In his review of the African IQ literature, Heiner Rindermann concluded that the mean IQ of Sub-Saharan Africa was somewhere between 68 and 78, adding that "given the quality of the data, it is not possible to come to a really precise result." His criticisms of that literature are worth quoting:
"The usual phrase ‘‘further research is needed’’ is very appropriate here: We need representative samples of the ages 10–70; samples representative of the full range of school education, including the share without or with only little education; the use of fluid (school-distant) and crystallized (school-near) cognitive ability tests; and up-to-date norms from Great Britain. Furthermore, as African samples have less cognitive task experience, the estimates could be increased by a short test training or a more general cognitive training."
I think you're missing the point when you write: "We don't disregard African data for any other variable just because it is of low quality." The problem here isn't simply the low quality of the data. If that were the case, there would just be more variability around a mean that is nonetheless more or less right. There is also the problem of low cognitive task experience.
In European and Asian cultures, you can easily spend a third of your life at school. So almost everyone is familiar with testing, and most people have learned what to do and what not to do on a test (like spending too much time on the hard questions). People are also familiar with the idea of answering questions in rapid-fire succession. That's less the case in Africa and elsewhere in the world. Even in traditional European cultures, that was less the case. It used to be considered rude to ask direct questions, especially in a rapid-fire manner. When I was doing fieldwork, I was warned against "pumping" older interviewees by asking one question after another.
I agree that there is global variation in mean cognitive ability, but I disagree with the sometimes naïve acceptance of IQ data from Africa and other places.
Reference
Rindermann, H. (2013). African cognitive ability: Research, results, divergences and recommendations. Personality and Individual Differences 55: 229-233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.06.022
No one said anything about naive acceptance. I am talking about mere acceptance of existing data, some of which are quite extensive. If you know how to gather more data in Africa, let me know.
In my opinion, African IQ scores are too problematic to be of any use. A better measure of cognitive ability is provided by polygenic scores for alleles associated with educational attainment (Edu PGS). Why is so little work being done in that area for Sub-Saharan Africa?
Again, I'm sympathetic to the idea that mean cognitive ability varies from one population to another (and not only among continental populations). I'm just not convinced by most of the African IQ data. I suspect the same is true for a lot of open-minded "fence sitters."
Why is that? There are lots of studies using many different kinds of tests. No particular rational reason to avoid the data. They are congruent with other developmental data from Africa. It is not rational to refuse to use the data.
Africans don't collect a lot of genomic datasets, obviously, so they are difficult to study using genetics.
I'm not "avoiding" the data. I'm trying to understand it.
I see two incongruences:
1. The mean IQ of African Americans is 85. If you adjust for European admixture, the mean IQ of their African ancestors should be about 80. That's at least 10 points above the figures being put forward here.
2. The Igbo perform at European levels of academic achievement. This is true both in Nigeria and in diaspora communities. Even if mean cognitive ability is lower for Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, there is clearly much variability among SSA populations.
Last paper can give a idea about Igbo IQ. Because Enugu is located in Igboland. Additionally highest IQ is from this paper. I guess this is not coincidence. This is compatible with Peter Frost's prior hypothesis.
"The indigenous people of Enugu include Enugwu-Ngwo people who live on the aged Hill-Top plain towards the Milliken Hills on the west, with their farm lands sprawling all over the valley, the Ogui Nike who live in the areas surrounding Hotel Presidential, Obiagu, Ama-Igbo, Ihewuzi and Onu-Asata. Other groups include the Awkunanaw people, who live mainly in the Achara Layout and Uwani areas. Other Nike people live around the Abakpa, Iji-Nike, and Emene areas of the city.[82][83][84] Most of the non-indigenous people of Enugu are migrants from other parts of the Igbo cultural area. After the majority Igbo, the Yoruba people are another significant ethnic group found present in Enugu; other groups include the Hausa, Kanuri, Ijaw, and Fulani people"
* Iloh, Ubesie and Iloh (2017, Table 2) observed the influence of socio-demographic characteristics on SPM-test performance on a sample with a mean age of 10.00y from the city of Enugu. Males obtained a raw score of 31.80 and females of 33.70, averaged to
32.75, which is at the 28.52 GBR-P and equivalent to an uncor. IQ of 91.49, corrected by -6.09 for FE to85.40.
Stephen Molyneux did a podcast where he talked about James Flynn asking scientists to collaborate with him to collect good data on African IQ. Not a single scientist accepted. Nobody wants to be associated with such a study. Everybody will complain about the quality of the data from existing studies, but when asked to collect the data themselves, they're all too busy.
