True or False?: Just Being an American Automatically Lowers Your IQ By Several Points

[BurtWorm]

Poll question: True or False?: Just Being an American Automatically Lowers Your IQ By Several Points

I say true, considering that the intelligence most of us Americans rely on to understand the world is the American media, the dumbest, most stupefying media in the world.

What say you?

[rucky]

1. False.

We have some of the best education - and some of the worst education in the world.

The gap is huge.

[trotsky]

2. That would seem to imply that a naturalized citizen becomes dumber...

the instant they receive citizenship. And we know that's not the case.

No, what makes Americans dumber is the sorry state of public education coupled with a widespread disinterest in the world outside one's daily experience.

[BurtWorm]

3. I don't know that's not the case.

Do you have evidence to back that up?

;-)

[SyntaxError]

28. I don't totally buy the poor public education idea though.

There are other nations who have more people and far less money going into their education system, yet they still produce very educated people. I think it has more to do with the way the American culture views education. So many people are unwilling to make an effort to learn... Of course it would be nice if we could all get free university education, but even without that, we shouldn't be incapable of self teaching ourselves.

I'm annoyed with the fact that so many people I know would rather sit on their asses and watch TV for five hours than pick up a book or something.

[cboy4]

4. Ummmmmmm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28L63Vi6AlU

[devilgrrl]

34. this too....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juOQhTuzDQ0

[cboy4]

39. I thought Europe was a country. LOL

The little boy's expressions were priceless.

[Toots]

5. But we have Viagra to raise it up..

:silly:

[Jim__]

6. Not true. IQ tests are normalized so that the average is 100.

My guess is that American IQ tests are normalized so that the average American IQ is 100.

Now, have American IQ tests been dumbed down?

[AngryAmish]

13. Average American IQ is about 98

See this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations> Look at the chart. A pretty good summary of the criticisms are also included.

This is controversial.

According to the chart, smartest nations are Hong Kong and South Korea. Dimmest are Ethiopia and Equitorial Guinea. America is 23d, a little dimmer than average.

[Jim__]

19. My reading of wikipedia is that those are not measured IQ's but estimated IQs.

Central to the book's thesis is a tabulation of what Lynn and Vanhanen believe to be the average IQs of the world's nations. Rather than do their own IQ studies (a potentially massive project), the authors average and adjust existing studies.

I'm not sure exactly what that means.

[AngryAmish]

20. It's a meta-study

There are the obvious problems of comparing apples to oranges between tests. But from my reading, IQ tests tend to be the same cross-culturally.

Above you asked if the norms have gotten dumber over the years. In fact, exactly the opposite is true. People alive today in the US are much, much smarter than they used to be. The rise in IQ in industrialized societies is called the Flynn effect, named after the researcher who discovered it. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect>

snip "American children of 1932 could take an IQ test normed in 1997 their average IQ would have been only about 80.<1> In other words, half of the children in 1932 would be classified as having borderline mental retardation or worse in 1997."

[Jim__]

26. A couple of points.

Above you asked if the norms have gotten dumber over the years. In fact, exactly the opposite is true. People alive today in the US are much, much smarter than they used to be. The rise in IQ in industrialized societies is called the Flynn effect, named after the researcher who discovered it.

But, this is addressing long term trends. To me, the dumbing down of the American media, the subject of the thread is fairly recent. And, as noted in the article: The Flynn effect may have ended in some developed nations starting in the mid 1990s; with the article noting a possible exception for black Americans.

Also, the article notes that the gains are not necessarily consistent: Because children attend school longer now and have become much more familiar with the testing of school-related material, one might expect the greatest gains to occur on such school content-related tests as vocabulary, arithmetic or general information. Just the opposite is the case: abilities such as these have experienced relatively small gains and even occasional declines over the years.

snip "American children of 1932 could take an IQ test normed in 1997 their average IQ would have been only about 80.<1> In other words, half of the children in 1932 would be classified as having borderline mental retardation or worse in 1997."

That's probably true. However, I don't believe that indicates that American children of 1997 are more intelligent than American children of 1932. I've never been clear on exactly what it is that an IQ test measures.

