Science News Archive

Britannia Rules the Brainwaves

Britons are more intelligent that we were 60 years ago, according to recent research ! According to James Flynn and his colleagues from the University of Otago in New Zealand, we are about 27 IQ points brighter since world war 2. Americans are only 24 points cleverer, he reports. Psychologists suspect that about 80% of our intelligence is genetically determined, but at least 20% is down to the environment we grow up in and our education. They suggest that our IQ has gone up because we live in a technologically complex modern world which stimulates brain development more effectively than in the past. That British people have done the best, and beaten America, because we have better nutrition and lower truancy rates, they say.

6th Jan 2002