Contrary to an earlier report that said humans’ IQ scores are decreasing due to advancement in technology, scientists have now claimed that the average intelligence of the human race has actually been steadily increasing.
In research looking back over IQ tests from the past few decades, they found that the tests were becoming harder – but people were still doing just as well.
But the reasons why people are becoming smarter is unknown – with theories including better education and improved medical care.
The research, titled A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis of Raven’s Progressive Matrices and reported by William Kremer for the BBC, was published in the journal intelligence.
Carried out by Peera Wongupparaj, Veena Kumari and Robin Morris from Kings College London, they looked specifically at the Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM).
This tasks participants with looking for patterns in an array of shapes – and is thought to be a good measure of intelligence.
In total, more than 200,000 participants from 48 countries over 64 years were studied in the research.
Since 1950, it was found that the average intelligence had risen by the equivalent of 20 IQ points.
‘RPM is a valid and reliable measure of general IQ, Dr Wongupparaj told MailOnline.
‘Also, it is cultural-free test so that it has been widely used for nearly 80 years.’
‘IQ tests are designed to ensure that the average result is always 100, so this is a significant jump,’ the BBC reported.
The research builds on earlier evidence from philosopher and psychologist James Flynn, from the University of Otaga in New Zealand.
He had noticed that IQ tests were getting harder, but people were still getting similar scores on them – which became known as the Flynn Effect.
This equates to a three-point rise in IQ per decade.
According to the new study, though, outside of the US the biggest change was clearly in developing countries, IQ was ‘catching up with the developed world’.
‘There are multiple possible reasons proposed for this phenomenon,’ they write.
These include improved education, increased exposure to testing, improved medical care and nutrition and decreased family size.
Perhaps most importantly, though, is that the instance of IQ increasing was not just true in general for the world as a whole – but could also be noticed on a much smaller scale.
‘The Flynn effect is strong enough to be showed in even small and non-representative samples as well as in the very young and older adults,’ the researchers conclude.
