Richard Lynn
Professor Emeritus,
University of Ulster
Research Interests:
Intelligence
Sex Differences
Race Differences
Eugenics
E-mail [email protected]
Books can be purchased from
Washington Summit Publishers
I graduated in psychology and took my Ph.D. at the University of
Cambridge and have worked as lecturer in psychology at the
University of Exeter, professor of psychology at the Economic and
Social Research Institute, Dublin, and at the University of
Ulster.
Most of my work has been on intelligence. My major discoveries are
that the Oriental peoples of East Asia have higher average
intelligence by about 5 IQs points than Europeans and peoples of
European origin in the United States and elsewhere; and that men
have a higher average IQ than women by about 5 IQs points. I first
published the high IQ of the Oriental peoples in 1977 in a paper on
the intelligence of the Japanese. In subsequent years the high
Oriental IQ has been confirmed in numerous studies of Oriental
peoples in Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, China, Singapore and the
United States.
In 1983 I published a paper in Nature showing that the IQ in Japan
had increased over the course of the previous half century, a
phenomenon now known as the Flynn Effect following the
demonstration by Jim Flynn of secular increases in intelligence in
number of countries. In 1989 I proposed that the increases in
intelligence have been caused by improvements in nutrition. I have
also published several papers showing that intelligence is
associated with brain size and reaction times.
My work on intelligence and brain size led me to consider the
problem that women have smaller brains than men even when allowance
is made for their smaller bodies. This implies that men should have
higher average IQs than women, but it has been universally asserted
that men and women have equal average IQs. In 1994 I proposed that
the solution to this problem is that girls mature faster than boys
and this compensates for their lower IQs, which only appear at the
age of 16 onwards. Among adults men have higher average IQs than
women by about 4 IQ points. This advantage consists largely of
higher spatial abilities but is also present in non-verbal
reasoning. In two meta-analyses of sex differences on the
Progressive Matrices carried out with Paul Irwing (2004, 2005) we
showed that in the general population men have a higher IQs than
women by 5 IQ points, and in university students the advantage of
men is 4.6 IQ points.
In 1991 I extended my work on race differences in intelligence to
other races. I concluded that the average IQ of blacks in
sub-Saharan Africa is approximately 70. It has long been known that
the average IQ of blacks in the United States is approximately 85.
The explanation for the higher IQ of American blacks is that they
have about 25 per cent of Caucasian genes and a better
environment.
The theory I have advanced to explain these race differences in IQ
is that when early humans migrated from Africa into Eurasia they
encountered the difficulty of survival during cold winters. This
problem was especially severe during the ice ages. Plant foods were
not available for much of the year and survival required the
hunting and dismembering of large animals for food and the ability
to make tools, weapons and clothing, to build shelters and make
fires. These problems required higher intelligence and exerted
selection pressure for enhanced intelligence, particularly on the
Orientals.
My book Dysgenics (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996) showed that the
eugenicists were right in their belief that modern populations have
been deteriorating genetically in respect of health, intelligence
and the personality trait of conscientiousness. This deterioration
began in the second half of the 19th century and has continued up
to the present.
My book Eugenics (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001) considers what
measures could be taken to rectify this and discusses the genetic
future of mankind. It is argued that genetic improvement is likely
to evolve spontaneously through the technique of embryo selection
in which women will use IVF to grow a number of embryos, have them
genetically assessed and will select for implantation those with
genetically desirable qualities. It is also likely that some
authoritarian states will use genetic engineering to improve the
genetic quality of their populations for military purposes.
My book IQ and the Wealth of Nations (co-author Tatu Vanhanen of
the University of Helsinki) (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) considers
the problem of national differences in wealth and economic growth.
Economists and other social scientists have been trying to solve
the problem of why some nations are so rich and others so poor
since Adam Smiths The Wealth of Nations (1776). We argue that an
important but hitherto unrecognised factor is the IQs of the
populations. We give measures and estimates of average IQs in the
worlds 185 nations and show that national IQs are strongly related
to national incomes and rates of economic growth. The principal
reason for this is that nations whose populations have high IQs can
produce goods and services that command high values in
international markets. See below for more details of this argument
and on the IQs of every nation in the world.
My most recent book published in 2006 is Race Differences in
Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis. Atlanta, Georgia:
Washington Summit Books (PO Box 3514, Augusta, GA 30914) ISBN
1-59368-020-1 pp. 318., US$37.95 HB), $20.95 (PB) (plus $6 for
overseas orders).
A review by Prof.J.P.Rushton in Personality and Individual
Differences is given below.
Lynns book represents the culmination of more than a quarter of a
centurys work on race differences in intelligence. It was in 1977
that he first ventured into this field some would say minefield
with the publication of two papers on the IQ in Japan and
Singapore. Both showed that the East Asians obtained higher means
than white Europeans in the United States and Britain. These
initial studies were criticised, but the present book lists 60
studies of the IQs of indigenous East Asians all of which confirm
the original claim.
