All Brains Are the Same Color, writes Richard E. Nisbett, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, in the New York Times. Heritability of I.Q. is very low for poor people, in the range of 10 percent to 20 percent, he writes, citing recent research. So environmental changes, such as better schooling, “have great potential to bring about increases in I.Q.”
Blacks with high I.Q.s have no more European ancestry, according to blood-typing tests, than lower-I.Q. blacks.
An Arizona State adoption study by psychologist Elsie Moore found no difference in I.Q. between black and mixed-race children adopted by middle-class families. But the race of the adoptive parents made a big difference.
Most telling is Dr. Moore’s finding that children adopted by white families had I.Q.’s 13 points higher than those of children adopted by black families. The environments that even middle-class black children grow up in are not as favorable for the development of I.Q. as those of middle-class whites.
Research shows blacks and whites have an equal ability to learn new words and concepts, Nisbett writes. However, whites have more background knowledge.
. . . interventions at every age from infancy to college can reduce racial gaps in both I.Q. and academic achievement, sometimes by substantial amounts in surprisingly little time. This mutability is further evidence that the I.Q. difference has environmental, not genetic, causes. And it should encourage us, as a society, to see that all children receive ample opportunity to develop their minds.
This supports E.D. Hirsch’s theories on “cultural literacy.” Children need a base of “core knowledge” in order to understand new things. Some parents are able to teach this at home. In other cases, children need to be taught at school.
This is yet another genetics-environment issue where many non-researchers only see the issue in black and white – either one side is right or the other.
Every trait a person is born with is affected by both genes and the environment, so it is theoretically possible for there to be a genetic basis for a slight discrepancy in IQ between populations. Any difference between populations, though, would be overshadowed by the variation in individuals due to genes and the environment.
In the end, the effect of fully exploiting one’s IQ through learning is much greater than any population-based genetic differences. Also, I doubt whether it is possible to design a study to truly isolate the effect of genetics on IQ across races. People on both sides need to let this issue die.
Mean differences in cognitive intelligence are attributable to both nature and nurture. Attempts to dimmiss either are futile.
Why not just a subjective, double blind study?
An old friend of mine administered IQ tests in the public school system here (in the 80s and 90s). She said IQ tests for children were basically vocabulary tests. I don’t know how accurate that is now, but if that’s true it could explain a lot.
The gap remains. The 13 point increase with a black child in a white family still puts those child on the back end of the bell curve.
As for this quote,”Blacks with high I.Q.s have no more European ancestry, according to blood-typing tests, than lower-I.Q. blacks,” one will find those examples in any standard distribution and it says nothing of the group profile.
Sadly, too many people see IQ as a reason to hurt people. Silly. Just silly.
Canis domesticus has lots of breeds. There is no one who will say that all breeds of the same species are of identical intelligence. No one. Ever. Period. So why are humans exemplt from evolution? Clue–they’re not!
Social policy that demands equal outcomes in all thing will always be a failure. The best policy is equality under the law with individual rights. Treat all people well and don’t color them with a group trait.
Mr. Smith said: “The 13 point increase with a black child in a white family still puts those child on the back end of the bell curve.”
The black-white differential in means IQ is about one standard-deviation, which is about 10 points… this 13 point gain does NOT put them on the back end of the bell curve, but squarely in the middle… in other words, the study potentially shows that a black child raised by a white family on AVERAGE will have the same IQ as a white child raised by a white family… I haven’t read the study, so I don’t know the details of the controls they used or the error analysis, but if what the authors of this study found can be confirmed by other studies, it shows that almost all of the difference is environmental. SuperSub above is correct in that the vast majority of human traits are controlled by multiple genes (except for very very simple traits, there is no ONE gene that controls a trait, it’s almost always the interplay of MULTIPLE genes), hormonal balance in utero, AND environmental factors after birth…
You miss the point jab, bringing a group up 13 points on average for a curve that is on the backend to begin with still puts the curve on the back end of the bell curve.
The difference is real.