I can't find the source anymore but I think the Australian government forbids scientists (foreign and domestic) from collecting IQ data on their aboriginal population. Despite more than 100+ years of education and even forced adoptions of aboriginal babies into white families (the ultimate blank slate study), the aboriginals continue to do behave pretty much the same way that they did when Captain James Cook found them.
> So there are 8 different studies with sample sizes totaling about 10,000 people. […]The IQs from these studies ranged from 67 to 85. It's these studies:
An observation: Using SD(IQ) =15 and N=1250, for illustration, we get SE=0.42, which means these numbers are —Bayes forgive me— significantly different. They are contradictory, as they make conflicting predictions for the population. For example, using 67 as the mean, only 11.5% of the population are above 85, contradicting the prediction of 50% given by the 85 mean.
If physicists estimating the gravity of Z'ha'dum got different numbers (beyond the precision of their instruments), they would consider _all_ numbers invalid until they could explain the difference and determine which number (possibly a new number) makes accurate predictions for a ballistic trajectory in Z'ha'dum.
Just a thought on what measurement means. I have no cat in the fight that's the topic of the post.
I have a hard time squaring the low African IQ estimates with the US-African immigrant overperformance on scholastic measures compared to native African-Americans.
Do you think that 67 is really the *genotypic* average IQ of Nigeria?
US African immigrants are very highly selected (legal immigrants to the US generally are, since the process is a bureaucratic maze + lots of competition from all over the world). For instance, 63% of first-generation Nigerian-Americans are college graduates, compared to only 7% of Nigerians, while half of adult Nigerians are illiterate.
I would guess the West African genotypic average (given First World levels of Flynn Effect) is around ~78, based on high-quality data from the US Virgin Islands (which are First World, full Flynn effect, etc) as well as African Americans (mean IQ ~85, with ~17% white admixture).
So what is the typical African nations’ IQ? We don’t know, too much noise in the “data” we are told. However, perhaps we have a better handle on Africans not native to Africa? For example, the USA. Blacks, who are descendant from African slaves brought over primarily from Africa’s West coast. I’ve heard many excuses for American Blacks low IQ score vis a vis other races native to the USA, but all of these have been shown lacking in merit.
Seems to me that the best measure we have is that the USA Black race is at an average IQ of 85–one SD below the mean IQ for the nation. Is this to be explained away as well with the African trope? My suspicion is that this mean score observation is probably a good guess for the very maximum average IQ of African (Subsaharan) nations. (Note I do not deny that there are probably sub populations within Africa that are quite high (relatively) wrt their IQ).
I believe it was Lynn that noted there were no functional nations with average IQ’s less than 90. Seems about right when observing African national dysfunction today. So are we arguing about minor differences here? A distinction without a difference?
Thanks for this. Do know about a go-to rebuttal for race realism specifically? It's annoying when people believe racial constructivism (or "it's just skin colour/phenotype") but I don't know of any resources that only details the measurable differences in genetic distance and distinctiveness between ethnoracial groups without also conflating it with racial differences in traits e.g. IQ, height, disease proclivity etc.
Of course, these are related arguments and I believe race denialists axiomatically deny the former in order to cynically discredit the latter. Nonetheless, I think it would be useful to have a resource to show to intellectually curious people that proves genetic nature of race without addressing racial differences in traits that would scare them off
> And that is just the average! Half of the distribution would be expected to have an IQ lower than that.
Kareem Carr is a “statistician” that doesn’t know the distinction between mean and median. That alone should be enough to discount anything he has to say.
that being said, the difference between mean and median is more relevant where there are extreme outliers and especially if there is only one tail (wealth for example). Since IQ is usually a gaussian distribution the mean and median will usually be quite close to one another
It's not a good way of thinking about it. Africans do not have an impairment. Think of them as being more like children in their cognitive development, as an average. Children are not impaired, but they are not at the level of adults in most cases.
I would think that for populations with higher average IQs, an IQ of 70 would be associated with cognitive comorbidities (e.g. caused by brain damage or Downs syndrome).
Down syndrome is more like 50 IQ and comes with other deficiencies. Low IQ Africans are not like that. They are more like a group of people who develop their brain to age 12 compared to European standards (again, averages). 12 year olds are not retarded or deficient.
That was my point about "cognitive comorbidities." Sub Saharan African's * don't * have them, which is counter our normal experience for IQ's in that range.
In his review of the African IQ literature, Heiner Rindermann concluded that the mean IQ of Sub-Saharan Africa was somewhere between 68 and 78, adding that "given the quality of the data, it is not possible to come to a really precise result." His criticisms of that literature are worth quoting:
"The usual phrase ‘‘further research is needed’’ is very appropriate here: We need representative samples of the ages 10–70; samples representative of the full range of school education, including the share without or with only little education; the use of fluid (school-distant) and crystallized (school-near) cognitive ability tests; and up-to-date norms from Great Britain. Furthermore, as African samples have less cognitive task experience, the estimates could be increased by a short test training or a more general cognitive training."