Hitherto studies of race differences in intelligence have been
largely conducted and discussed in local contexts. In the United
Sates they have been largely concerned with the IQs of whites,
blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native American Indians. In Australia
they have been concerned with the low IQ of the Aborigines, and in
New Zealand with the low IQ of the Maoris. These differences have
typically been explained by racism and discrimination of Europeans
against minorities the legacy of slavery, although a number of
writers have posited a significant genetic factor (Jensen, 1998;
Rushton and Jensen, 2005). Lynns book differs in taking a global
perspective and consists of a review more than 500 studies
published world wide from the beginning of the twentieth century up
to the present. He devotes a chapter to each of ten races,
differentiated by Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza (1994) into
genetic clusters, which he regards as a transparent euphemism for
races.
His
conclusions are that the East Asians (Chinese, Japanese and
Koreans) have the highest mean IQ at 105. These are followed by the
Europeans (IQ 100). Some way below these are the Inuit (Eskimos)
(IQ 91), South East Asians (IQ 87), Native American Indians (IQ
87), Pacific Islanders (IQ 85), South Asians and North Africans (IQ
84). Well below these come the sub-Saharan Africans (IQ 67)
followed by the Australian Aborigines (IQ 62). The least
intelligent races are the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert together
with the Pygmies of the Congo rain forests (IQ
54).
After the ten chapters setting out the evidence for each of the ten
races there follows a chapter on the reliability and validity of
the measures. These show that the studies have high reliability in
the sense that different studies of racial IQs give closely similar
results. For instance, East Asians invariably obtain high IQs, not
only in their own native homelands but in Singapore, Malaysia,
Hawaii and North America. To establish the validity of the racial
IQs he shows that they have high correlations with performance in
the international studies of achievement in mathematics and
science. Racial IQs also have high correlations with national
economic development, providing a major contribution to the problem
of why the peoples of some nations are rich and others poor. He
argues further that the IQ differences between the races explain
the differences in achievement in making the Neolithic transition
from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, the building of early
civilizations, and the development of mature civilizations during
the last two thousand years.
Lynn tackles the problem of the environmental and genetic
determinants of race differences in intelligence and concludes that
these contribute about equally to the phenotypic differences. He
argues that the consistency of racial IQs in many different
locations can only be explained by powerful genetic factors. He
works out the genetic contribution in most detail for the
sub-Saharan Africans. His argument is that sub-Saharan Africans in
the United States experience the same environment as whites, as
regards determinants of intelligence. He argues that they have as
good nutrition as whites, as shown by their having the same average
height in studies going back to World War 1, and they have
approximately the same education as whites. He presents evidence
that blacks in the southern states have very little white ancestry
and have an IQ of about 80, and that proposes that this can be
adopted as the genotypic IQ of blacks, i.e. the IQ that blacks
attain when they are reared in the same environment as whites. The
IQ of blacks in sub-Saharan Africa is a good deal lower at 67.
Hence, the adverse environment in sub-Saharan Africa, which he
regards as consisting principally of poor nutrition and health,
contributes about 13 IQ points to the low IQ in sub-Saharan Africa.
Lynns estimate is not too different from that advanced in 1969 by
Jensen to the effect that about two thirds of the low IQ of blacks
in the United States is attributable to genetic factors, and the
more recent estimate of Rushton and Jensen (2005) that the figure
is around 80 percent. Lynn has (unsurprisingly for those familiar
with his work) put a bit more weight on the genetic factor.
The last three chapters are concerned with the books subtitle (An
Evolutionary Analysis) and discusses howrace differences in
intelligence have evolved. He begins by putting the problem in
context by summarizing Jerisons (1973) classic study showing that
during the course of evolution species have evolved greater
intelligence in order to survive in more cognitively demanding
environments. For instance, in one of the most dramatic of these
developments, early mammals evolved larger brains and greater
intelligence to survive in the nocturnal environment, for which
they needed to evolve larger auditory and olfactory analysing
centres in the brain.
The same principle, Lynn argues, explains the evolution of race
differences in intelligence in humans. He elaborates the argument
he has advanced over the last fifteen years that the race
differences in intelligence have evolved as adaptations to colder
environments as early humans migrated out of Africa. In North
Africa and South Asia, and even more in Europe and Northeast Asia,
these early humans encountered the problems of having to survive
during cold winters when there were no plant foods and they had to
hunt big game to survive. They also had to solve the problems of
keeping warm. These required greater intelligence than was needed
in tropical and semi-tropical equatorial Africa where plant foods
are plentiful throughout the year. He shows that race differences
in brain size and intelligence are both closely associated with low
winter temperatures in the regions they inhabit. For instance, he
gives a figure of 1282 cc for the average brain size of sub-Saharan
Africans, as compared with 1367 cc for Europeans and 1416 cc for
Orientals. His analysis relating race differences in intelligence
to exposure to low winter temperatures has recently been
independently corroborated by Templer and Arikawa (2005).
From time to time Lynn notes anomalies in his theory that require
explanations. One of these is that the Europeans have made most of
the great intellectual advances and discoveries, while the East
Asians, despite having a higher IQ have made relatively few (as
extensively documented by Murray, 2003). Lynn proposes the
explanation for this may be that the East Asians are more
conformist that Europeans and this inhibits creative achievement.
