Are People Getting Dumber?

It might be easy to pass off all the examples I give of poor choices by saying that people are just not as intelligent as they used to be.  College entrance scores on the SAT have been trending downward since the 1970s.  The time it takes to earn a college degree, once assumed to be four years, now is over five.  Last year the authors of Academically Adrift reported that nearly half of college students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” during their first two years.  We frequently hear about kids graduating from high school unable to read or do simple arithmetic without a calculator.  The government finds it necessary to pass consumer protection laws to combat the "deceptive" practices of businesses and advertisers.  And how else would you explain more than 20,000 children hurt each year in shopping-cart incidents? – Shopping carts!

Instead there is good evidence that people are actually getting smarter from one generation to the next.  It’s called the Flynn Effect.  As summarized in “Explaining the Flynn Effect” a paper by Jariel Rendell: “In the United States between 1932 and 1978, mean IQ scores rose 13.8 points, or approximately 0.33 points each year (Flynn, 1984), and IQ scores continued to increase at least into the mid 1990s (Rowe & Rodgers, 2002).”

Despite ongoing research, the reasons for the increase in pure intelligence are unclear, and opinions vary considerably.  Some think that, having gotten more exposure to these types of tests in recent years, Americans are just getting better at test taking.  Some say that people today have an advantage from the technological advancements and have developed the ability to think more abstractly.  Others attribute the improvement to better nutrition.

So if everyone is getting smarter, why do so many agree that America is headed in the wrong direction, going to hell in a hand basket?  One theory is that poor time management in a rushed society leads to poor results despite increased intelligence.  My contention, which I think my previous posts bear out, is that it has nothing to do with intelligence, but rather with the misapplication of that intelligence due to incorrect assumptions promoted by our society.  This leads to problematic behavior in the areas of Critical Thinking, Perspective, Discipline, Economic Understanding, and Responsibility.  It’s a behavior problem when intelligent people make poor choices.

It’s incorrect to write poor choices off as the result of stupid people doing stupid things.  Look at the current news.  No one can say John Edwards is not intelligent.  He earned multiple degrees and didn’t just squeak by, graduating with honors.  He had a successful law practice before being elected to the Senate.  Now he is at risk of going to prison.  Haven’t we all known intelligent people who made bad decisions:  doctors who continued to smoke long after the dangers were well-known; people who spent money they didn’t have to impress others; teachers and priests seducing young people?  The problems we face as a nation are related to behavior, not intelligence.  The sooner we learn this, the quicker solutions will come.