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James Robert Flynn

James Robert Flynn

Intelligence researcher who documented the effect

Appears in 1 story

Notable Quotes

If you score the people a century ago against modern norms, they would have an average IQ of 70. If you score us against their norms, we would have an average IQ of 130.

Stories

A century of rising IQ scores gets its definitive measurement

New Capabilities

Deceased (December 11, 2020)

In 1932, the average American would have scored 70 on a modern IQ test—the threshold for intellectual disability. By 2013, raw performance had climbed by 30 points, a finding confirmed by a 2015 meta-analysis of 271 studies in 31 countries with nearly 4 million participants. The data supported what psychologist James Flynn long argued: IQ scores have risen worldwide at roughly 3 points per decade throughout the 20th century.

Updated May 22