In 1950 the average IQ score was about 100. In 2020 it was about 100 again. That sameness is misleading, and James Flynn spent his career explaining why.
IQ tests report scaled scores. A raw result goes through a formula, and the formula is reset every ten years so the average always lands on 100. The raw scores underneath have climbed a long way. Convert our grandparents’ raw results with today’s formula and their average falls to about 70. Convert ours with their formula and we average about 130.
Are we really that much smarter? Flynn, who first noticed the rise, did not think so. He pointed to schooling.
Why scores rose
Children now spend far more years in class than children did when IQ testing began. And the lessons have changed. Schools today lean harder on abstract and hypothetical thinking than they did a century ago. Flynn’s full argument runs well beyond these two points.
Flynn died in New Zealand, where he had been a professor for decades. Colleagues remembered him as a giant of intelligence research, and as someone who paired a sharp mind with kindness.
Richard Haier, editor of the journal Intelligence, posted his own tribute on Twitter. “Jim Flynn became famous for showing a global secular rise in IQ scores but he was admired even more for engaging with critics as a gentleman,” Haier wrote. “In a field raked with controversy and not without personal attacks, Jim sought out contrary opinions and engaged intellectually.”
Even people with little regard for IQ as a yardstick admired how Flynn pushed everyone to think harder about how intelligence is measured, built and understood. Haier added: “We can also learn from his example on conversing with people we disagree with.”
