The conservative website Breitbart is arguing that women are objectively less intelligent than men. Should we take them seriously?
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In a recent editorial for Breitbart, Milo Yiannopoulos is pushing for the argument that “the smartest people in the world are all men.” To support this claim, Yiannopoulos is relying on that old staple for pseudoscientific arguments – IQ tests.
“There’s little doubt that men occupy more of the higher end of the IQ scale,” Yiannopoulos observes. “Every study comes out the same. IQ isn’t a perfect measure of everything, but it’s the best indicator available of whether someone will be able to compete at the very highest levels.” Because men significantly outnumber women at the higher extremes of IQ scores, Yiannopoulos concludes that this explains why women are underrepresented in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).
“In the last 100 years the IQ scores of both men and women have risen but women’s have risen faster,”
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There are two points worth mentioning here. For one thing, despite devoting considerable time to analyzing the different male-to-female ratios found at the upper ends of the IQ charts, Yiannopolous never bothers demonstrating that there is an actual correlation between those measurements and objective intelligence. Rather than attempt to explain the inherent flaw in that point-of-view on my own, I shall instead refer to the forefather of intelligence tests himself, Alfred Binet:
“The scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured.”
Suffice to say that countless studies – psychiatric, biological, genetic, and sociological – have reinforced the unassailable wisdom of Benet’s observation in the century since he made it. What’s more, although this detail is commonly overlooked today, Binet’s tests were designed to help weed out disruptive students in classroom environments, not to determine the overall cognitive capacities of entire groups of human beings. Considering that disproving a definite connection between IQ and intelligence deals a fatal blow to Yiannopoulos’ case, one might assume that it’d be unnecessary for me to further analyze the errors in that pundit’s survey. Unfortunately, there is another problem that transcends even the unwarranted confidence placed in these tests – namely, the Flynn Effect.
Referring to a phenomenon in which a nation’s average IQ test scores have gradually increased over the years, the Flynn Effect also blows a giant hole in Yiannopoulos’ sexist conclusion. “In the last 100 years the IQ scores of both men and women have risen but women’s have risen faster,” said Flynn in an interview with Forbes Magazine [boldface added]. “This is a consequence of modernity. The complexity of the modern world is making our brains adapt and raising our IQ.” He later added that the “improvement is more marked for women than for men because they were disadvantaged in the past.” In short, only does the Flynn Effect prove that IQ tests are quite subjective (otherwise their results would remain relatively constant regardless of time and location), but it specifically demonstrates that as social and educational equality begins to have its effect, the gap between men and women starts to close.
Will this silence Yiannopoulos and his fellow MRAs (such as the folks at A Voice for Men, who reposted his article) about the alleged superiority of the male gender? Probably not, but it’s a shame that for all of their talk about intelligence, they have yet to display any of that trait when trying to advance their regressive agenda.
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Photo: Flickr – Allan Ajifo/”brain”
Emma My degree was in psychology half a century ago. I follow this sort of thing, among others, and there are many sources. Try using various combinations of the terms I mentioned. “Griffe du Lion” is an interesting site. Bring your stat text and recall he has an interesting way of presenting his data, including talking to a fictional nephew, “Prodigy”. His explanation of which states have higher, and which lower, discrepancies in racial factors in incarceration is interesting and surprising. When my granddaughter was being born, I chatted with a peds nurse. She said there’s an ethnic grouip known… Read more »
She didn’t have to. When racists want to racist without appearing so, they’ll use hints and winks. No need to be explicit, since “everybody knows.” I asked about sources because I’ve never seen those numbers. The disparities in average IQ by ethnicity were within a few points, from what I remember when reading literature on the subject, rather than exceeding standard deviations (SD on Wechsler scales is 15, on Stanford-Binet scales it is 16). All the average IQ numbers in various ethnic groups were still within the average IQ range (90-110). I’m wary of people who use IQ as a… Read more »
its obvious from the dismal state of the world that IQ means less than nothing if there is not a higher EQ to balance it out. these findings are like back in the early 1900s when they gave immigrants IQ tests and found they were not intelligent. does anyone remember this? it turns out, the tests were totally inappropriate for many reasons and proved nothing. just how manipulative and cunning the test makers were and how important separation and demeaning others was to those who feel less than so must make others feel that way as well. women as a… Read more »
No you’re wrong if you think women have gotten any smarter. The only reason is that IQ tests have been standardized to remove questions which show huge disparity in sexes. Also IQ test these days include linguistics which favour women and it is debatable whether someone who can read out a thesaurus is really as intelligent as a guy working in STEM.
Nonsense.
Richard Aubrey, do you have sources for those numbers?
