Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents' | James Flynn

Summary

This script explores the dramatic cognitive evolution of the 20th century, highlighting significant shifts in mental habits due to technological and societal changes. It discusses the substantial increase in IQ scores over generations, the development of new mental skills such as abstraction and hypothetical reasoning, and the impact of these changes on education, employment, and moral debates. The speaker also notes a concerning trend of historical ignorance that hinders effective political engagement.

Takeaways

• 🚀 The cognitive abilities of humans have dramatically evolved over the 20th century, adapting to a more complex world and developing new mental habits.
• 🛣️ Just as the evolution of cars and roads has been driven by technological advancements, our minds have also adapted to better understand and navigate the world.
• 📈 Significant I.Q. gains over time suggest that modern generations are far more adept at problem-solving and abstract thinking compared to a century ago.
• 🧠 The rise in average I.Q. scores from 70 to 130 reflects a broader cognitive shift rather than a simple increase in intelligence.
• 👽 The hypothetical scenario of a Martian archaeologist illustrates the impact of technological advancements on performance, analogous to the cognitive tools we've acquired.
• 🔬 Luria's studies highlight the resistance of pre-scientific individuals to abstract thinking and the hypothetical, showing a stark contrast to modern cognitive habits.
• 🏫 The evolution of education reflects a shift towards teaching abstraction, logic, and the hypothetical, preparing students for a complex world.
• 🔬📚 The increase in cognitively demanding professions and the upgrading of existing ones require individuals to be more flexible and adept in abstract thinking.
• 🌐 The development of cognitive habits has also influenced moral debates, enabling deeper and more universal discussions on ethics and values.
• 📊 Despite overall cognitive progress, there's a noted decline in historical and political knowledge, which is crucial for informed decision-making in a democratic society.
• 🌟 The 20th century has revealed the vast cognitive potential of ordinary people, debunking the aristocratic belief that common individuals were incapable of complex thought.

Q & A

How did the speaker describe the cognitive shift in the 20th century?

The speaker described the cognitive shift in the 20th century as a dramatic change from people who analyzed the world in terms of personal benefit to those who confront a complex world, developing new mental habits such as classification, logical consistency, and considering hypotheticals.

What evidence did the speaker provide for the cognitive changes in people over the century?

The speaker provided evidence of cognitive changes through massive I.Q. gains over time, suggesting that each succeeding generation scored significantly higher on I.Q. tests than the previous ones, indicating a significant cognitive development.

What is the average I.Q. score that people from a century ago would have according to modern norms, as mentioned in the script?

According to the script, if people from a century ago were scored against modern norms, they would have an average I.Q. of 70.

Why did the speaker use the example of a Martian archaeologist to illustrate cognitive changes?

The speaker used the Martian archaeologist example to illustrate how the cognitive abilities of humans have evolved over time, similar to how the technology used by soldiers has advanced from muskets to machine guns, indicating that the 'equipment' of the mind has improved rather than just physical abilities.

What did Luria's studies on people before the scientific age reveal about their cognitive habits?

Luria's studies revealed that people before the scientific age were resistant to classifying the concrete world, deducing hypotheticals, and dealing with abstractions or using logic on those abstractions.

How did the speaker illustrate the resistance to abstractions and hypotheticals in Luria's interviews?

The speaker illustrated this resistance by recounting Luria's interviews where subjects could not see commonalities between crows and fish beyond their immediate uses, could not logically deduce the absence of camels in Germany, and refused to speculate on the color of bears at the North Pole based on given premises.

What changes in education does the speaker attribute to the cognitive development of the 20th century?

The speaker attributes the increase in years of formal education, the rise of scientific education, and the shift in examination content from concrete information to abstractions as evidence of cognitive development in education.

How has the nature of employment changed in terms of cognitive demands according to the script?

The script states that the nature of employment has changed with 35 percent of Americans now practicing cognitively demanding professions, and even traditional professions like doctor and banker have seen an upgrade in cognitive demands due to advancements in their respective fields.

What impact have the cognitive habits developed in the 20th century had on moral debates, as discussed in the script?

