Flynn Effect

The interesting phenomenon that intelligence levels across the population are generally rising.

“That’s not so,” you say? Well, we are talking about intelligence levels…not driving ability. Can’t really make the claim that people are getting better there…especially when drivers are barreling right off of a cliff because responding to that text message about what to have for dinner tonight is far more important than accurately piloting a 2-ton death machine.

But anyway, what were we saying? Oh yeah—we’re all, like, getting smarter and stuff. And we know this because James Flynn says so. And James Flynn would know—he’s an intelligence researcher and college professor in New Zealand. It’s his research that informed the world that our intelligence test scores—and by “our,” we mean everyone around the globe—have steadily been improving over time.

There are some ideas about why this might be true…better education, lots of test-taking, practice makes perfect, smaller families which allow for more attention for each child, and possibly genetics. Or those IQ tests might just be a load of crap. That’s an argument, too.

But either way, James Flynn’s research was so inspiring that two other social scientists, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, named the phenomenon “the Flynn effect.” Today, there is some debate about whether that trend is still, uh, trending, since a few recent studies are actually showing a slight IQ decline. But whatever, we’re sure it’s only temporary. Because we’re all definitely getting much, much smarter. And stuff.