Researchers Say Western Iqs Dropped 14 Points Over Last Century

[Flashermac]

A new study from researchers in Europe claims that the average IQ in Western nations dropped by a staggering 14.1 points over the past century.

 

"We tested the hypothesis that the Victorians were cleverer than modern populations using high-quality instruments, namely measures of simple visual reaction time in a meta-analytic study," the researchers wrote in the study, which was published online in the journal Intelligence on Thursday. "Simple reaction time measures correlate substantially with measures of general intelligence and are considered elementary measures of cognition."

 

The results might surprise some. Especially if the researchers were simply measuring visual response times. After all, in a digital world constantly competing for our attention, it would seem people generally respond more quickly to visual stimuli. However, the results appear to indicate something different.

 

The Victorian era ran roughly from 1837 to 1901, coinciding with the reign of England's Queen Victoria. Some have credited the Reform Act of 1832 with sparking an era of previously unprecedented peace and prosperity in the U.K.

 

The results were measured using data from 1889 to 2004 and were analyzed by Michael A. Woodley of Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, Jan te Nijenhuis of the University of Amsterdam and Raegan Murphy of the University College Cork in Ireland.

 

So why has there been such a steady drop? As UPI notes, previous research studies have found that women of higher intelligence tend to have fewer children on average, meaning that population growth may be driven by those with a lower IQ. And over time, the abundance of less intelligent offspring would affect the overall IQ average.

 

On average, the general intelligence of those populations measured dropped by 1.23 points per decade.

 

"These findings strongly indicate that with respect to general intelligence the Victorians were substantially cleverer than modern Western populations," the study says.

 

The study had other positive observations about the Victorian era, noting that economic efficiency began to flourish during the period and that the “height of the per capita numbers of significant innovations in science and technology, and also the per capita numbers of scientific geniuses,†occurred during that time, followed by a steady decline.

 

 

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/researchers-western-iqs-dropped-14-points-over-last-180634194.html

[Boo Radley]

Possibly partly due to lead in petrol, which is only just being phased out.

Also the rise of the internet, turning our brains to mush

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/15/internet-brain-neuroscience-debate

[Flashermac]

U R so rite dude.

[StoneSoup]

The movie "Idiocracy "nailed this one cold:

 

http://www.videobash.com/video_show/idiocracy-intro-245281

[JaiRai]

The part on women with high IQs having less children, thus dumbing down the entire population, is... interesting. To what extent in humans is high IQ genetic, opposed to a range that occurs somewhat randomly in different people and is nurtured through your lifetime? It'd be easier to make the case that kids from neglectful parents start at a disadvantage. But even then it's not a simple flowchart.

 

Weren't we all fish millions of years ago? And yet those Victorians still came into existence, without high IQ breeding. How?

[JaiRai]

I stand corrected. It looks like genetics plays a significant role in IQ of the offspring.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

 

Though Wikipedia isn't exactly the most accurate academic resource, this particular piece is sourced out to multiple reliable entities.

 

(Note: prior to this snippet, the case was made that the greatest probability for any given child is to tend toward the mean of the population, regardless of parental IQ. That said there is a higher probability that someone with a high IQ had a parent with the same).

 

==============

Estimates of the heritability of IQ [edit]

Various studies have found the heritability of IQ to be between 0.7 and 0.8 in adults and 0.45 in childhood in the United States.^[7][5][18] It may seem reasonable to expect that genetic influences on traits like IQ should become less important as one gains experiences with age. However, that the opposite occurs is well documented. Heritability measures in infancy are as low as 0.2, around 0.4 in middle childhood, and as high as 0.8 in adulthood.^[8][19] One proposed explanation is that people with different genes tend to seek out different environments that reinforce the effects of those genes.^[7]

A 1994 review in Behavior Genetics based on identical/fraternal twin studies found that heritability is as high as 0.80 in general cognitive ability but it also varies based on the trait, with .60 for verbal tests, .50 for spatial and speed-of-processing tests, and only .40 for memory tests.^[5]

In 2006, The New York Times Magazine listed about three quarters as a figure held by the majority of studies,^[9] while a 2004 meta-analysis of reports in Current Directions in Psychological Sciencegave an overall estimate of around .85 for 18-year-olds and older.^[8]"

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[radioman]

Yup, the dumb clucks breed more.

[Flashermac]

Way back in the Middle Ages, when I was a high school student and Ike was still President, my biology teacher made this very point. Intelligent people marry later and have few or no children. Meanwhile, the drones shag away and turn out babies on a conveyor result. That is the only problem with democracy ... a moron's vote counts as much as a genius's.

[Specialist]

For an amusing treatment of the subject, LONG before "Idiocracy", see "The Marching Morons" by C.M. Kornbluth.

 

Now, if you want to get yourself tarred, feathered, and burned at the stake, ask if IQ correlates with any other genetic attributes. You don't have to propose an answer either way. Just asking the question will get you crucified.

[huumlaar]

Stone, I was going to post that movie link ya bugger!

 

Great movie