Joseph Henrich: evaluation

Transcript context

…Culturally local. If I try to tie this to other areas of psychology — we all know about the Flynn effect, that measured IQ each generation, at least in the West, probably many other places. It goes up consistently just by having a new generation. It goes up a surprisingly large amount. Is this the same as the Flynn effect? Is it operating in parallel? Is it explaining the Flynn effect? Is the Flynn effect explaining this? Is the Flynn effect real or artifact? What’s your take on how the big picture fits together? I don’t think there’s any relation between these numbers. Efforts to control for IQ or intelligence scores don’t seem to predict behavioral games. (There’s a few exceptions to that.) I don’t think those are linked. The Flynn effect is a great example. People tend to think of IQ as being a product of genes. Certainly, genes make a contribution to IQ. Although the heritability of IQ actually depends on the population you use. You pick one population, you get a high heritability — saying there’s lots of genetic influence, 0.8 — that would be middle-class, upper-class Americans. But if you study low-class Americans, it’s like 0.2, 0. 1. That’s because there’s a lot of variation in the environments that people in lower classes face compared to the relatively homogeneous environments that they face in upper classes. That’s just a comment on IQ heritability. But the Flynn effect, I think, is a great example of people adapting their cognition to the economic and social world that they face. They’ve got to deal with new kinds of problems, and that’s going to favor more analytic thinking. Most of the increase in the Flynn effect is due to the three subtests. There’s 10 subtests on the IQ test and three of them are about analytic thinking. Those are the three that have really dramatically gone up over the last hundred years. The Flynn effect in the short run puzzles me more than in the long run. If I compare today to the 18th century, I can see where the difference might be. But in many countries, it seems the Flynn effect hasn’t stopped. Nutritional gains probably are over. The environment — smartphones are newer than the Flynn effect, but it doesn’t seem to be changing now compared to a generation ago. They both seem quite complex. We’ve had TV for a while. People have books, market society. What exactly is the difference over the last generation in the short run?…

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