The cognitive habits developed in the 20th century, such as taking the hypothetical seriously and using logic on universals, have escalated moral debates by allowing for more abstract and logical considerations in moral arguments, as opposed to being fixed on concrete mores and attitudes.

What concern does the speaker express about the current generation's engagement with history and politics?

The speaker expresses concern that young Americans are becoming ahistorical, reading less history and literature about foreign lands, which hampers their ability to engage effectively in politics despite having developed cognitive abilities.

How does the speaker conclude the discussion on cognitive history and the potential of ordinary people?

The speaker concludes on an optimistic note, highlighting the cognitive reserves in ordinary people that have been realized over the 20th century, challenging the aristocratic belief that the average person could not share their mindset or cognitive abilities.

Outlines

00:00

🧠 Evolution of Cognitive Abilities in the 20th Century

This paragraph delves into the significant transformation of human cognition throughout the 20th century. It posits that our minds have evolved to adapt to a more complex world, necessitating the development of new mental habits such as classification, logical consistency, and hypothetical thinking. The speaker highlights the dramatic increase in I.Q. scores over time, suggesting that if evaluated by modern standards, people from a century ago would be considered mentally challenged, while we would be seen as gifted. The analogy of a Martian archaeologist examining the evolution of shooting accuracy over time is used to illustrate the concept that advancements in 'mental artillery' have contributed to these cognitive changes, rather than inherent abilities.

05:01

📚 The Impact of Education and Employment on Cognitive Development

The second paragraph examines the influence of formal education and employment on cognitive development. It notes the increase in the number of years of education and the shift towards scientific learning, which inherently involves classification, hypothesis formation, and logical consistency. The speaker contrasts the examinations of 1910 with those of 1990 to illustrate the transition from valuing concrete information to embracing abstractions. Furthermore, the paragraph discusses the rise in cognitively demanding professions and the need for individuals to be more cognitively flexible to meet modern employment standards. It also touches on the evolution of specific professions, such as banking and farming, and how they have become more cognitively complex over time.

10:03

🌐 The Expansion of Cognitive Habits into Moral Philosophy and Politics

This paragraph explores how the cognitive habits developed over the 20th century have extended into the realms of moral philosophy and politics. It discusses the escalation of moral debates in developed nations due to a serious consideration of hypotheticals and universals. The speaker uses the example of racial bias and how the hypothetical question of waking up black challenged the concrete attitudes of previous generations. The paragraph also points out the importance of historical knowledge in informed political discourse, expressing concern over the trend of young Americans becoming increasingly ahistorical and its implications for their political understanding and participation.

15:06

📊 Cognitive Progress and Challenges in Modern Society

The final paragraph reflects on the cognitive progress made as indicated by I.Q. tests, particularly in areas such as classification and logical reasoning with abstractions. It provides examples of how the ability to understand and solve complex analogies has advanced over time. However, it also acknowledges that not all areas have seen improvement, with a noted decline in historical and literary knowledge among the younger generation. The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding history to make sense of current events and to engage in politics effectively, concluding with a hopeful note about the cognitive potential of ordinary people, as opposed to the views of the aristocracy in the past.

Keywords

💡Cognitive History

Cognitive history refers to the evolution of human thought processes and mental abilities over time. In the video, it is used to describe the significant changes in how humans have perceived and interacted with the world during the 20th century, moving from a concrete to a more abstract and complex understanding.

💡Mental Retardation

Mental retardation, now more commonly referred to as intellectual disability, is a term that describes a range of cognitive impairments. In the script, it is mentioned in the context of historical I.Q. scores, suggesting that if people from a century ago were scored by today's standards, they might be considered intellectually disabled due to an average I.Q. of 70.

💡Giftedness

Giftedness is the state of possessing exceptional intellectual abilities or creativity. The video discusses how, by modern I.Q. standards, people from the past might be considered intellectually disabled, while conversely, modern people might all be seen as 'gifted' with an average I.Q. of 130, which is above the threshold for giftedness.

