What about the education systems? One of those two countries is heavily denying basic science at schools, teaching creationism as something at the same level as evolutionism, letting religion pollute education, banning books from schools, teaching obsolete two genders theory, etc. Is the study short about the differences in education?
What about the education systems?
Education, sure. But also environment, nutrition, and stress/trauma.
The US is polluted with heavy metals, our food is awful, and we regularly put residents (particularly young people) in extremely traumatic situations. All of that stunts intellectual development.
Its a side effect about the differences in education. IQ is relative to the population and education, they slightly increase it to keep the average around 100. The average person 100 years ago had 30 less IQ points, because education and child nutrition were non existent. Cut those things and your average person reverts back.
Other countries have only gotten better, the US has just gotten worse.
they slightly increase it to keep the average around 100
They don’t “slightly increase it to keep the average around 100.” The average is defined as 100. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_score https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_classification
My explanation is for laymen, 100 in 2025 is not the same 100 in 1925, my point.
Lots of people who talk about IQ don’t know what the Q stands for.
The article is trash, especially with the added stock photos. Use the source link instead
Lmao at all of the nationalists post-hoccing away at shitty explanations as to why the US isn’t just a dumb as a brick nation.
why the US isn’t just a dumb as a brick nation
The US isn’t just a dumb as a brick nation. We’re immersed in historic and environmental factors that are engineered to segregate who has access to intellectual capital and who is tracked into jobs that discourage free thinking.
Yeah people don’t realize IQ is relative to education. If you cut education you get dumber people on average.
Breaking News….America makes you dumb
This website’s use of stock images and gifs were aggravating. The actual case study was worth the read, but only covers a single pair of individuals: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886922001477
It’s certainly interesting. I’m particularly curious about the effects of the multiple confusions:
US had three concussions as an adult, caused by car accidents and from falling on ice. The most recent and severe incident occurred in January 2018, resulting in classic symptoms of light sensitivity and concentration difficulty. US feels she is a “different person,” with increased anger and anxiety. She requires additional time to process information in some problem-solving situations, although she has always seen herself as a poor test taker.
Some of the conclusions seemed a stretch for a single sample. I’m much more curious about more extensive studies with many more subjects.
Gotta say as someone who experienced traumatic brain injury I also feel like I’m a different person, and not as bright as I used to be. The doctors estimate I lost somewhere on the order of 15-20% of whatever that was.
Exactly, there’s a lot of different factors that can affect cognition.
Manga authors “write that down write that down!”
Manhwa*
'My twin Sister from another country couldn’t be this dumb???!"
If anyone else is wondering why their faces on the image are not identical: its a representative stock pic
With america being the shitshow that it is I am not surprised
I do hope she could move back and get the support of the family in South Korea because she shouldn’t have to live in that sithole anymore
the researchers note that the sister raised in the US had suffered three previous concussions
the twin raised in Korea described growing up in a loving and harmonious family home, the adopted sister reported a harsher upbringing, colored by regular conflict and the divorce of her adoptive parents
It does seem as if there would be explanations for the unusual difference.
That’s kind of an understatement. Three traumatic brain injuries is not exactly something that can be ignored when discussing differences in mental faculties.
It can be ignored if your only priority is dunking on America. I feel sorry for this young person being made into the poster child for everyone who would like to take America down a peg. Even the concussions will somehow get attributed to “the way things are there.”
Concussion, and Traumatic Brain Injury, are two very different diagnosis.
The two shouldn’t be conflated.All concussions are traumatic brain injuries, not all traumatic brain injuries are concussions.
And there’s a reason for the two different terms. Concussions (or mild TBI), is a brief dysfunction of the brain. Full TBI is substantial often permanent damage.
Using the term TBI for concussion, is an example of manipulative intensifying language, to make something sound worse than it is.
