Brendan Baker

Professor Girswald.

Sociology 110

The Decline of the Average Human I.Q.



    The larger the human population grows, the average human I. Q seems to drop. Now how is this possible? Studies show that since the nineteen fifties the average I. Q has dropped a total of three points. This is alarming and confusing at the same time. How with all of our medical and technological advancements is this occurring?  Many charts that I have found showed that the average I. Q was at its peak in nineteen fifty that was sixty years ago. Many blame this fall of global I. Q on the fall of the Soviet Union. In the soviet unions control of Eastern Europe, their children were forced to be schooled in far more advanced subjects than modern students. It was a race to attempt to beat the west technologically. In turn the west also made their students study harder and learn more thusly making the average I. Q greatly superior than it had been for many years. Without this compaction the schooling that was installed in a time of panic was called off. Recent studies show that the is now Falling at a rapid rate.
    The average I.Q. for 2011 is calculated to be 88.54 this is the lowest I.Q. rate in years. Even though we have much more social media and technology. How is this possible? Well it is shown that rising birth rates, along with a constant population rise in much of the world. I.Q. is the intelligence quotient used to measure the intelligence of every human on the planet. I.Q. is used to measure your intelligence based on age, gender, and ethnicity. I.Q. testes are administered using a series of tests that scientism have determined over the years to be an accurate measure of how much intelligence the human brain actually holds. Most people in modern day society have an average I.Q. ranging between 89 and 100. If you have an I.Q. that falls out of that range you are believed to be below average intelligence. There are four basic I.Q. testes; these testes test the four lobes of your brain. The first test tests the back of the frontal lobe of the brain, the second tests the rear lobe, the third tests the occipluar and the fourth tests the rest of the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe is believed to be the part of the brain that is in charge of learning. So people who administer I.Q. tests test those areas, first and last. The rest of the sectors of the brain are meant to test how your brain processes information and how well it comprehends it. Another variable of these test are how old your are, children who take I.Q. tests are known to be better off than people who haven’t taken I.Q tests.
    Studies conducted in recent years have shown a direct correlation between population growth and the decline in the standard I. Q of countries such as, New Zeland, Australia, Brazil and Mexico. For every 10 years a .30 I.Q drop occurs so it is predicted by the year 2050 the average I. Q will have fallen to 89.32 from 91.64. How is this possible? Science points to the process of natural selection. It shows that people will flock to people of similar I. Q levels. So thusly people with lower I. Q levels would mate with people of similar standings, thus producing offspring of similar learned standards. A similar comparison of this would be the AIDS outbreak in Nigeria. The wealthier more educated people were less likely to contract this despise because their I.Q helped them avoid such activates that would allow the deseise to become contracted.
    In the search to discover how I. Q and population growth are connected it may also help to look at the average income of people who have lower I.Qs. Since people with lower I. Qs tend to search for others like them does it not make since that they would also look for people of similar economic standing? This is one theory to how the drop in I.Q and poverty rates is directly connected. At this point in history we have one of the largest poverty rates in recorded history. The two seem connected somehow. With a twenty five percent high school drop out rate many people aren’t getting the proper education and thusly their average I. Q from generation to generation keeps falling at a steady rate (about .30 every ten years).  With the steady increase of the worlds population, shouldn’t the dropout rate increase causing the I. Q rate to drop even further? Studies also show if you’re out of work or injured that your idleness or lack of production will cause your brain to lose some of its activity level also contributing to this epidemic.
    What are the conquiecnes of lower I. Q rates? Well one major one is a lack of motivation to further your education so higher drop out rates begin to surface. With these higher dropout rates, the dropout’s turn to other ways of attain income. These methods often involve illegal activity such as, robbery and prostitution. Other consequences of lower I. Q are a steep rise in illigatme births and lower rates of marriages. With a lager amount of low I.Q mothers their children wont develop proper social or motor skills, and their behavior will begin to become rash and violent starting around age four. Many people will begin to care less and less about the political process. You can see clear evidence about this even today, the amount of younger people taking place in the political process is Significantly lower than it was even twenty years ago. 
