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How should we think about IQ? - Many Minds

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    Title
    How should we think about IQ?
    Description
    <p class="MsoNormal">IQ is, to say the least, a fraught concept. Psychologists have studied IQ—or <em>g</em> for “general cognitive ability”—maybe more than any other psychological construct. And they’ve learned some interesting things about it. That it's remarkably stable over the lifespan. That it really is general: people who ace one test of intellectual ability tend to ace others. And that IQs have risen markedly over the last century. At the same time, IQ seems to be met with increasing squeamishness, if not outright disdain, in many circles. It's often seen as crude, misguided, reductive—maybe a whole lot worse. There's no question, after all, that IQ has been misused—that it still gets misused—for all kinds of racist, classist, colonialist purposes. As if this wasn't all thorny enough, the study of IQ is also intimately bound up with the study of genetics. It's right there in the roiling center of debates about how genes and environment make us who we are. So, yeah, what to make of all this? How should we be thinking about IQ?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">My guest today is <a href= "https://uva.theopenscholar.com/eric-turkheimer">Dr. Eric Turkheimer</a>. Eric is Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He has studied intelligence and many other complex human traits for decades, and he's a major figure in the field of “behavior genetics.” Eric also has a new book out this fall—which I highly recommend—titled <em><a href= "https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/life-sciences/genetics/understanding-naturenurture-debate?format=PB&isbn=9781108958165"> Understanding the Nature-Nurture Debate</a></em>. In a field that has sometimes been accused of rampant optimism, Eric is—as you'll hear—a bit more measured.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In this conversation, Eric and I focus on intelligence and its putatively genetic basis. We talk about why Eric doubts that we are anywhere close to an account of the biology of IQ. We discuss what makes intelligence such a formidable construct in psychology and why essentialist understandings of it are so intuitive. We talk about Francis Galton and the long shadow he’s cast on the study of human behavior. We discuss the classic era of Twin Studies—an era in which researchers started to derive quantitative estimates of the heritability of complex traits. We talk about how the main takeaway from that era was that genes are quite important indeed, and about how more genetic techniques suggest that takeaway may have been a bit simplistic. Along the way, Eric and I touch on spelling ability, child prodigies, the chemical composition of money, the shared quirks of twins reared apart, the Flynn Effect, the Reverse Flynn Effect, birth order, the genetics of height, the problem of missing heritability, whether we should still be using IQ scores, and the role of behavior genetics in the broader social sciences. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Alright folks, lots in here—let's just get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Eric Turkheimer. Enjoy!</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">A transcript of this episode will be available soon.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em><u>Notes and links</u></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal">3:30 – The 1994 book <em>The Bell Curve</em>, by Richard Herrnstein a Charles Murray, dealt largely with the putative social implications of IQ research. It was extremely controversial and widely discussed. For an overview of the book and controversy, see the Wikipedia article <a href= "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve">here</a>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">6:00 – For discussion of the “all parents are environmentalists…” quip, see <a href= "https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/all-parents-are-environmentalists-until-they-have-their-second-child/DB02CC1112C2C5EAED87DE8D250ECB9A"> here</a>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">12:00 – The notion of “multiple intelligences” was popularized by the psychologist Howard Gardner—see <a href= "h
    Publication Date
    2024-10-17T04:55:00+00:00
    Status
    completed
    Website
    https://manyminds.libsyn.com/how-should-we-think-about-iq
    Length
    93:44
    File
    /podcasts/Many Minds/1729140900-4908.mp3
    Size
    82.29 MB
    Bitrate
    119-VBR
    Channels
    1

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