From the early 1930s through the 20th century, IQ scores have significantly increased all around the World, with some of the differences ranging from 3 to 5 IQ points per decade in a phenomenon known as the Flynn Effect. However, it appears that there is a Reverse Flynn Effect taking place in the United States of America according to a recent study from Northwestern University.
The study published in the journal Intelligence shows that this reverse effect was observed across a large American sampling between 2006 and 2018 in every category, with the exception of one, and the other three cognitive domains displaying consistent negative slopes.
American ability scores pertaining to verbal reasoning such as vocabulary and logic, matrix reasoning such as analogies and problem-solving, as well as number and lettering series like mathematical and computational skills all consistently dropped over the span of the study period.
American composite ability scores composed of single scores that were derived from multiple pieces of information also declined across the more recent samples, and the score differences remained regardless of gender, age, or education. American scores of 3D rotation like spatial reasoning were the only scores to generally increase between 2011 to 2018, though this data only exists for those recruited between 2100 and 2018.
Sugarcoating the IQ Decline
Despite the consistent decline in American IQ scores, the study’s corresponding study author Elizabeth Dworak sprinkles sugar on the findings, suggesting that people should think that Americans are becoming less intelligent.
“It doesn’t mean their mental ability is lower or higher; it’s just a difference in scores that are favoring older or newer samples,” explains Dworak, a research assistant professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “It could just be that they’re getting worse at taking tests or specifically worse at taking these kinds of tests.”
The Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment (SAPA) Project was used to examine the participants on 27 temperament traits along with the ability scores of a smaller subset of 303,540 participants who were recruited between 2011 and 2018.
Why the Decline?
The study did not examine the reason for the decline in IQ scores, but the is no shortage of theories as to why such as poor nutrition, poor health, media exposure, shifts in society values, decline in motivation and activity, as well as changes in education. As such the researchers are trying to access a dataset that contains 40 years’ worth of data to conduct a follow-up study.
“There’s debate about what’s causing it, but not every domain is going down; one of them is going up,” Dworak said. “If all the scores were going in the same direction, you could make a nice little narrative about it, but that’s not the case. We need to do more to dig into it.”
“If you’re thinking about what society cares about and what it’s emphasizing and reinforcing every day, there’s a possibility of that being reflected in performance on an ability test,” Dworak said.
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References/Sources/Materials provided by:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000156
https://worldhealth.net/news/lead-exposure-last-century-shrank-iq-scores-half-americans-study-finds/
