Race Differences in Intelligence

This page is about a book. For general discussion see Race and intelligence.

Race Differences in Intelligence

Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis is a 2006 book by Richard Lynn representing the largest collection and review of the global cognitive ability data, by nine global regions,Lynn derives these groups from global genetic branches identified in previous genetic cluster analysis ( p. 79). surveying 620 published studies from around the world, with a total of 813,778 tested individuals.

Lynn's meta-analysis lists East Asians (105), Europeans (99), Inuit (91), Southeast Asians and Amerindians each (87), Pacific Islanders (85), Middle Easterners (including South Asians and North Africans) (84), sub-Saharan Africans (67), and Australian Aborigines (62). Lynn has previously argued at length that nutrition is the best supported environmental explanation for variation in the lower range,In RDiI Lynn surveys NGO reports of four different signs of severe malnutrition - underweight, anemia, wasting, and stunting - for five developing regions, ranking Latin America as suffering the least malnutrition, followed by the Middle-east, Asia/Pacific, Africa, and finally South Asia, suffering the worst malnutrition of any region (ch. 14). and a number of other environmental explanations have been advanced.See Race and intelligence#Cultural or genetic explanations? Ashkenazi Jews score significantly higher than other groups (107-115) in the U.S. and Britain, but estimates of the average IQ of Ashkenazim in Israel may be somewhat closer to the European mean.Lynn's data is somewhat weak on Ashkenazi Jews (), and only allows an indirect, weighted estimate in Israel (103), compared with (similarly indirect) estimates of 91 for Israeli Oriental Jews, and 86 for Israeli Arabs. Israeli Ashkenazi's scores may average lower than U.S. and British Ashkenazi, Lynn suggests, due to selective migration effects in relation to those countries, and to immigrants from the former Soviet Block countries having posed as Ashkenazim. The data isn't necessarily strong enough, however, to rule out identical scores for Ashkenazi across these nations (). In other data, Hispanics average 91 and African Americans average 87,.

Like much research regarding race and intelligence, Lynn's work has been controversial. When taken as national averages, the data available, particularly regarding the developing world, is speculative due to limited sampling, year of testing, and varying type of cognitive ability test used. Lynn's survey is an expansion by nearly four times of the data collected in his 2002 IQ and the Wealth of Nations with Tatu Vanhanen.4x: Sailer 2006 Critics criticized IQatWoN, which dealt with the relationship between IQ and economic development, for error, alleged bias, and racism, but the book has also been used as a source of IQ data and hypotheses in several peer-reviewed studies.Sociologist Thomas Volken argues the IQ and the Wealth of Nations data for national IQs is "highly deficient," citing limited sampling and varying tests and years (Volken). In a 1995 review of The Bell Curve, critic Leon Kamin writes that "Lynn's distortions and misrepresentations of the data constitute a truly venomous racism, combined with scandalous disregard for scientific objectivity."(). In contrast to Kamin's strongly worded attack on Lynn, W. D. Hamilton described Lynn in a review of another of Lynn's books as doing "an excellent job with the facts" and being "brave [and] thick-skinned ... to swim against ... popular antirealistic currents."[1]

Kamin also argued Lynn selectively excluded data showing a similar score in Whites and sub-Saharan Africans: "Lynn chose to ignore the substance of Crawford-Nutt's paper, which reported that 228 black high school students in Soweto scored an average of 45 correct responses on the Matrices--HIGHER than the mean of 44 achieved by the same-age white sample on whom the test's norms had been established and well above the mean of Owen's coloured pupils" ().

's checking of RDiI's data finds discrepancies that are "mostly minor. . . typically within a couple of IQ points" but concludes: "The citations and references were, on the whole, accurate. In short: Yes, the general trends in the tables are probably dependable, if the assumptions regarding Flynn effects, etc., are correct, but it is prudent (as always) to check with original sources before quoting particular results. . . Is this book the final word on race differences in intelligence? Of course not. But Richard Lynn is a major player, and it is good to have his extensive work on this topic together in one place. Future workers who address these matters under this or any other label will find that Lynn has done a lot of spadework for them..." Lynn argues the surveyed studies have high reliability in the sense that different studies give similar results, and high validity in the sense that they correlate highly with performance in international studies of achievement in mathematics and science and with national economic development.