💡Hypothetical

The hypothetical refers to considering possibilities or scenarios that are not currently the case. The speaker emphasizes the importance of taking hypotheticals seriously in modern thinking, as it allows for deeper analysis and understanding of situations beyond what is immediately present.

💡I.Q. Tests

I.Q. tests, or intelligence quotient tests, are standardized assessments designed to measure human intelligence. The script discusses the significant gains in I.Q. scores over the 20th century, suggesting a dramatic increase in cognitive abilities and the development of new mental habits.

💡Classification

Classification is the process of organizing things into categories. In the context of the video, it is highlighted as a new mental habit developed in the 20th century, allowing people to make sense of the complex world by categorizing information.

💡Abstractions

Abstractions are concepts or ideas that do not have a physical or concrete form. The speaker notes that the ability to work with abstractions and apply logic to them is a key cognitive shift that has occurred during the 20th century, enabling more complex thinking.

💡Cognitive Demanding Professions

Cognitive demanding professions are jobs that require a high level of mental effort and intellectual skills. The script points out that the percentage of people in such professions has significantly increased over the century, reflecting a broader societal shift towards more complex and intellectually challenging work.

💡Moral Debate

Moral debate involves discussions and arguments about ethical principles and values. The video discusses how the ability to engage in moral debate has evolved over the century, with people becoming more adept at applying universal principles and logic to ethical considerations.

💡Empirical Evidence

Empirical evidence is information or data that is based on observation and experimentation. In the script, it is mentioned as a tool for challenging stereotypes and prejudices, by providing factual information that can be used to counter unfounded beliefs.

💡Cognitive Reserves

Cognitive reserves refer to the brain's capacity to learn new skills and adapt to new information. The video concludes by highlighting the discovery of the vast cognitive reserves within ordinary people during the 20th century, challenging the aristocratic belief that the average person could not match their intellectual capabilities.

Highlights

The cognitive history of the 20th century shows a dramatic alteration in human minds due to advancements in technology and society.

People have evolved from analyzing the concrete world for personal benefit to developing new mental habits to confront a complex world.

The development of new mental habits includes classifying the world, introducing logically consistent abstractions, and considering hypothetical scenarios.

Massive I.Q. gains over time indicate a significant change in cognitive abilities, with each generation scoring higher on I.Q. tests than the previous.

If scored against modern norms, people from a century ago would have an average I.Q. of 70, while we would have an average of 130.

The presenter argues for a third alternative to explain the I.Q. gains, drawing a parallel to the evolution of weaponry and its impact on performance.

Luria's studies show resistance to classification, hypothetical reasoning, and abstraction among people before the scientific age.

Examples from Luria's interviews illustrate the difficulty people had with abstract thinking and hypothetical scenarios in the early 20th century.

Education has shifted from concrete information to abstractions and logical reasoning, as seen in the evolution of school exams.

The increase in cognitively demanding professions and the upgrading of existing ones have necessitated more flexible cognitive abilities.

Moral debates have escalated in the last century due to the serious consideration of hypotheticals and universals in logical reasoning.

The hypothetical scenario of waking up black was used to challenge racial biases and promote moral argumentation.

I.Q. test gains are most significant in areas related to classification, logic on abstractions, and understanding analogies.

Despite cognitive progress, there is a noted decline in historical and literary knowledge among young Americans, affecting their political understanding.

The presenter emphasizes the cognitive reserves in ordinary people that have been realized over the 20th century, challenging aristocratic misconceptions.

The transcript concludes on a cautiously optimistic note, acknowledging cognitive progress but also the importance of historical awareness.

Transcripts

We are going to take a quick voyage

over the cognitive history of the 20th century,

because during that century,

our minds have altered dramatically.

As you all know, the cars that people drove in 1900

have altered because the roads are better

and because of technology.

And our minds have altered, too.

We've gone from people who confronted a concrete world

and analyzed that world primarily in terms

of how much it would benefit them

to people who confront a very complex world,

and it's a world where we've had to develop

new mental habits, new habits of mind.

And these include things like

clothing that concrete world with classification,

introducing abstractions that we try to make

logically consistent,

and also taking the hypothetical seriously,

that is, wondering about what might have been

rather than what is.

