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39 - Secular Changes in Intelligence

The “Flynn Effect”

from Part VII - Intelligence and Its Role in Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2019

By
James R. Flynn
Edited by
Robert J. Sternberg
Robert J. Sternberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

Massive IQ gains over time showed that obsolete norms had inflated estimates of the effects of intervention, adoption, and aging; and misdiagnosis of whether individuals had met IQ cutting lines that affected everything from the administration of the death penalty to who should benefit from special education. There were also important studies cited in the literature as if they could be taken at face value – the adoption study by Skodak and Skeels, for example. In America, obsolete norms had turned the death penalty into a lottery: you survive if you took a current test and got sixty-eight; you die if you took an obsolete test and got seventy-five. Research on the causes of IQ gains showed that environmental factors had a potency hitherto unappreciated, illuminated the history of cognitive progress in the twentieth century and its social significance, and recast the debate about group differences in IQ.

Keywords

Flynn effectinflation of IQ scoresmental retardationdeath penaltypotency of environmenthistory of intelligence gainssocial significance of cognition
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence , pp. 940 - 963
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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