Lol brain injury is cumulative (e.g. football players) in what way is calling brain injury what if is “manipulative intensifying language” lmao
This isnt me defending the US btw, apparently its the kind of place you get lots of concussions (the nice, non traumatic kind tho ;3)
If there are two correct and common terms; One broad that includes far more severe effects, and one narrow that specifically excludes the worst. Then choosing to use less accurate term is misleading and manipulative, intentionally or not.
I’m not conflating anything. A concussion is literally considered a mild TBI.
A concussion is a mild traumatic brain injury that affects brain function. Effects are often short term and can include headaches and trouble with concentration, memory, balance, mood and sleep.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/concussion/symptoms-causes/syc-20355594
Concussion is a type of mild TBI that may be considered a temporary injury to the brain but could take minutes to several months to heal.
https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/disorders/traumatic-brain-injury-tbi
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines concussion as a traumatic brain injury (TBI) caused by a bump, blow, or jolt to the head or by a hit to the body that causes the head and brain to move rapidly back and forth.
https://biausa.org/brain-injury/about-brain-injury/what-is-a-brain-injury/concussion-mtbi
There seems to be this trend of masochistic behavior in the US. Where we take pride in our injuries and illness, bragging about working and pushing ourselves while we are suffering. The whole time telling ourselves it’s not that bad. It’s definitely stood out more since Covid, it’s stupid behavior though.
Thank the puritans who evolved into evangelicals and baptists for that.
“Religious freedom” to make others suffer is why they came here. The idea for separation between church and state did not come out of nowhere.
That does exist.
Just like the tendency to make things sound worse than they are.Why use the broader term instead of the more narrow, when both are accurate? Could it be in this case to associate a relatively minor injury with its most extreme version?
The same way that stapling your finger and being shot, are both wounds.
Right, this assertion is invalidated and agenda-driven.
Can you clarify?
It’s invalidated because multiple concussions would probably damage the brain and reasonably lower IQ. Also, the potential abuse that was hinted at would of course potentially affect IQ as well. It’s agenda-driven because it trivializes all of the above in order to push what seems to be an anti-USA agenda.
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16 points, so about a standard deviation. That’s big, but your own varience can be just as high; the original point of IQ is a measure of how well you’ll do in school to detect who may need additional attention (and not an inherent intelligence) so later aged tests include more on knowledge base while earlier tests are more about things like pattern recognition, mental rotation, etc. Infact, it has to get recurved regularly as each generation tends to be roughly 10 or 15 points higher (although idk about gen Z).
All this is to say that a slump of 16 points doesn’t have to be shit like lead poisoning or gas fumes (although that certainly doesn’t help, and pollution matters), it can simply be the US education system isn’t good at teaching students. Cross culture studies already show that, as do differences between the rich and the poor. Or hell, just playing Tetris raises IQ, lol.
It’d obviously help if this wasn’t a click bait article, though. People wanting to know why need to read a lot of actual research to know the myriad of different things that impact IQ and not just “haha US stupid.”
although idk about gen Z
💀
I technically meant that in regards to not seeing the research lately, but… lol
I thought it was hilarious, can’t lie. But I don’t think gen Z (or alpha, or beta, or whatever gen is the currently self-aware one) are unintelligent, I just think they have shit influence. Parents need to stay extra vigilant in this age.
Real talk the main driver of advances are usually healthier environments, better nutrition and access to knowledge (e g. Via tech). I don’t think Z or alphas are getting better in those regards, kind of inheriting the opposite.
You might be right on that, indeed. At least some countries are backpedaling hard on all of the above right now.
The article says 7 points is standard in twins. So this is over twice what is normally seen
There’s link for the study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886922001477
Personality traits, mental abilities and other individual differences: Monozygotic female twins raised apart in South Korea and the United States by Nancy L. Segal and Yoon-Mi Hur
It is literally a case study with a single pair of subjects. At first I thought the OP pop sci article was just focusing in on one pair of participants of many. Most of the discussions in threads here seem wholly unwarranted. There are loads of random factors that affect people’s development, many of which can’t realistically be measured in a study. Maybe one of them happened to become friends with with a classmate that’s really into literature and so they started reading a lot! Maybe they are both sensitive to sounds, but only one of them happens to live near an airport, disrupting their sleep at night.