He also notes one or two anomalies in his cold winter theory of
race differences in intelligence. The most striking of these is
that the Inuit have been exposed to the coldest winter temperatures
and have evolved large brains, the same average size as that of the
East Asians. Yet their IQ is only 91, and this is the IQ obtained
by those who attend the same schools as Europeans. To explain this
anomaly he proposed that two genetic processes must be assumed to
explain the evolution of race differences in intelligence. The
first of these is that differences in the frequencies of the
alleles for high and low intelligence have evolved between races
such that the alleles for high intelligence are more common in the
races with the higher IQs and less common in the races with the
lower IQs. The early humans that migrated out of Africa and spread
throughout the world would have carried all the alleles for high
and low intelligence with them, but those who colonized Asia and
Europe were exposed to the cognitively demanding problems of
survival during cold winters. Many of those carrying the alleles
for low intelligence would have been unable to survive during the
cold winters and the less intelligent individuals and tribes would
have died out, leaving as survivors the more intelligent. This
process would have reduced and possibly eliminated the alleles for
low intelligence, leaving a higher proportion of the alleles for
high intelligence. The more severe the winter temperatures, the
greater the selection pressure for the elimination of low IQ
individuals carrying low IQ alleles. This process explains the
broad association between coldest winter temperatures and IQs and
brain size.
He now suggests that there must have been a second genetical
process that several new alleles for high intelligence must have
appeared as mutations in some races but did not appear in others,
and once these had appeared they were never transmitted to other
races. These new mutant alleles for high intelligence would have
been most likely to appear in large populations because a mutation
is a chance genetic event and hence would have been more likely to
occur in races with large populations than in those with small. The
Inuit comprised only very small populations numbering today around
55,000, so they would be unlikely have had mutations for higher
intelligence that have to be assumed in the East Asians and
Europeans. Once a new mutant allele for higher intelligence had
appeared in the East Asians and Europeans it would have conferred a
selection advantage and would have spread throughout the group of
around 50 to 80 individuals in which people lived during the
hunter-gatherer stage of human evolution. It would then have spread
fairly rapidly to adjacent groups because hunter-peoples typically
have alliances with neighboring groups with which they exchange
mating partners, and it is reasonable to assume that this custom
was present for many thousands of years during the evolution of the
races. These alliances of groups are known as demes, and a new
mutant allele for higher intelligence and which conferred a
selection advantage would have spread fairly rapidly through a
deme. From time to time matings would take place between demes and
by this means new mutant alleles for higher intelligence would
spread from one deme to another and eventually throughout an entire
race.
However, this would take some considerable time, and Lynn proposes
that in 25,000 years, consisting of approximately 1,000
generations, an advantageous allele would be transmitted about 800
miles. Hence, an advantageous allele occurring as a mutant in the
region of, say, Beijing, 25,000 years ago would not yet have spread
outside China and would take another 50,000 years or so to reach
the Inuit peoples of far North East Asia and even longer to cross
the Bering Straits into Alaska. In addition, there are geographical
barriers of high mountains between the East Asians and the Inuit
that would have imposed a further impediment for the new alleles
for higher intelligence being transmitted from East Asia
northwards. He extends this explanation to the low IQs of the
Australian Aborigines and Bushmen. These have only been small
populations, so the chance of mutations of high IQ alleles in them
would have been low.
To the arguments presented by Jensen (199
for a substantial genetic determination of the difference
in intelligence between blacks and whites in the United States,
Lynn adds a more general one. He advances the general principle of
evolutionary biology that wherever subspecies, strains or races
have evolved in different environments they invariably develop
differences in all characteristics for which there is genetic
variation as a result of mutations occurring in some subspecies and
of adaptations to different environments, and asserts that
intelligence cannot be an exception. He concludes witheringly that
The position of environmentalists that over the course of some
100,000 years peoples separated by geographical barriers in
different parts of the world evolved into ten different races with
pronounced genetic differences in morphology, blood groups and the
incidence of genetic diseases, and yet have identical genotypes for
intelligence, is so improbable that those who advance it must
either be totally ignorant of the basic principles of evolutionary
biology or else have a political agenda to deny the importance of
race. Or both . So much for the assertion of the American
Psychological Associations task force under the chairmanship of
Ulrich Neisser set up to produce a consensus statement on what is
known about intelligence that concluded that there is no persuasive
evidence for genetic race differences (Neisser et al., 199. With the publication of Lynns book it will never again
be possible to make this assertion and retain any
credibility.
Over the years Lynn has made a number of important contributions to
the field of intelligence. He has written the standard works on the
dysgenic processes that have been taking place almost worldwide for
the last century and on how these could be addressed (Lynn, 1996,
2001). He has shown that the problem of why some nations are rich
and others poor is largely explained by the intelligence of the
populations (Lynn and Vanhanen, 2002). He has overturned the
century long consensus that there is no sex difference in
intelligence by showing that men have a higher average IQ than
women by approximately 5 IQ points (Lynn and Irwing, 2004). But I
would guess that the present book documenting global race
differences in intelligence and analysing how these have evolved
will come to be seen as his crowning achievement.