[AngryAmish]

30. IQ generally measure "g"

I again recommend the wikipedia article on IQ. It does a good job of relating the various controversies and factual information. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ>

In essence "g" is the genral intelligence factor. Abstract reasoning, applying knowledge to new facts, etc. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor> I'm not really doing a good job of explaning "g" so please look it up for a better explanation.

BY any objective standard American children are much smarter than they used to be. Many more kids get schooling (remember in the Jim Crow south they did not like to educate black kids). College degrees have gone through the roof, both in absolute and percentage basis.

Another way of looking at things is in popular entertainments. Compare the plots of an old Dragnet or Gunsmoke episode to a CSI or 24. The old stuff is very basic.

[WilliamPitt]

7. False

[MadHound]

8. Beg to differ

Just because our media is horribly biased doesn't mean that American people are less intelligent, just less informed. Yes, people could take the time to inform themselves better, but the key phrase there is "taking time." In today's jammed packed society, by the time Mom or Dad get home from their ten-twelve hour work day, get done ferrying around their kids, spend a bit of time with the family, they have maybe fifteen or thirty minutes to puruse the news. Most just want to relax. get out from in front of their computer, if they have one, so they plop down on the couch and turn on the TV, watch the news and go to bed.

American people aren't unintelligent, you can say uneducated and uninformed, but not unintelligent.

[Mist]

9. The 25% or so of Kool-Aid fanatics skew the curve, so to speak. Everyone

isn't as dumb as they are, but they do make the rest of us look bad.

Plus, "uniformed" is what many reasonably intelligent people are.

[baldguy]

10. Americans aren't less intelligent - they just refuse to use the intelligence they have.

[TahitiNut]

37. It's a "use it or lose it" proposition.

Sloth results in atrophy. :shrug:

[nightrider767]

11. I think it's actually true.

Several points is not much, and it's easy to believe that the stipidification of Americans is a reality.

Plus consider carefully, elections are stolen with low percentage swings.

No accident here freinds..

The Brits question "How can Americans be so stupid?".

I answer, "I don't know but we are" and also tell the Brits "Go screws yerselves Morans!"

[Dorian Gray]

25. I used to be married to a Brit.

He was in the military (RAF), and let me tell you... his friends were definitely not more intelligent than my American friends. No way, no how.

[SyntaxError]

29. Doesn't the cool accent automatically raise ones IQ about 20 points?

Kind of like how the Southern US accent automatically lowers it by 15 to 50 points...



I wonder if I should add the sarcasmo tag... hmmm

[Dorian Gray]

36. Well... it probably

helped me overlook some of the personality traits that led to our divorce! (Thus lowering my IQ by about ten pts.!) hah!

[dmallind]

12. False - it just seems that way

Since a huge chunk of the media caters to the lowest common denominator, and that's what the rest of the world imports because they also have lowest comnmon denominators to cater to, we just look like morons.

Consider it this way - and this is speaking from large personal experience of US and UK TV media (just an example, but IMO a telling one).

All the UK imports from us is dreck. They buy the latest idiot sitcoms and schlock shows. They don't buy PBS specials very much because they have their own BBC. So the idea is "all American TV is for idiots" when that's just what the UK imports to sell to their own idiots.

The converse is true too. We import all the quirky and intelligent and artsy shows. We don't buy shite like Coronation Street etc because we have our own vapid cheap soaps. So everybody thinks "my god UK television is a constant stream of intelliegnt and original stuff" when it really isn't - that's just what we buy from them because we have our own dreck.

[tom_paine]

14. False. And poorly worded even if it was true.

Remember this: the BBC and other Free World news organizations that we regard with respect, from behind the Iron and Televised Curtain of Lies that Imperial Amerika is since the Bushie Takeover, all have their own problem when covering the misdeeds of their OWN governments.

This is not to say that your basic point is false, our media IS a laughable joke of an amazing propaganda instrument and merketing tools, and it has ceased to be anything more, with a few notable exceptions.

We can reflect that the BBC is free to tell a more unvarnished truth about our nation, and as a free world news organization is far likelier than any of our FOXCNNMSNBCCBSABC Mediawhores to uncover actual governemntal wrongdoing and so help effect opposition and change.

But they have their own problems, especially when propgandizing their own about their own. I mean, have we forgotten that the Brits marched merrily along to war with us?