It is not surprising that one particular set of monozygotic twins happens to markedly differ with respect to some traits. There are always outliers in large twin studies too, and researchers don’t usually get that hung up about them because everyone knows there are countless factors involved. To be able to have any certainty about the effects of a particular factor you need scale that lets you separate them from the random noise. It’s just basic statistics, like what is even anyone doing here. The study itself does make sense, but should be interpreted as extremely exploratory in nature, not something to draw any conclusions from. IMO the researchers themselves are irresponsible in this regard, as they speculate much more than what’s warranted in the discussion and conclusions sections. Like, one of their conclusions is “They [the twins] also show that cultural climates can modify values.”. First, that is something already widely known and accepted, but second and more importantly, that is not the kind of statement you should make based on a single pair of subjects.
I have children. The amount of trauma a two year old would experience losing their family, being transported to a foreign country and adopted by different people would be
traumaticintense as hell.A two year old is not a newborn. That’s their entire world blowing up.
Yeah you can basically completely disregard any other aspect in this study, right? ‘massive trauma in early life has strong impact’ is the real finding here, and that’s hardly a new one
Luckily it’s very local, time wise. I don’t remember a thing from like 5 and earlier.
Just because a person doesn’t have a memory of a traumatic event doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect them. Kids can have lasting trauma effects even from things they were too young to remember.
That’s true. But I imagine a lot has to do with how they are received and how they deal with it. If the adopting parents handle it gracefully, then the child is in a good place to deal with their trauma, whether it’s consciously or subconsciously. At least I hope.
During the communist regime in Romania there was a ban on abortion and the state encouraged people to have lots of kids (sound familiar?). This lead to A LOT of kids in orphanages and not enough resources to properly care for them. Conditions were atrocious, to say the least.
But, that lead to a lot of research data by following the lives of kids who got adopted from those orphanages. It was determined that 4 month old was the cut-off point from where kids can still recover from traumatic experiences. Kids adopted younger than that did fine, but kids adopted after that age were affected for the rest of their lives. The fact that they didn’t actually remember things consciously did not matter.
That’s very interesting. I’m curious about how it affected their lives.
(And yes, sounds very familiar… 🚩🇺🇸🚩)
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Your anecdotal experience doesn’t have anything to do with this if you weren’t traumatized at a young age.
My parents were divorced when I was about 2? Not “trauma” maybe, but you’d think it might be something I might remember. I dunno.
Trauma doesn’t always come with memories. You might have some form of PTSD response to the stressors the divorce caused.
Significant trauma are frequently suppressed in memory.
Could be that, too. I have a great relationship with both my parents though so I doubt it’s PTSD in my particular case. Or at the very least I’ve had great support in subconsciously dealing with it, if anything. But still, yes!
I would not think that, no.
Makes sense, if I don’t remember it. But maybe it was just a calm separation.
Interesting. I’ve got very distinct memories from back then, though they’ve almost become memories of memories now.
From what I understand, this is how memory works. Every time you remember something, you’re actually remembering the last time you remembered it.
The medium in which memories are stored isn’t exactly digital or isolated from stimulus. If something disturbs the memory, or the memory gets taken over by some other shit you learn, then I imagine the memory will take on another shape. So in essence, you are recalling a current snapshot of the memory. But the more often you recall it, the more recent and solidified/consolidated the memory will be. Just like muscle memory. The brain will make strong connections for things it uses often, because it is implied that those things are important for survival.
I’m no expert(!) but I imagine this is how it works.
Look at what Americans consume. There’s your answer.
yeah, totally not the concussions.
while the other faced hardships with her adoptive family and parents
Does anyone have more info? Abuse, neglect, and malnutrition are proven to reduce IQ. So are the concussions referenced in the article. I would be dubious to make any statements on the back of a single case like this. This is not even outside the realm of possibility of twin IQ variance - albeit unlikely.
So is lead.
