New York Times

Thinking in More Sophisticated Ways

James R. Flynn, an emeritus professor of politics at the University of Otago in New Zealand, is the author of "What Is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect" and "Are We Getting Smarter? Rising IQ and the Twenty-First Century," forthcoming in August from Cambridge University Press.

UPDATED FEBRUARY 27, 2012, 2:37 PM

On an IQ test, the average person today would be 30 points above his or her grandparents, so we are not getting any dumber. But are we smarter? That’s a more complicated idea. In fact, it’s the subject of my next book: “Are We Getting Smarter? Rising IQ and the Twenty-First Century.”

I would prefer to say that our minds are 'more modern' than those of our ancestors.

If the question is “Do we have better brain potential at conception,” or “Were our ancestors too stupid to deal with the concrete world of everyday life,” the answer is no. If the question is “Do we live in a time that poses a wider range of cognitive problems than our ancestors encountered, and have we developed new cognitive skills and the kind of brain that can deal with them,” the answer is yes.

I would prefer to say that our minds are “more modern” than those of our ancestors. Our ancestors lived in a world that was concrete and utilitarian. In 1900, schoolchildren were asked, “What are the capitals of the 46 states?” Today they are asked, “If rural representatives dominated a state legislature, where would they put the capital?” (The answer is that, because they hate big cities, they would put the state capital in Albany rather than New York City.) In other words, we take applying logic to hypothetical situations seriously, plus of course playing video games that take us into hypothetical and symbolic worlds.

As a result, we are better prepared to learn about science, which is all about the hypothetical and abstractions, and even to reason better about ethics. If you asked my father, “What if you woke up one day and were black,” he would say that is ridiculous. But a modern racist would have to take the question seriously. He would have to say that black people are worthy of discrimination not simply because they are black, but because of some genetic taint. Immediately, evidence enters the debate and takes it to a higher level.

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Topics: Culture, psychology