麻豆传媒

Our IQs have risen. Does this mean we are getting smarter?

Our brains have no more potential at conception, but because we have done different 鈥渕ental exercise鈥� throughout our lives, our brains would look different at autopsy, just as a weightlifter鈥檚 muscles look different from a swimmer鈥檚. Our ancestors were just as good as we are at practical intelligence, at dealing with everyday life. But we have developed the mental skills needed to deal with the demands of the modern world.

Does that mean we should revise our definition of intelligence?

Once we understand how our minds have changed, I leave it to you whether you want to say we are 鈥渕ore intelligent鈥�. There is no doubt that we need a new approach to the study of intelligence.

If one individual is better than average on one important cognitive skill, they tend to be better on all of them. Society, on the other hand, may change so as to demand enhancement of one important skill 鈥� say, the ability to use logic to deal with abstract symbols 鈥� but make no extra demands on the expansion of our everyday vocabulary. Writing the cognitive history of the 20th century, of how our minds have changed over time, is quite different from measuring how much one person鈥檚 cognitive skills are superior to another鈥檚.

You caused a bit of stir talking about gains in women鈥檚 IQ.

, to the point where they now equal or slightly surpass men. I don鈥檛 think the advantage that women are showing is a genetic advantage for intelligence; I suspect it鈥檚 down to extra mental exercise. Girls are more likely to use their mind in school than boys are. But at university, they really are two or three points below men, and that鈥檚 because more marginal women, IQ-wise, qualify for university.

How come?

A girl with an IQ of 100 thinks of herself as university material and has the marks. A boy with the same IQ hates school and doesn鈥檛 have the marks. So you鈥檙e much more likely to find girls with an IQ below 110 in university than boys. Even so, females do better than males at university.

What about the infamous remarks by Larry Summers, when he was president of Harvard University, that women have less innate ability than men for science and mathematics?

This is a perfectly respectable hypothesis. Every hypothesis should be tested. He remarked that at the highest level of pure mathematics, women are under-represented. My answer is that if there is a difference, it鈥檚 not cognitive but temperamental.

I鈥檓 convinced from my research that women can use logic just as well as men. It could be that thanks to the testosterone of males and the greater proclivity of women to be interested in human beings, there will always be fewer women in pure mathematics. Who knows?

I have an open mind. When I lecture on this, I say Summers was wrong to think that women are less gifted cognitively.

It鈥檚 a sensitive issue. Why tackle it?

We need to know. And if people like me didn鈥檛 investigate it because it was politically incorrect, we never would know. It鈥檚 not accidental that I鈥檓 the one who鈥檚 overwhelmingly brought this evidence to bear on the gender issue. A lot of other people were too scared to go into it.

鈥淚f we didn鈥檛 investigate because it was politically incorrect, we鈥檇 never know鈥�

When feminists say to me that this is a great difficulty, I say, do you want women to be as competitive and soulless as men? I mean, is your ideal human being someone who neglects their family and kids and works 16 hours a day to be a corporate executive? You can鈥檛 have it both ways.

Do these differences in outlook exist between cultures too?

Yes. If you came home and told your Irish father [Flynn is Irish American] you鈥檇 made the football team, he鈥檇 be over the moon. If you told that to a Jewish parent, they might forbid you to play football. And if I came home with a good report card, my father would give me perfunctory praise. A Chinese parent, the kid knows he鈥檚 over the moon.

In my book , I wrote that Chinese Americans who had come to America before 1950 as children, or had been born in the US, had IQs no higher than whites 鈥� they just outperformed them like crazy. That is, they could drop seven points on whites and still get the SAT scores and grades to get into Berkeley. A Chinese American with an IQ of about 93 looked as intelligent as a white at 100, in terms of their educational and occupational profile. Like women, Chinese are more adjusted to formal education. They don鈥檛 skip class; they hand homework in on time; they don鈥檛 get suspended.

What implications does the 鈥淔lynn effect鈥� have for the use of the death penalty?

In the US I鈥檓 going to be executed rather than exonerated if I have an IQ above 70 鈥� because below that is where they deem 鈥渟ignificant limitations鈥�, such as problems with literacy or social skills, set in. For 10 years I have been trying to educate judges about the Flynn effect and the need to restandardise IQ tests every generation or so. If I was tested in 1976 with an IQ test from 1948, it has been inflated by 28 years of IQ gains, which means that an IQ of 67 could be returned as one of 75.

Have you succeeded in changing things?

At the beginning, I faced enormous resistance. Today, almost everyone who defends capital offenders is aware of my work. Given how conservative the judicial profession is, I鈥檓 not discouraged. I hope that before I die, I will see more progress.

You鈥檙e now 78, but you鈥檙e still working pretty much full time?

I teach four-fifths of the time, two courses, and I have a lot more time for my writing than I did when I was department head.

Doesn鈥檛 this run counter to the material in your about the 鈥渄ark鈥� side of old age?

No, that is about analytical people losing more ground in old age. Most IQ tests divide skills into four categories 鈥� analytical skills, verbal skills, working memory and perceptual speed. Disturbingly, those who are most above the average analytically have the deepest fall-off between the age of 65 and 88. Retirement age is what really sets things off.

Why do people decline after they retire?

Let鈥檚 imagine that high-performance analytical brains are like high-performance cars: in old age, they need more servicing than the average car. It could be that evolution has not geared the high-performance analytical brain to keep its tone in old age, neuronally. Or it may be that most highly intelligent people mainly use analysis at work, and when they retire, they lose an analytical exercise advantage over the average person. But there鈥檚 a bright spot for verbal skills: for people who are well above the mean, verbal facility decays slower.

How are you holding up?

Oddly enough, I don鈥檛 really feel I have fewer new ideas or am able to do less analysis than I could at 20. I do find my working memory has slipped a bit. I鈥檝e remained intensely active. I still run.

What do the next few years hold for you?

I鈥檓 on a crusade to salvage university education. I looked at students at a very good US university, one of the top 10, and found that only about 1 in 5 could do any critical thinking outside their major subject. Universities are in a position to correct this; every department could run a course that gave them these key tools. And I鈥檝e just finished a little book on climate change. This seems to be an issue that any educated person would want to have an independent opinion on.