Using historical data on U.S. childhood blood-lead levels, leaded-gas use, and population statistics, they determined the likely lifelong burden of lead exposure carried by every American alive in 2015.
https://today.duke.edu/2024/12/20th-century-lead-exposure-damaged-american-mental-health
She looks pretty young, but still.
Also, just schooling, lol. US education sucks donkey dick
The photo is stock. They’re in their 40s so it could be lead. The US twin experienced multiple serious concussions, so that alone might explain a 16 point IQ difference.
Not stock, slop.
iq still a thing?
Yes. Contrary to current pop-sci thought, it’s not actually useless bunk. Epically when differences reach into 2 digits.
I didn’t realise it wasn’t a thing anymore.
I know it’s never been a good indicator of success or even cognitive abilities but it’s still a thing that people try to measure.
I know it’s never been a good indicator of success
I suppose you might define “success” in an unusual way, but IQ is the single highest correlate with income of all factors. Higher than parental income, race, or residential location.
If you’re interesting in learning more I recommend this article. They cite a lot of data and research. I’m happy to walk you through the directionality topic as well if you’re interested.
I may need you to walk me past my inhibitions about accepting scientific information from a website called PumpkinPerson that center justifies its articles.
I just watched a Veritasium video that said that IQ is not very strongly correlated with higher income.
I’ll take a look at the article too.
there are companies that still use myers-briggs personality tests for “compatibility”
Myers-Briggs is modern snake oil.
Meyers-Briggs is astrology with more steps
Yeah, that is accurate. Astrology pretending to be science.
It still is a thing, always will be. People are vastly differently skilled. The problem isnt that there are different abilities but that our centralized meat mill pushes them into categories. It doesnt make you better to have more skill in one area, it just means people should consider listening to you.
IQ is a very good indicator of cognitive abilities. It’s a poor indicator of kindness, morality, or honesty.
Why wouldn’t it be? It is the single most research metric in all of sociology. We have more evidence for the existence of the g factor (and its causal and correlative effects) than any other phenomenon in that entire school of science.
Don’t confuse the criticism of measurement tools with the premise that g doesn’t exist.
Americans are so weird about IQ. Yes, indeed, some brains work better than others — by avoiding lead poisoning or traumatic brain injuries, for instance, and by reading books, pursuing higher education, and enjoying a fulfilling social environment.
Apparently not in the US!
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It’s not canceled. It’s just not an accurate reflection of inherent overall intelligence but, instead, a measurement of very specific mental skills.
It’s a test of pattern recognition. The difficulties come from trying to apply similar measurements between disparate populations, as the questions themselves tend to rely upon common understandings of the world. You can measure two people from two different cultures with two different tests, but then it’s more difficult to claim that the resulting scores are comparable. As long as people understand that it’s a rough approximation rather than something akin to video game stats, then it’s quite useful.
Even video game stats have the same problems though, your W/L ratio in free for all should be a lot lower than in team deathmatch, or if you are playing a support class it’s expected you get less kills per game so comparing a support player vs a fragger will get you errors but if you control for as many variables as possible then IQ can be a not complete shit variable
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I learned about the issues with IQ long before “cancelling” was a thing.
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Ok, but if you’re gonna make a joke like that in a serious thread about actual IQ, you’re probably gonna want to include a little bit more so people are able to pick up what you’re putting down.
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Really? I thought I was being pretty cordial… Oh well.
It’s mostly a metric people use to prove their superiority over other people, when all of the other metrics for happiness and success suggest otherwise.
Of course not. IQ should be forbidden because it is racist, fascist and bad!
You can always tell which people took an “IQ test” (most of them probably even just did some bullshit online thing and not even a real one) and have nothing else going for them but a number that they think tells people they’re smart.
Yeah, about online tests, I’ve taken it twice in the olden days, once I got a result (probably due to connection problems) fitting a rock, and once I got something egghead high (probably due to the same).
And I’ve never met people mentioning their IQ test results as an argument other than what you said.
You just did it. 🤷♂️
I thought I did the opposite.