Now, this dramatic change was drawn to my attention

through massive I.Q. gains over time,

and these have been truly massive.

That is, we don't just get a few more questions right

on I.Q. tests.

We get far more questions right on I.Q. tests

than each succeeding generation

back to the time that they were invented.

Indeed, if you score the people a century ago

against modern norms,

they would have an average I.Q. of 70.

If you score us against their norms,

we would have an average I.Q. of 130.

Now this has raised all sorts of questions.

Were our immediate ancestors

on the verge of mental retardation?

Because 70 is normally the score for mental retardation.

Or are we on the verge of all being gifted?

Because 130 is the cutting line for giftedness.

Now I'm going to try and argue for a third alternative

that's much more illuminating than either of those,

and to put this into perspective,

let's imagine that a Martian came down to Earth

and found a ruined civilization.

And this Martian was an archaeologist,

and they found scores, target scores,

that people had used for shooting.

And first they looked at 1865,

and they found that in a minute,

people had only put one bullet in the bullseye.

And then they found, in 1898,

that they'd put about five bullets in the bullseye in a minute.

And then about 1918 they put a hundred bullets in the bullseye.

And initially, that archaeologist would be baffled.

They would say, look, these tests were designed

to find out how much people were steady of hand,

how keen their eyesight was,

whether they had control of their weapon.

How could these performances have escalated

to this enormous degree?

Well we now know, of course, the answer.

If that Martian looked at battlefields,

they would find that people had only muskets

at the time of the Civil War

and that they had repeating rifles

at the time of the Spanish-American War,

and then they had machine guns

by the time of World War I.

And, in other words, it was the equipment

that was in the hands of the average soldier

that was responsible, not greater keenness of eye

or steadiness of hand.

Now what we have to imagine is the mental artillery

that we have picked up over those hundred years,

and I think again that another thinker will help us here,

and that's Luria.

Luria looked at people

just before they entered the scientific age,

and he found that these people

were resistant to classifying the concrete world.

They wanted to break it up

into little bits that they could use.

He found that they were resistant

to deducing the hypothetical,

to speculating about what might be,

and he found finally that they didn't deal well

with abstractions or using logic on those abstractions.

Now let me give you a sample of some of his interviews.

He talked to the head man of a person

in rural Russia.

They'd only had, as people had in 1900,

about four years of schooling.

And he asked that particular person,

what do crows and fish have in common?

And the fellow said, "Absolutely nothing.

You know, I can eat a fish. I can't eat a crow.

A crow can peck at a fish.

A fish can't do anything to a crow."

And Luria said, "But aren't they both animals?"

And he said, "Of course not.

One's a fish.

The other is a bird."

And he was interested, effectively,

in what he could do with those concrete objects.

And then Luria went to another person,

and he said to them,

"There are no camels in Germany.

Hamburg is a city in Germany.

Are there camels in Hamburg?"

And the fellow said,

"Well, if it's large enough, there ought to be camels there."

And Luria said, "But what do my words imply?"

And he said, "Well, maybe it's a small village,

and there's no room for camels."

In other words, he was unwilling to treat this

as anything but a concrete problem,

and he was used to camels being in villages,

and he was quite unable to use the hypothetical,

to ask himself what if there were no camels in Germany.

A third interview was conducted

with someone about the North Pole.

And Luria said, "At the North Pole, there is always snow.

Wherever there is always snow, the bears are white.

What color are the bears at the North Pole?"

And the response was, "Such a thing

is to be settled by testimony.

If a wise person came from the North Pole

and told me the bears were white,

I might believe him,

but every bear that I have seen is a brown bear."

Now you see again, this person has rejected

going beyond the concrete world

and analyzing it through everyday experience,

and it was important to that person

what color bears were --

that is, they had to hunt bears.

They weren't willing to engage in this.

One of them said to Luria,

"How can we solve things that aren't real problems?

None of these problems are real.

How can we address them?"

