General Intelligence as a Domain-Specific Adaptation.

Abstract

General intelligence (g) poses a problem for evolutionary psychology's modular view of the human brain. The author advances a new evolutionary psychological theory of the evolution of general intelligence and argues that general intelligence evolved as a domain-specific adaptation for the originally limited sphere of evolutionary novelty in the ancestral environment. It has accidentally become universally important merely because we now live in an evolutionarily novel world. The available data seem to support the author's contention that intelligent people can solve problems better than less intelligent people only if the problems are evolutionarily novel, and they have no advantage in solving evolutionarily familiar problems. This perspective can also solve some empirical anomalies, such as the "central theoretical problem of human sociobiology" (D. R. Vining, 1986, p. 167) and the geographic distribution of general intelligence throughout the world.The g factor is actually a biologically based variable, which, like other biological functions in the human species, is necessarily a product of the evolutionary process. (Jensen, 1998, p. xii) I thank Garth J. O. Fletcher for disagreeing with me, thereby motivating me to write this article, and

A Life-History Model of Human Fitness Indicators

“…It would seem that in such an ecological context selection would be better served to create inflexible, instinctual mechanisms based on such predictability. Other theories of general intelligence tend to focus on novel adaptive problems as being the drive for its evolution (e.g., Kanazawa, 2003). If true, this might explain why there is no difference in the g-factor between high-and-low-K individuals, as novel encounters are likely to occur across ecological niches.…”

“…However, it is generally accepted among intelligence researchers that 'g' is not one specific trait, or module, that resides somewhere in the brain (see Kanazawa, 2003, for alternate viewpoint). Rather, it is a latent variable that is comprised of some ability that allows an organism to tap into, and integrate, various aspects of cognitive function (e.g.…”

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“…Similarly, the fact that there is a tendency in many cultures to reinforce authoritarian proscriptions by appeal to unseen watchers (ancestors, gods, or God) might be evidence for an evolved functional illusion that the self transcends time and place, but an equally sound argument can be made that a combination of a general capacity for off-line prediction and the ability to think abstractly about non-perceptual events and objects have been recruited by many successful cultures to enhance the adaptation of their members to life's vagaries. Although the relevant theory in this case is also speculative, Occam's razor favors an appeal to the evolutionarily adaptive advantages of these general-purpose cognitive endophenotypes (e.g., see Kanazawa 2004) over the appeal to a specific, error-based module for belief in souls. Belief in an afterlife is far from the only common feature of religious systems and one can't help worrying that religion modules will begin to proliferate uncontrollably.…”

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“…Further, if general intelligence evolved as a domain-specific adaptation for evolutionarily novel problems and it is not important for solving evolutionarily familiar problems, as Kanazawa (2004b) suggests, then it seems unlikely that more intelli-gent individuals necessarily possessed more resources in the ancestral environment.…”