Survey of Expert Opinion on Intelligence: Causes of International Differences in Cognitive Ability Tests

Abstract

Following Snyderman and Rothman (1987, 1988), we surveyed expert opinions on the current state of intelligence research. This report examines expert opinions on causes of international differences in student assessment and psychometric IQ test results. Experts were surveyed about the importance of culture, genes, education (quantity and quality), wealth, health, geography, climate, politics, modernization, sampling error, test knowledge, discrimination, test bias, and migration. The importance of these factors was evaluated for diverse countries, regions, and groups including Finland, East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Europe, the Arabian-Muslim world, Latin America, Israel, Jews in the West, Roma (gypsies), and Muslim immigrants. Education was rated by N = 71 experts as the most important cause of international ability differences. Genes were rated as the second most relevant factor but also had the highest variability in ratings. Culture, health, wealth, modernization, and politics were the next most important factors, whereas other factors such as geography, climate, test bias, and sampling error were less important. The paper concludes with a discussion of limitations of the survey (e.g., response rates and validity of expert opinions).

Research on group differences in intelligence: A defense of free inquiry

“…Mainstream media coverage of the race-and-IQ controversy almost always falsely claims that there is a consensus among the relevant experts that hereditarianism has been refuted. In fact, anonymous surveys reveal that a substantial proportion of experts on intelligence believe that there is a genetic component to race differences (Rindermann, Becker, & Coyle, 2016, 2020Snyderman & Rothman, 1987, 1988. Research supporting both hereditarian and environmentalist explanations of race differences is routinely published in major psychology journals, particularly in psychometrics journals like Intelligence and Personality and Individual Differences.…”

Beliefs about Human Intelligence in a Sample of Teachers and Non-Teachers

“…Because of the importance of intelligence in gifted education-and educational outcomes in general-we chose to conduct a survey of teachers' beliefs and understandings of intelligence. While surveys of experts on intelligence theory are available (Snyderman & Rothman, 1987, 1988Rindermann, Becker, & Coyle, 2016, 2020, there are no detailed surveys of opinions and knowledge about intelligence from teachers or the general public. We believe that gathering information about the beliefs about intelligence from these two populations has important implications for gifted education for two reasons.…”

The Intelligence of Biracial Children of U.S. Servicemen in Northeast Asia: Results from Japan

“…Persistent racial/ethnic gaps in intelligence/cognitive ability have been documented for decades almost everywhere in the world (see [1] for a global review). However, at present there is little agreement on the causes of these gaps [2][3][4]. Surveys show that with regards to the Black-White gap in the United States, experts believe it is roughly equally caused by genetic and environmental factors [4,5].…”