Now, these three categories --

classification,

using logic on abstractions,

taking the hypothetical seriously --

how much difference do they make in the real world

beyond the testing room?

And let me give you a few illustrations.

First, almost all of us today get a high school diploma.

That is, we've gone from four to eight years of education

to 12 years of formal education,

and 52 percent of Americans

have actually experienced some type of tertiary education.

Now, not only do we have much more education,

and much of that education is scientific,

and you can't do science without classifying the world.

You can't do science without proposing hypotheses.

You can't do science without making it logically consistent.

And even down in grade school, things have changed.

In 1910, they looked at the examinations

that the state of Ohio gave to 14-year-olds,

and they found that they were all

for socially valued concrete information.

They were things like,

what are the capitals of the 44 or 45 states

that existed at that time?

When they looked at the exams

that the state of Ohio gave in 1990,

they were all about abstractions.

They were things like,

why is the largest city of a state rarely the capital?

And you were supposed to think, well,

the state legislature was rural-controlled,

and they hated the big city,

so rather than putting the capital in a big city,

they put it in a county seat.

They put it in Albany rather than New York.

They put it in Harrisburg rather than Philadelphia.

And so forth.

So the tenor of education has changed.

We are educating people to take the hypothetical seriously,

to use abstractions, and to link them logically.

What about employment?

Well, in 1900, three percent of Americans

practiced professions that were cognitively demanding.

Only three percent were lawyers or doctors or teachers.

Today, 35 percent of Americans

practice cognitively demanding professions,

not only to the professions proper like lawyer

or doctor or scientist or lecturer,

but many, many sub-professions

having to do with being a technician,

a computer programmer.

A whole range of professions now make cognitive demands.

And we can only meet the terms of employment

in the modern world by being cognitively

far more flexible.

And it's not just that we have many more people

in cognitively demanding professions.

The professions have been upgraded.

Compare the doctor in 1900,

who really had only a few tricks up his sleeve,

with the modern general practitioner or specialist,

with years of scientific training.

Compare the banker in 1900,

who really just needed a good accountant

and to know who was trustworthy in the local community

for paying back their mortgage.

Well, the merchant bankers who brought the world to their knees

may have been morally remiss,

but they were cognitively very agile.

They went far beyond that 1900 banker.

They had to look at computer projections

for the housing market.

They had to get complicated CDO-squared

in order to bundle debt together

and make debt look as if it were actually a profitable asset.

They had to prepare a case to get rating agencies

to give it a AAA,

though in many cases, they had virtually bribed the rating agencies.

And they also, of course, had to get people

to accept these so-called assets

and pay money for them

even though they were highly vulnerable.

Or take a farmer today.

I take the farm manager of today as very different

from the farmer of 1900.

So it hasn't just been the spread

of cognitively demanding professions.

It's also been the upgrading of tasks

like lawyer and doctor and what have you

that have made demands on our cognitive faculties.

But I've talked about education and employment.

Some of the habits of mind that we have developed

over the 20th century

have paid off in unexpected areas.

I'm primarily a moral philosopher.

I merely have a holiday in psychology,

and what interests me in general is moral debate.

Now over the last century,

in developed nations like America,

moral debate has escalated

because we take the hypothetical seriously,

and we also take universals seriously

and look for logical connections.

When I came home in 1955 from university

at the time of Martin Luther King,

a lot of people came home at that time

and started having arguments with their parents and grandparents.

My father was born in 1885,

and he was mildly racially biased.

As an Irishman, he hated the English so much

he didn't have much emotion for anyone else.

(Laughter)

But he did have a sense that black people were inferior.

And when we said to our parents and grandparents,

"How would you feel if tomorrow morning you woke up black?"

they said that is the dumbest thing you've ever said.

Who have you ever known who woke up in the morning --

(Laughter) --

that turned black?

In other words, they were fixed in the concrete

mores and attitudes they had inherited.

They would not take the hypothetical seriously,

and without the hypothetical,

it's very difficult to get moral argument off the ground.

You have to say, imagine you were

in Iran, and imagine that your relatives

all suffered from collateral damage

even though they had done no wrong.