I think you're missing the point when you write: "We don't disregard African data for any other variable just because it is of low quality." The problem here isn't simply the low quality of the data. If that were the case, there would just be more variability around a mean that is nonetheless more or less right. There is also the problem of low cognitive task experience.
In European and Asian cultures, you can easily spend a third of your life at school. So almost everyone is familiar with testing, and most people have learned what to do and what not to do on a test (like spending too much time on the hard questions). People are also familiar with the idea of answering questions in rapid-fire succession. That's less the case in Africa and elsewhere in the world. Even in traditional European cultures, that was less the case. It used to be considered rude to ask direct questions, especially in a rapid-fire manner. When I was doing fieldwork, I was warned against "pumping" older interviewees by asking one question after another.
I agree that there is global variation in mean cognitive ability, but I disagree with the sometimes naïve acceptance of IQ data from Africa and other places.
Reference
Rindermann, H. (2013). African cognitive ability: Research, results, divergences and recommendations. Personality and Individual Differences 55: 229-233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.06.022
No one said anything about naive acceptance. I am talking about mere acceptance of existing data, some of which are quite extensive. If you know how to gather more data in Africa, let me know.
In my opinion, African IQ scores are too problematic to be of any use. A better measure of cognitive ability is provided by polygenic scores for alleles associated with educational attainment (Edu PGS). Why is so little work being done in that area for Sub-Saharan Africa?
Again, I'm sympathetic to the idea that mean cognitive ability varies from one population to another (and not only among continental populations). I'm just not convinced by most of the African IQ data. I suspect the same is true for a lot of open-minded "fence sitters."
Why is that? There are lots of studies using many different kinds of tests. No particular rational reason to avoid the data. They are congruent with other developmental data from Africa. It is not rational to refuse to use the data.
Africans don't collect a lot of genomic datasets, obviously, so they are difficult to study using genetics.
I'm not "avoiding" the data. I'm trying to understand it.
I see two incongruences:
1. The mean IQ of African Americans is 85. If you adjust for European admixture, the mean IQ of their African ancestors should be about 80. That's at least 10 points above the figures being put forward here.
2. The Igbo perform at European levels of academic achievement. This is true both in Nigeria and in diaspora communities. Even if mean cognitive ability is lower for Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, there is clearly much variability among SSA populations.
Naturally, many years ago, Lynn advocated the model that the remaining 10 IQ gap is due to environmental factors. https://kirkegaard.substack.com/p/basics-on-hereditarian-thinking-about
No real data about Igbos in Nigeria as far as I know. If you know how to sample them for IQ test, pray tell.
Last paper can give a idea about Igbo IQ. Because Enugu is located in Igboland. Additionally highest IQ is from this paper. I guess this is not coincidence. This is compatible with Peter Frost's prior hypothesis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enugu
"The indigenous people of Enugu include Enugwu-Ngwo people who live on the aged Hill-Top plain towards the Milliken Hills on the west, with their farm lands sprawling all over the valley, the Ogui Nike who live in the areas surrounding Hotel Presidential, Obiagu, Ama-Igbo, Ihewuzi and Onu-Asata. Other groups include the Awkunanaw people, who live mainly in the Achara Layout and Uwani areas. Other Nike people live around the Abakpa, Iji-Nike, and Emene areas of the city.[82][83][84] Most of the non-indigenous people of Enugu are migrants from other parts of the Igbo cultural area. After the majority Igbo, the Yoruba people are another significant ethnic group found present in Enugu; other groups include the Hausa, Kanuri, Ijaw, and Fulani people"
* Iloh, Ubesie and Iloh (2017, Table 2) observed the influence of socio-demographic characteristics on SPM-test performance on a sample with a mean age of 10.00y from the city of Enugu. Males obtained a raw score of 31.80 and females of 33.70, averaged to
32.75, which is at the 28.52 GBR-P and equivalent to an uncor. IQ of 91.49, corrected by -6.09 for FE to85.40.
(lynn-becker 2019)
Stephen Molyneux did a podcast where he talked about James Flynn asking scientists to collaborate with him to collect good data on African IQ. Not a single scientist accepted. Nobody wants to be associated with such a study. Everybody will complain about the quality of the data from existing studies, but when asked to collect the data themselves, they're all too busy.