[porphyrian]

15. IQ is supposed to measure intelligence, not accumulated knowledge.

You can have a high IQ without any access to current events or even a formal education.

[SyntaxError]

23. That's what I thought...

Although, I don't see how one could score well on an IQ test without being knowledgeable in certain subjects. That's even if their reasoning skills are very sharp....

[porphyrian]

31. That's why IQ tests are scaled to the person's age and level of education.

But, like all tests, they really only measure how good a person is at taking that test at that time.

[Zensea]

16. False, although ...

I feel dumber for having read this thread.

[The2ndWheel]

17. I say knowing your IQ lowers your IQ

Just another form of domination and control really.

[SyntaxError]

24. That's deep...

[stillcool]

18. Who is doing the measuring..

and what yard stick is being used? Is a botanist more intelligent than a brain surgeon, if he/she has more time to invest in seeking the reality in current events?

[SyntaxError]

21. OMG!!!!!!111!! Reading this poll has lowered my IQ...

Well, it might have the bong hit I took right before I clicked the link... I can't say for sure....

:evilgrin: O8)

[Dorian Gray]

22. False

[BoneDaddy]

27. Wow if this poll

doesn't tell you something about the IQ of this poster, I do not know what does.

Why is it ok to slam Americans? What a ignorant thing to say.

[BurtWorm]

32. What you don't seem to understand is that it's not "Americans" I'm "slamming,"

I'm assuming humans are intelligent beings a priori, and I'm asking if the fact of being born in the USA is detrimental to that inherent intelligence. I was being facetious, for the record. But I do think it's interesting to wonder if there's something in the water--or in the idiotic media we're forced to feed our minds with--that, as a rule, degrades American intelligence.

[BoneDaddy]

40. I heard what you said

but it is hard to gauge facetiousness or sarcasm or nuance with the literal post (unless you use emoticons or other indications of subtlety), so I took you at face value. Still, I think it is insulting. My guess is you are non-American? And believe me when I say, I do have criticism over a portion of the American thought process, but I am not going to throw the good out with the bad. I am sure, with a small bit of research (if you are non American)that we could most certainly find faults in your culture.

[AlCzervik]

33. Nice Post Professor Hawking.

Our media sucks the fat one. My husband is overseas all the time and he was amazed at the difference when he first started traveling. when i went to London 2 years ago one of things i miss about being there is the BBC.


:loveya:

[cgrindley]

35. Compare church attendance in Canada vs the US

explains so much.

[Labors of Hercules]

38. True, assuming you are educated in this country....

(That's also assuming you mean "IQ" in the euphemistic sense, which we will assume for this exercise that you do)...

There are many flaws in our overall "education system" (if you can call it that), that have reduced its efficacy behind other countries, but to me the most fundamental is the way our educators are educated themselves. There is still an enormous disconnect between sound cognitive and educational theory and it's implementation in the classroom.

Basically, American Teachers still aren't adequately taught how to teach their subject areas, far less how to promote INTELLIGENCE in the classroom.

Until the average course of study in k-12 at American Universities becomes as technically rigorous in it's application as other scientific fields of study, our American students (as a whole) will continue to reflect their teachers' (as a whole) lack of expertise in intellectual development.

[Rex]

41. False

I would say we are low on wisdom, not intelligence. We KNOW what we are doing (intelligence), just don't do anything to stop it - that is not wise.

[Swamp Rat]

44. That's the definition of insanity.

.... repeating failed actions over and over and over.

[Rex]

46. Not always, it took Thomas Edison thousands of tries to get the lightbulb

to work. In Quantum learning, they teach that failure eventually leads to success, HOWEVER, there is always one living aberration - who fails and can never EVER succeed. The Laws of the Universe stop working with the aberration, which is obvious by now. Even when handed everything to succeed, with unlimited resources. Even when given every option to succeed. Unbelievable odds and never once a success. Ever.

Makes ya wonder how we even got this far...

[Swamp Rat]

47. Are you calling Thomas Edison a psycho?

:D

[Rex]

48. Yes!

Crazy asses!

Butt not crazier than this lady!

[Raine]

42. False nt

[ecstatic]

43. I think I agree, because of our media and broken education system nt

[Swamp Rat]

45. LOL!

[Rex]

49. He cheated.

"Do you need a diaper change?"