    When parents have fewer children the average I.Q. will change dependent on various variables like, amount of kids, I.Q. of the parents and what social class they were born into. This theory is known as dysgenic fertility theory. This says that parents with fewer kids will have an I.Q. similar to their parents. So for example a parent with one child when both parents have an I.Q. of about 100, their child will be more likely to have a similar I.Q. than a parent with many kids with the same I.Q.
    Evidence found by doctors states that another possible explanation for the decline in average I.Q. is via blood transfusions They found that the blood not only carried a small amount of the person but it also carried the information that allowed them to think. They did a transfusion between two people, one was intellectually very advanced and the other was one person who was considerably lower on the I.Q. ladder. The recipients of the blood became confused over time and their ability to maintain their previous level of I.Q. was indeed noted to be in jeopardy. The result of this experiment was that in blood donation centers all across the countries, the recipient was asked to put their I.Q. into the forms they were required to fill out.
    In 1988 a book was published by Robert Flynn called “The Flynn affect”.  This work made a certain distinction between phenotypic and genotypic styles of intelligence. He discovered that genotypic intelligence was measured to be falling by .57 points per generation. This was very early on before “the Bell Curve” was ever published. The Bell Curve was the first book to really blow the lid off the whole idea that the average I.Q. of humans was falling at a rapid rate.
    All of these consequences and theories tie into an idea known as the bell curve, which was a study published in 1994 by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. This article was used to display the change in intelligence overtime in American Society. This study was also published to provide a since of warning to the masses about the trend that they are all following.  This study was reelected to a very large public response in the first few months worldwide around 400,000 copies were sold and this is still used as a chief tool in determining how I. Q is falling.
    I had interviewed several people around campus that I was acquainted with. Over half of them said that they believed that the average I.Q. was actually rising because of the great amounts of technology that we had access to now. When I explained to them and showed data more often than not they were astounded with the results. I went in to explain that just because we have newer technology and greater access to knowledge now doesn’t mean we really mean we know how to use it. Over the years a human’s ability to process and use information has defiantly fallen.  One way I have seen this is how we aren’t able to communicate with other people as well as our parents were even. Because we have such a large access to social media and texting, we are actually losing one of the greatest forms of human contact we need and that is the ability to communicate with our fellow man face to face. This is a crucial part of our brain and basic day-to-day functions. The ability to communicate is a part that plays into finding someone’s I.Q. people generally with higher I.Q.s can communicate with people face to face very well and express what they are trying to say in an educated manner.    
    It is concluded with the ever-rising population of the earth that the average I.Q. will undoubtly continue to fall. It seems that the way that we as humans evolved has now switched over to allow the people who can breed the most with each other are the most fit to survive. It has been proven that people with similar I.Q. scores are more likely to breed with each other. So their offspring will have a similar I.Q. to their parents. So if the parents had an I.Q. of 75 their child is more likely to have a similar I.Q. to them. So its assumed that if the worlds population continues to grow at the rate its going that the average I.Q. by the year 2050 will be an 86.32 which is almost a ten point drop from 1950.

Sources
Global IQ 1950-2050

The Daily Beast (creativity Crisis)
July 10 2010

On the I.Q. of Nations; Smart, Smarter and Smartest?
William McConochie, Ph.D. TestMaster
Bill@Politicalpsychologyresearch.com. 3/11/09 Primary source

Poverty and Education
Cristy Brandy-Smith

Prenatal pesticide exposure tied to lower IQ in children
By Sarah Yang, Media Relations | April 20, 2011

American Intelligence Compromised by Blood Transfusions
Librul news today

How the world's IQ is in decline
Gunjan Singh
, Cognitive Science Examiner
July 31, 2010