I can't find the source anymore but I think the Australian government forbids scientists (foreign and domestic) from collecting IQ data on their aboriginal population. Despite more than 100+ years of education and even forced adoptions of aboriginal babies into white families (the ultimate blank slate study), the aboriginals continue to do behave pretty much the same way that they did when Captain James Cook found them.
> So there are 8 different studies with sample sizes totaling about 10,000 people. […]The IQs from these studies ranged from 67 to 85. It's these studies:
An observation: Using SD(IQ) =15 and N=1250, for illustration, we get SE=0.42, which means these numbers are —Bayes forgive me— significantly different. They are contradictory, as they make conflicting predictions for the population. For example, using 67 as the mean, only 11.5% of the population are above 85, contradicting the prediction of 50% given by the 85 mean.
If physicists estimating the gravity of Z'ha'dum got different numbers (beyond the precision of their instruments), they would consider _all_ numbers invalid until they could explain the difference and determine which number (possibly a new number) makes accurate predictions for a ballistic trajectory in Z'ha'dum.
Just a thought on what measurement means. I have no cat in the fight that's the topic of the post.
I have a hard time squaring the low African IQ estimates with the US-African immigrant overperformance on scholastic measures compared to native African-Americans.
Do you think that 67 is really the *genotypic* average IQ of Nigeria?
No. https://kirkegaard.substack.com/p/basics-on-hereditarian-thinking-about
US African immigrants are very highly selected (legal immigrants to the US generally are, since the process is a bureaucratic maze + lots of competition from all over the world). For instance, 63% of first-generation Nigerian-Americans are college graduates, compared to only 7% of Nigerians, while half of adult Nigerians are illiterate.
I would guess the West African genotypic average (given First World levels of Flynn Effect) is around ~78, based on high-quality data from the US Virgin Islands (which are First World, full Flynn effect, etc) as well as African Americans (mean IQ ~85, with ~17% white admixture).
So what is the typical African nations’ IQ? We don’t know, too much noise in the “data” we are told. However, perhaps we have a better handle on Africans not native to Africa? For example, the USA. Blacks, who are descendant from African slaves brought over primarily from Africa’s West coast. I’ve heard many excuses for American Blacks low IQ score vis a vis other races native to the USA, but all of these have been shown lacking in merit.
Seems to me that the best measure we have is that the USA Black race is at an average IQ of 85–one SD below the mean IQ for the nation. Is this to be explained away as well with the African trope? My suspicion is that this mean score observation is probably a good guess for the very maximum average IQ of African (Subsaharan) nations. (Note I do not deny that there are probably sub populations within Africa that are quite high (relatively) wrt their IQ).
I believe it was Lynn that noted there were no functional nations with average IQ’s less than 90. Seems about right when observing African national dysfunction today. So are we arguing about minor differences here? A distinction without a difference?
what do you think are the Iq scores of countries like Morroco,India, Yemen, and Iraq I am curious
My take-away from this is that malnourishment seems to cause low IQs.
Thanks for this. Do know about a go-to rebuttal for race realism specifically? It's annoying when people believe racial constructivism (or "it's just skin colour/phenotype") but I don't know of any resources that only details the measurable differences in genetic distance and distinctiveness between ethnoracial groups without also conflating it with racial differences in traits e.g. IQ, height, disease proclivity etc.
Of course, these are related arguments and I believe race denialists axiomatically deny the former in order to cynically discredit the latter. Nonetheless, I think it would be useful to have a resource to show to intellectually curious people that proves genetic nature of race without addressing racial differences in traits that would scare them off
Thanks a lot, this is exactly the kind of resource that I'm looking for.
Second picture:
> And that is just the average! Half of the distribution would be expected to have an IQ lower than that.
Kareem Carr is a “statistician” that doesn’t know the distinction between mean and median. That alone should be enough to discount anything he has to say.
Great article in any case!
that being said, the difference between mean and median is more relevant where there are extreme outliers and especially if there is only one tail (wealth for example). Since IQ is usually a gaussian distribution the mean and median will usually be quite close to one another
It's not a good way of thinking about it. Africans do not have an impairment. Think of them as being more like children in their cognitive development, as an average. Children are not impaired, but they are not at the level of adults in most cases.
I would think that for populations with higher average IQs, an IQ of 70 would be associated with cognitive comorbidities (e.g. caused by brain damage or Downs syndrome).
Down syndrome is more like 50 IQ and comes with other deficiencies. Low IQ Africans are not like that. They are more like a group of people who develop their brain to age 12 compared to European standards (again, averages). 12 year olds are not retarded or deficient.
"...comes with other deficiencies."
That was my point about "cognitive comorbidities." Sub Saharan African's * don't * have them, which is counter our normal experience for IQ's in that range.