By Steve Sailer
01/27/2019
The late snail expert Stephen Jay Gould famously ranted against IQ research: “The chimerical nature of g [for General factor] is the rotten core of Jensen’s edifice, and of the entire hereditarian school.”
From Psychological Bulletin:
Spearman’s g found in 31 non-Western nations: Strong evidence that g is a universal phenomenon.
Warne, Russell T.; Burningham, Cassidy
Abstract
Spearman’s g is the name for the shared variance across a set of intercorrelating cognitive tasks. For some — but not all — theorists, g is defined as general intelligence. While g is robustly observed in Western populations, it is questionable whether g is manifested in cognitive data from other cultural groups. To test whether g is a cross-cultural phenomenon, we searched for correlation matrices or data files containing cognitive variables collected from individuals in non-Western, nonindustrialized nations. … Across 97 samples from 31 countries totaling 52,340 individuals, we found that a single factor emerged unambiguously from 71 samples (73.2%) and that 23 of the remaining 26 samples (88.5%) produced a single second-order factor. The first factor in the initial EFA explained an average of 45.9% of observed variable variance (SD = 12.9%), which is similar to what is seen in Western samples. … Factor extraction in a higher-order EFA was not possible in 2 samples. These results show that g appears in many cultures and is likely a universal phenomenon in humans. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)Impact Statement
Public Significance Statement — This study shows that one conceptualization of intelligence — called Spearman’s g — is present in over 90 samples from 31 non-Western, nonindustrialized nations. This means that intelligence is likely a universal trait in humans. Therefore, it is theoretically possible to conduct cross-cultural research on intelligence, though culturally appropriate tests are necessary for any such research.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.