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American IQ scores have rapidly dropped, proving the 'Reverse Flynn effect'

(www.popularmechanics.com)
256 points hirundo | 2 comments | 10 Apr 23 13:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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JoeAltmaier ◴[10 Apr 23 22:29 UTC] No.35518164[source]▶
When IQ tests were invented folks didn't know about tests, at least in the US. They were rural immigrants who could maybe read. So when asked logic questions, they would answer pragmatically and be 'wrong'. That had some impact on perceived early low results.

As folks became better-read and educated they began to understand that IQ test questions were a sort of puzzle, not a real honest question. The answer was expected to solve the puzzle, not be right in any way.

E.g. There are no Elephants in Germany. Munich is in Germany. How many elephants are there in Munich? A) 0 B) 1 C)2

Folks back then might answer B or C, because they figure hey there's probably a zoo in Munich, bet they have an elephant or two there. And be marked wrong.

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pseudo0 ◴[10 Apr 23 22:57 UTC] No.35518406[source]▶
That theory could be plausible, except Flynn used results from Raven's Progressive Matrices, which is just pattern recognition. There are no questions about elephants or text-based questions that could introduce cultural bias. It's simply picking the shape that matches the pattern presented in a grid.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven's_Progressive_Matrices

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1. ramblenode ◴[11 Apr 23 02:08 UTC] No.35519847[source]▶
Good point about the Raven's Progressive Matrices, but I still think the parent's hypothesis that we have improved at test taking is relevant. Outside of verbal reasoning there are a lot of soft factors that influence test taking ability. People who haven't taken a timed test before would probably perform worse than expected simply because it is an unfamiliar context, and unfamiliarity tends to create higher stress/anxiety which is known to be bad for cognitive performance in novices. A group that has taken hundreds of tests will probably score better on a test in an unfamiliar subject than another unprepared group that isn't used to taking tests simply because they have some meta-knowledge about test taking.
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2. aeternum ◴[11 Apr 23 18:32 UTC] No.35529251[source]▶
Yes, I think unfamiliarity might actually be the main explanation here.

IQ tests in general were popular 20 years ago and have since fallen out of fashion quite significantly: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=IQ%20tes...

The lower performance may simply be due to people being less familiar/trained on the type of questions that IQ tests tend to ask.