What is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect

Professor James Flynn is one of the most creative and influential psychologists in the field of intelligence. The \'Flynn Effect\' refers to the massive increase in IQ test scores over the course of the twentieth century and the term was coined to recognize Professor Flynn\'s central role in measuring and analyzing these gains. For over twenty years, psychologists have struggled to understand the implications of IQ gains. Do they mean that each generation is more intelligent than the last? Do they suggest how each of us can enhance our own intelligence? Professor Flynn is finally ready to give his own views. He asks what intelligence really is and gives a surprising and illuminating answer. This book bridges the gulf that separates our minds from those of our ancestors a century ago. It is a fascinating and unique book that makes an important contribution to our understanding of human intelligence.

• The style is simple and direct, yet even experts will find their understanding of intelligence enhanced • Boxes and figures make IQ trends easy to comprehend • Tables have been reserved for an Appendix but experts will find the data of great value

1. A bombshell in a letter box; 2. Beyond the Flynn Effect; 3. Towards a new theory of intelligence; 4. Testing the Dickens/Flynn model; 5. Why did it take so long?; 6. IQ gains can kill; 7. What if the gains are over?; 8. Knowing our ancestors; Appendix I: Tables; Appendix II: Declaration in a capital case.

\'In a brilliant interweaving of data and argument, Flynn calls into question fundamental assumptions about the nature of intelligence that have driven the field for the past century. There is something here for everyone to lose sleep over. His solution to the perplexing issues revolving around IQ gains over time will give the IQ Ayatollahs fits!\' Professor S. J. Ceci, Cornell University

‘There are relatively few eponymous effects in psychology, and the Flynn Effect is among the best known. Here we see James Flynn discussing fully the ramifications of his effect, from its implications for intelligence theory to its social impact, including the death penalty. But it\'s not just the fascinating effect, its much debated origins, or the headaches it provided to researchers in different areas of intelligence that make the book special. It\'s also Flynn\'s style. There\'s an unusual combination of clarity, wit (cognitive and humorous), apposite allusion, and farsightedness in making connections and exploring unexpected consequences of what was, originally, a boring-sounding fact: i.e., that mental tests had to be re-normed every so often. The Flynn Effect, in Flynn\'s hands, makes a good, gripping, puzzling, and not-quite-finished story.’ Professor Ian J. Deary, University of Edinburgh

‘Few topics are more important than the study of human intelligence - and few generate so much heat relative to light. James Flynn has been a saintly anomaly in this contentious debate. His latest book is a classic expression of the man - advancing a particular point of view, but committed to following the data, responding to criticism with reason and evidence, and unfailingly good-humored. All of us who wrestle with the extraordinarily difficult questions that he discusses are in his debt.’ Charles Murray, Co-author with Richard Herrnstein of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994)

\'The ‘Flynn Effect’ (i.e. the rise in IQ over time) caught the imagination of most people, but also raised controversy through its challenging of several accepted ideas. This highly engaging, and very readable, book takes forward the Dickens and Flynn model of intelligence, but does so in the form of asking yet more provocative questions, whilst simultaneously indicating how their hypotheses might be tested.  It is essentially a book in which the originators of an important set of ideas think aloud and seek to get everyone else thinking critically and constructively. A most unusual book, but one that holds the reader’s attention and leaves behind concepts and ideas that force us to rethink all sorts of issues.\' Professor Sir Michael Rutter, Institute of Psychiatry, King\'s College London

\'Flynn provides the first satisfying explanation of the massive rise in IQ test scores. He avoids both the absurd conclusion that our great grandparents were all mentally retarded and the equally unsatisfactory suggestion that the rise has just been in performance on IQ tests without any wider implications.\' Professor N. J. Makintosh, University of Cambridge

‘This book is full of insightful ideas about our measuring rods and the ways in which they tap the thing that matters: the brains relative capacity to use memory and learning to adapt to the world as we have made it.’ Times Higher Education Supplement