Are Humans Getting Smarter? | The Flynn Effect
Trends show that people are scoring higher and higher on IQ tests as time passes — this is known as the Flynn Effect. What is this attributed to? Are we really getting smarter?
IQ tests are not precisely the best way to measure intelligence — they are a good general indicator, yes, but not a flawless method.
An IQ test is designed to measure an individual's intelligence regardless of education. In the words of author David Epstein, “This test was created so that you wouldn’t have to bring to it anything that you have learned in life. If Martians landed on Earth, this was supposed to be the test that could determine how clever they were.”
IQ tests deal with abstractions; you answer questions about hard logic — such as filling in missing pieces of a numerical or geometric sequence.
For example, you might find questions like these in an IQ test:
Fill the missing number from the following sequence: 2, 7, 4, 9, 6, 11, ?, 13
This sequence alternates between adding five and subtracting three. The right answer would be eight.
If all members of group A belong to group B and all members of group B belong to group C, are all members of group A also members of group C?
This one is pure logic: If all A’s are B’s and all B’s are C’s, then logically, all A’s are also C’s.
This may feel easy to you, perhaps far too easy. This is partially thanks to the Flynn Effect. The term is named after scholar James Flynn.
Nearly a century ago, in the Soviet Union, a psychologist named Alexander Luria decided to put people’s abstract thinking skills by asking abstract questions to people of different backgrounds.
He noticed that rural workers had some difficulty answering these questions. One of his sessions went like this:
Luria: What do a chicken and a dog have in common?
Farmer: They are not alike. A chicken has two legs; a dog has four. A chicken has wings but a dog doesn’t. A dog has big ears and a chicken’s are small.
Luria: Is there one word you could use for them both?
Farmer: No, of course not.
Luria: Would the word “animal” fit?
Farmer: Yes.
The subjects were clearly able to think objectively, and they answered based on their knowledge of the question. I have never been to B. How can I know whether there are camels there?
This may sound insulting to early 20th-century rural workers, but it isn’t. Showing objective thinking over abstract thinking is not a disadvantage; it’s simply a different mode of operation.
Most people back then didn’t need to worry about the hypothetical, so they didn’t. They only worried about what directly concerned them, and this is how they were best adapted to their respective roles.
Which orange circle is bigger? The one on the left or the one on the right? If you’ve seen this before, you might already know that they are the same size but still look different.
You probably grew up in a time and place where abstract thinking was required. Unlike early 20th-century Soviet Farmers, you received years of education that trained you to understand hypotheticals without much effort.
You may see the orange and black circles as a group, paying more attention to the whole than to the individual, which creates the illusion.
As David Epstein notes, if you were to show this image to a person who lacks such abstract thinking, they are more likely to intuitively know that the orange circles are the same size.
We live in a world where information is abundant in nearly every field. Even the farmers today are overwhelmed with information, whereas a century ago, it was a much simpler lifestyle.
This is not a bad thing—more information has allowed us to work more efficiently on practically every front. However, to deal with this overflow of information, we need more people who are more thoroughly educated than we were a century ago.
Working with more data requires more abstract thinkers.
Education isn’t supposed to affect your IQ test score, but it does. Not because the questions relate to whatever you might have learned but because schools inherently train you to think abstractly.
And unsurprisingly, as more people grew up receiving an education:
Sources:
1. Human Intelligence - Encyclopedia Britannica
2. The Evolution of Cognition - William L. Benzon & David G. Hays
3. 100 years of intelligence tests: We can do better - APA Divisions
4. A. R. Luria: The Neuropsychology of Praxis - Three-Toed Sloth
5. The Flynn Effect: A Meta-analysis - National Library of Medicine
6. The Flynn Effect – Explaining Increasing IQ Scores - Simply Psychology
Edited by Gaurav Mishra
Written by Lucas L
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