““In the last 100 years the IQ scores of both men and women have risen but women’s have risen faster” Women have better nutrition, more access to schooling and aren’t as constrained by gender roles to stay away from academics so I’d say that’s a large part of why women’s IQ’s advanced faster. IQ only measures some of a person’s intelligence and their general ability to learn vs actual intelligence. It also fails to cover emotional intelligence, creative intelligence, social intelligence, etc and high IQ is also linked to autism. So it doesn’t necessarily mean men are more intelligent overall… Read more »
And maybe it was men that designed the IQ tests?
I think your IQ is high Archy.
There are a lot of tests that determine what you know. There are other tests that determine how well you think. Here are two questions I remember having to solve from the latter category. You have 6 sticks. Create a four sided object using all the sticks. What object do you make? A farmer has enough seeds to plant ten trees. He plants 5 rows of 4 trees each. How does he plant the seeds? Here was a logic question. Three prisoners of average intelligence were being held in a cell. Two sighted and one blind. A jailer walks in… Read more »
John
When will you tell us the correct answer?
I not brave enough to post what I think is the answer……
Here are some answers. 1. The key is to think in 3 dimensions. You create a pyramid with a triangular base. 2. Draw a clock so it helps you form the image. The clock is not part of the image. Draw a line from 8 to 12, a line from 12 to 4, a line from 4 to 10, a line from 10 to 2, and a line from 2 to 8. You should have a star with a pentagram inside of it. Place a tree at each point of the star and at each of the five places where… Read more »
I forgot some of my reasoning for number 2. I knew we needed 5 rows so I started with a pentagram (5 sided object). That left me with 5 trees left, but each row already contained 2 trees. I knew I’d need to utilize the walls of the pentagram so set a point outside. I realized that this point could connect to 2 walls, but of course there needed to be another point along the line to give it 4 trees So I extended the lines by adding another point outside. I now had 2 rows of 4 and 3… Read more »
Thanks !
Silke. Why should it not be genetics? The identical twins separated at birth are busy taking tests. There aren’t really a lot of them. Culture makes a difference, but, apparently, not all the difference. In the US, Askenazic Jews test about 1 SD above the US average. As to the immigrants and their asserted 70 pt. IQ, some reports have the Arab society averaging about 85. It’s frequently ascribed to cousin marrying, which is, in the UK, associated with, approx., eleven times the average birth defects. To insist it’s not genetics is a matter of faith. I have no problem… Read more »
Richard
I think it is partly genetic.
Matthew
It does not upset me that lots of men are more intelligent than me.
I can live with that…..
The problems with these IQ tests is that they also show an enormous difference in the IQ in different population groups around the world.
In Europe we now have more refugees and immigrants coming than earlier.
Some of those that want all borders to be closed use arguments like ” do not want to bring in 70 IQ people in”.
Boy, this is still a thing? Sigh. Yes, there are more men than women at the highest, but also at the lowest IQ range. This makes the average IQ in men and women the same. IQ is not a monolithic measure. It encompasses a range of varied abilities that are “averaged” (not exactly, but) in that one number. This means that two people with an IQ of 140 may, and likely will, have very different profiles of intellectual strengths and weaknesses. And so, for instance, the one whose verbal abilities are his leading strengths, and who may have weaknesses in… Read more »
Emma
And somebody has to take care of the men on the lowest part of the spectrum.
In fact that can be a pleasure.
Two of the persons I love the most among my neighbours are a couple with intellectual disability that means an IQ lower than 70.
In all the years I have known them they have never gossiped ,never hated anyone near,and they are trusting and kind with a clean pure love for others.
Intelligence is whatever the intelligence tests measure..
That being said, the implication of the article is that men’s intelligence and women’s intelligence is supposed to be the same.
Is there anything empirical on that?
It’s sounding like all races are equally intelligent and anybody who says different is a racist.Except for Asians who are smarter than whites and how do you like that, you so-superior white racists?
Richard
Are also all the adopted Asian kids that grows up in non Asian environment, more intelligent ( as measured with an IQ test) ?
Is it mostly genetic?
They’re probably just trying to make the best of bad news. Since when has men being superior in anything resulted in advantage for men in this political environment? Men are bigger and stronger so obviously they don’t need DV shelters even though research shows that 3/4 of non-reciprocal DV is perpetrated by women. Women can’t compete for police and fire fighter jobs. Simply create a lower standard for them. Hire them. Send the men out to do the actual fire fighting work and because the waitress next door doesn’t earn the same you know because she isn’t fighting fires complain… Read more »
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9401241/IQ-tests-women-score-higher-than-men.html
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/andrew-smiler-the-women-are-smarter-so-what/
Lemme guess: “It’s different when we do it *something something* privilege *something something* fragile masculinity”?