Richard Lynn is a Pioneer fund grantee. The fund is often criticzed for a claimed racist history, implying Lynn is racist. The book's publisher, Washington Summit Publishers, has, according to amazon.com, previously only published a book by Kevin MacDonald, often accused of anti-Semitism, implying Lynn is anti-Semitic.

Overview

Average IQ of indigenous populations

Lynn devotes a chapter to the data on each of the nine genetic clusters or population groups identified in previous genetic cluster analysis,Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994, p. 79 which Lynn regards as races. The book subsequently discusses the reliability and validity of the measures, concluding that, though additional evidence may be required to confirm some of the racial IQ estimates, many have very high reliability in the sense that different studies give very similar results, and that they correlate highly with performance in international studies of achievement in mathematics and science and with national economic development.

Global IQ averages

Approximate tally by Malloy 2006.

620 studies summarized in Race Differences in Intelligence

Population	IQ	Majority Population		Minority Population		Total Population
		# Studies	# Countries	# Studies	# Countries	# Studies	# Countries! Sample
East Asian	105	59	5	42	7	101	12	128,322
European	99	93	36	6	6	112	42	175,950
â€"N America	100	(34)
â€"N, C & E Europe	99	(104)
â€"Spain & Portugal	97	(6)
â€"SE Europe	92	(40)
Arctic	91			15	2	15	2	2,690
Southeast Asian	87	11	6	7	3			13,433
Pacific Islander						29	10	7,729
â€"Maori	90			15	1
â€"Non-Maori	85	14	9
Amerindian	86	11	5	21	2	63	7	37,304
West/South Asian	84	37	15	61	9	98	24	65,855
â€"West Asia	89	(5)
â€"South Asia (India)	82	(26)
Sub-Saharan Africa						115	28	387,286
â€"Africa	67	57	18
â€"Non-WesternAfricans in developing countries outside of Africa (primarily in the Caribbean and Latin America).	71	14	6	2	1
â€"WesternAfricans in developed countries outside of Africa.	85			54	3
â€"Khoisan	54			3	1
Australoid	62	24	1	5	1	29	2	4,785
World	90					620	100	813,778

Climate and brain size

Both Lynn and Rushton have previously suggested that high IQ is associated with colder climates. Lynn examines this hypothesis in chapter 16 of Race Differences in Intelligence.

Table 16.2. Race differences in winter temperatures (degrees Celsius) and brain size

 Race                   Winter Temp Wurm Temp Brain Size  IQ
 Arctic Peoples         -15         -20       1,443       91
 East Asians            -7          -12       1,416       105
 Europeans              0           -5        1,369       99
 Native Americans       7           5         1,366       86
 S. Asian & N. Africans 12          7         1,293       84
 Bushmen                15          15        1,270       54
 Africans               17          17        1,280       67
 Australians            17          17        1,225       62
 Southeast Asians       24          24        1,332       87

Pacific Islanders 24 24 1,317 85

Environments at the last glacial maximum, around 18,000 BC.

"Wurm Temp" is the coldest winter monthly temperatures during the main Wurm glaciation, which lasted between approximately 28,000 and 10,000 years ago and during which winter temperatures fell by about 5 degrees Celsius in the northern hemisphere but not in the southern hemisphere.

In a separate analysis Templer and Arikawa (2006; see discussion [2]) examined this question by comparing the national IQ data from Lynn and Vanhanen (2002) with data sets that describe national average skin color and average winter and summer temperatures. They find that the strongest correlations to national IQ were âˆ'0.92 for skin color and âˆ'0.76 for average high winter temperature. They interpret this finding as strong support for IQ-climate association. Other studies using different data sets find no correlation [3][4].

End material

Notes

References

*Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., Menozzi, P., & Piazza, A. (1994). The history and geography of human genes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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