Book Review “Intelligence: How Smart Are We Really?”

Smarter or dumber?

Another focus of the work is the question of how average intelligence develops in a population. In the 1980s, American political scientist James Robert Flynn (1934-2020) demonstrated that people in different countries around the world have been doing better and better on IQ tests for decades. Are we smarter than previous generations? Pietschnig discusses many potential causes of the so-called Flynn effect, including better education, better nutrition, and fewer health problems for children that can hamper the development of intelligence.

It also refers to the opposite effect, the “anti-Flynn effect”: in many countries the increase in IQ has stagnated or even reversed for a number of years. Have we become stupid again? Here, too, the author explains possible explanations. He explains that hypotheses such as that less intelligent people reproduce more or that immigration leads to lower average intelligence are untenable scientifically. In his view, increased specialization could be a reason for our poor performance on IQ tests: as in the decathlon, tests depend on doing well in many different areas. Those who focus specifically on one discipline do worse. According to this, we did not get dumber, but worse on IQ tests.

Finally, Pietschnig addresses common myths about intelligence, such as that listening to Mozart’s sonnets increases intelligence and that we only use ten percent of our brains. His message: If a method for increasing intelligence sounds too good to be true, it usually isn’t. However, it is certainly possible to enhance intelligence in oneself or in children. However, training plays a smaller role than is usually assumed. Rather, according to the author, a lot depends on environmental factors. In the elderly, for example, social contact has a positive effect on maintaining cognitive abilities; In children, parenting style plays as important a role as healthy nutrition.