As for genes, they are subject to natural selection. Differences in groups arise from the environment’s effect on gene selection. I can’t take a tree and make it a doctor. Genes are THE controlling factor to environmental influence.
Genetics is the Necessary Condition for anything to happen.
As to why anyone would treat individuals bases on group traits is a mystery to me. Judge people by their actual expressed traits and what they do, not the group.
The danger is how social policy is set. If we say that all professions must have a proportionate amount by race, then we are producing folly. Can you imagine a legal requirement that basketball teams reflect the population at large? Silly, no?
Mr. Smith,
I really do not understand how you can say: “bringing a group up 13 points on average for a curve that is on the backend to begin with still puts the curve on the back end of the bell curve.”
What you said is not true if the increase is greater than or equal to the differential.
For this group, there is NO DIFFERENCE in IQ… that is the whole point… that 13 point increase erases the whole black-white IQ differential. Black children adopted and raised by white families have the SAME IQ ON AVERAGE than white children raised by white families.
This is consistent with the finding in the article that half-German/half black-American children raised by German parents have the same IQ as half-German/half white-American children raised by German parents after WWII.
Unless I am misunderstanding your point in that your saying the increase for this very small subgroup of black children adopted by white families does not bring up the average of all blacks… if that’s your point, well, that is quite obvious and silly.
Haven’t had time to look into this carefully, but note Nisbett’s credentials:
“Education:
A.B., 1962, Tufts University, Psychology major.
Ph.D., 1966, Columbia University, Department of Social Psychology.
“
A sociologist! Any math in his background? Any biology? Any science? Unless I see some hard science I’m going to be sceptical of what he says.
The other thing to remember is that while IQ is interesting, it’s not everything.
You can have a high IQ kid who’s lazy, has poor work habits, and doesn’t care.
You can have an average kid who is hard-working, motivated and organized.
Kid #2 will be more successful, given the same environment.
Once someone hits a certain minimum IQ, they can do pretty well in life PROVIDED THAT THEY HAVE A DECENT EDUCATION AND CULTURE to back them up.
Slackers slack and fail. Hard workers do well.
That being said, I also know a couple of people who are Geniuses AND hardworking (at least in their chosen field) and they blow everyone else out of the water.
But in terms of a decent adult life, the difference between 100 and 113, or even the difference between 135 and 146, is not really that important.
(Sort of like the whole “first three years” movement…. in reality, once you reach a certain minimum of stimulation and parental interest, more intensive prep(like baby flashcards) doesn’t really make a difference.)
When I was young, IQ mattered intensely to me because it was something I could “win” at. But the older I get, and the more people I meet, the more I realize that it’s not the sole source of people’s success…..
An interesting article on the Flynn Effect and IQ:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/12/17/071217crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=1
Jab, the studies you posit have faulty methodology and are motivated by political correctness to have a specific finding.
If what you say were true, we would not have black children from $70,000 and greater households scoring lower on the SAT than whites in households of incomes below $20,000.
And the SAT has a larger testing population.
The IQ gap is one of the longest replicatable studies with consistent results on ALL OF SCIENCE. It has been done and challenged over and over again. When a “study” comes up that supposedly refutes the long standing evidence, the new study is politically motivated or it doesn’t really address the group difference.
The ‘put a black in a white family’ studies do not address the group difference at all. Actually go and read the methodology of some of those studies. You will see the methodology is rigged or just plain pure garbage. The outcomes are predetermined.
Again, just because there are group differences cause by evolution does not mean anyone has the right to treat members of a group badly. The resistance to the facts may be that very fear that the difference may be used for that reason.
Treat people well as individuals and remove all group rights from the public arena and all will be well.
The notion that there is a large genetic gap in ability to do well on IQ tests is very unwelcome. It’s been propounded by some very unattractive people over the years. That doesn’t have any relationship to whether it is true or not – one of the more useful things Watson said, quoted in the Independent “The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity. It may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science. To question this is not to give in to racism.”
