocal effects will cause a rise in the correlation of IQ and environment and an increase in the variance of IQ, but the analysis they do is inadequate to judge the magnitude of this effect."
   
   Samantha Murphy: The gains in IQ are not evenly distributed across populations. Flynn makes predictions about which countries' scores will rise the most and shares recent data showing that women now outshine men.
   
   That is the nature of life in the 21st century.
   
   More could be done to clarify reciprocal effects theory and promulgate its explanation. Murphy is right; it is presently too abstract to be widely known and understood.

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3. 3. Edward ! 11:53 AM 12/16/12

   Having conducted 'IQ' testing for 38 years, I can attest that such assessment is a veritable chaos of uncontrolled factors despite our best efforts at controlling for setting and the nature of the probe. The same number of years doing neuropsychological assessment suggests that the question of intelligence, begs the question of adaptive ability relative to the nature of the problem which in turn recourses to the genetic and constitutional character of a variety areas in the brain in the subject.

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