{"id":7978,"date":"2019-05-22T16:02:43","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/flynn_effect\/"},"modified":"2019-05-22T16:02:43","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:02:43","slug":"flynn_effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/flynn_effect\/","title":{"rendered":"Flynn effect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The continued year-on-year rise of IQ test scores world wide, but with varying rates across countries. &nbsp;From 1952 to 1982, IQ rose on average by 20 points, giving a mean rate of increase of about 3 points per decade. &nbsp;The highest gains were for so-called culturally-reduced tests measuring fluid intelligence (e.g., Raven&#8217;s Progressive Matrices), and lowest for those measuring verbal abilities. &nbsp;The increase was highest in Belgium, Holland and Israel (20 points per generation), and lowest in Denmark and Sweden (10 points per generation). &nbsp;This cross-generational trend remained unnoticed due to the fact that IQ scores are calculated relative to the average score for the contemporary cohort, with the average being set to 100. &nbsp;If an IQ of 120 is compared with the average for a cohort tested one generation earlier, the score would then be about 130. &nbsp;Consequently, IQ tests require frequent renormalization. &nbsp;The effect is named after <a href=\"http:\/\/www.otago.ac.nz\/politicalstudies\/flynn.html\" target=\"_self\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/www.otago.ac.nz\/politicalstudies\/flynn.html&amp;target=_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">James R. Flynn<\/a> who first published the corroborative data mentioned above in 1984 and then again in 1987. &nbsp;There is no straightforward explanation for the effect, but Flynn himself favors an increase in some sort of abstract problem-solving ability rather than a rise in intelligence per se.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>See <a href=\"cohort\">Cohort<\/a>, <a href=\"cohort_effect\">Cohort effect<\/a>, <a href=\"cross-sectional_design\">Cross-sectional design<\/a>, <a href=\"crystallized_intelligence\">Crystallized intelligence<\/a>, <a href=\"d--calage\">D\u00e9calage<\/a>, <a href=\"equivalence_-of_data_across_cultures-\">Equivalence (of data across cultures)<\/a>, <a href=\"fluid_intelligence\">Fluid intelligence<\/a>, <a href=\"intelligence\">Intelligence<\/a>, <a href=\"problem_solving\">Problem solving<\/a>, Raven&#8217;s Progressive Matrices <\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/body><\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The continued year-on-year rise of IQ test scores world wide, but with varying rates across countries. &nbsp;From 1952 to 1982, IQ rose on average by 20 points, giving a mean rate of increase of about 3 points per decade. &nbsp;The highest gains were for so-called culturally-reduced tests measuring fluid intelligence (e.g., Raven&#8217;s Progressive Matrices), and &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/flynn_effect\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Flynn effect&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-7978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glossary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}