How would you feel about that?

And if someone of the older generation says,

well, our government takes care of us,

and it's up to their government to take care of them,

they're just not willing to take the hypothetical seriously.

Or take an Islamic father whose daughter has been raped,

and he feels he's honor-bound to kill her.

Well, he's treating his mores

as if they were sticks and stones and rocks that he had inherited,

and they're unmovable in any way by logic.

They're just inherited mores.

Today we would say something like,

well, imagine you were knocked unconscious and sodomized.

Would you deserve to be killed?

And he would say, well that's not in the Koran.

That's not one of the principles I've got.

Well you, today, universalize your principles.

You state them as abstractions and you use logic on them.

If you have a principle such as,

people shouldn't suffer unless they're guilty of something,

then to exclude black people

you've got to make exceptions, don't you?

You have to say, well, blackness of skin,

you couldn't suffer just for that.

It must be that blacks are somehow tainted.

And then we can bring empirical evidence to bear, can't we,

and say, well how can you consider all blacks tainted

when St. Augustine was black and Thomas Sowell is black.

And you can get moral argument off the ground, then,

because you're not treating moral principles as concrete entities.

You're treating them as universals,

to be rendered consistent by logic.

Now how did all of this arise out of I.Q. tests?

That's what initially got me going on cognitive history.

If you look at the I.Q. test,

you find the gains have been greatest in certain areas.

The similarities subtest of the Wechsler

is about classification,

and we have made enormous gains

on that classification subtest.

There are other parts of the I.Q. test battery

that are about using logic on abstractions.

Some of you may have taken Raven's Progressive Matrices,

and it's all about analogies.

And in 1900, people could do simple analogies.

That is, if you said to them, cats are like wildcats.

What are dogs like?

They would say wolves.

But by 1960, people could attack Raven's

on a much more sophisticated level.

If you said, we've got two squares followed by a triangle,

what follows two circles?

They could say a semicircle.

Just as a triangle is half of a square,

a semicircle is half of a circle.

By 2010, college graduates, if you said

two circles followed by a semicircle,

two sixteens followed by what,

they would say eight, because eight is half of 16.

That is, they had moved so far from the concrete world

that they could even ignore

the appearance of the symbols that were involved in the question.

Now, I should say one thing that's very disheartening.

We haven't made progress on all fronts.

One of the ways in which we would like to deal

with the sophistication of the modern world

is through politics,

and sadly you can have humane moral principles,

you can classify, you can use logic on abstractions,

and if you're ignorant of history and of other countries,

you can't do politics.

We've noticed, in a trend among young Americans,

that they read less history and less literature

and less material about foreign lands,

and they're essentially ahistorical.

They live in the bubble of the present.

They don't know the Korean War from the war in Vietnam.

They don't know who was an ally of America in World War II.

Think how different America would be

if every American knew that this is the fifth time

Western armies have gone to Afghanistan to put its house in order,

and if they had some idea of exactly what had happened

on those four previous occasions.

(Laughter)

And that is, they had barely left,

and there wasn't a trace in the sand.

Or imagine how different things would be

if most Americans knew that we had been lied

into four of our last six wars.

You know, the Spanish didn't sink the battleship Maine,

the Lusitania was not an innocent vessel

but was loaded with munitions,

the North Vietnamese did not attack the Seventh Fleet,

and, of course, Saddam Hussein hated al Qaeda

and had nothing to do with it,

and yet the administration convinced 45 percent of the people

that they were brothers in arms,

when he would hang one from the nearest lamppost.

But I don't want to end on a pessimistic note.

The 20th century has shown enormous cognitive reserves

in ordinary people that we have now realized,

and the aristocracy was convinced

that the average person couldn't make it,

that they could never share their mindset

or their cognitive abilities.

Lord Curzon once said

he saw people bathing in the North Sea,

and he said, "Why did no one tell me

what white bodies the lower orders have?"

As if they were a reptile.

Well, Dickens was right and he was wrong. [Correction: Rudyard Kipling]

[Kipling] said, "The colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady

are sisters underneath the skin."

(Applause)