More and more work comes out showing that the intellect and character of individuals are profoundly shaped by their genes: personality traits, intelligence, tendency to schizophrenia, cheerfulness. The notion that these things come out – for individuals – of an absolutely level pool in each group, however defined, doesn’t have any basis obvious to me. There’s research being reported right now suggesting that human evolution has been very fast, in the last 20000 years, in terms of gene changes – and the last 20000 years is the period when the groups of humans which most folks call races have been separate, and exposed to different influences.
It’s worth looking at the controversy in terms of similarity to the defense of the Ptolemaic universe, to Agassiz’ rear guard fight against Darwinism, to Lysenkoism – and also to the folks who have been claiming that AIDS didn’t come from HIV virus, to the cold fusion people. There’s trouble right now between people who say climate change is settled ‘consensus’ science and anyone who doubts that we must lessen greenhouse gas emissions to avoid catastrophe is beyond the pale, and people who think it’s not settled science. Sometimes scientific consensus is right, and folks who think not are barking at the moon. Sometimes, not so much. Watson is clearly right that wanting something to be true is not a good reason for thinking that it is true.
One problem with Moore’s study is that the Army weeds out low IQ soldiers with IQ tests. So the soldiers studied are not representative of the population at large. This is a sampling error.
Also, a one standard deviation difference between two populations is a large differential. The mean of the low group performs at about the 17th percentile of the higher group. This is much closer to the back end than it is to the middle of the curve.
I have had a career that has overlapped the fields of science, education, law, and government, but I actually started out life as a scientist, and my training is as a scientist. Science is more accurate, the more detailed and specific the level of inquiry. For example, my college chemistry professors did not make me report results to 4 decimal places just because they loved numbers, but because that was the level of detail needed to validate meaningful results. Anything less detailed than that would have been too generalized to really mean much of anything. Scientific methods have specific limits and parameters on purpose. To make generalized sweeping conclusions, even if using accepted scientific methods, one is still making generalized sweeping conclusions.
Race is a very broadly defined concept, especially when talking about the gigantic grouping of black versus white, or even the groupings of African, European, Asian, and Latino. At some point artificial lines have to be drawn between groups. Race is usually perceived at the phenotype level, not the genetic level. If one were to make the argument that this one very particular and specific genetic family had an IQ difference that deviated from the norm, I could accept that at some level. But for every level of generalization from that point, the more error I will suspect in any conclusion, no matter who does the generalization. Also, IQ is far too broad of a category as well. If one were to make the argument that that a specific genetic family scored higher on speed of processing multiplication questions, that is specific enough that I could believe the results. I don’t expect specifics to correlate exactly to other specifics.
For this argument of race and IQ, I find race on its own to be a vague and fuzzy concept. Genetic research on genes and ethnic groups are amazing, but still very incomplete. Even for me, I am classified officially as white or Caucasian. However, I also have several tribes of Native American heritage as well, if the family stories passed along to me are true. Proving it at a genetic level is still inconclusive at this point. There is not enough of a sample of many smaller Native American tribes at this point to validate results. I have to settle for potentially and probable at this point. Maybe, in the near future I will know whether or not science backs up what my family has believed about our heritage, but at this point, the sample selection is really too small. If I can’t even define my own ethnic makeup at the genetic level accurately, why should I conclude anything about race and intelligence?
I can accept intelligence differences between races, if one is being very specific. However with all of the generalizations, cultural differences toward the value of education, phenotypes that contain a multitude of genetic variations, etc., I am no where near the point of being willing to conclude anything at this point. Yes, I am aware of the numerous studies that seem to conclude there are differences, still circumstantial evidence at best. I think both sides have such a long way to go in terms of science that I don’t think science truly backs any particular generalized conclusion at this point, and I believe that science is at its best when kept to the details.
This news item on accelerated human evolution may be relevant to the discussion here.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=culture-speeds-up-human-evolution
While this may be a piece of the puzzle, I agree with Soapbox Diva we need a lot more advances in science to be able in come up with generalized conclusion.