Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain,
Speaker 1: behavior and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest
Speaker 1: who will stimulate your mind and give you a greater
Speaker 1: understanding of yourself, others, and the world we live in.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today we have doctor
Speaker 1: Stuart Ritchie on the show. Stuart is a post doctoral
Speaker 1: research fellow at the Center for Cognitive Aging and Cognitive
Speaker 1: Epidomology in the University of Edinburgh's Department of Psychology. I'm
Speaker 1: sure he'll tell me I mispronounced that word. His research
Speaker 1: focuses on how intelligence develops and changes across the lifespan,
Speaker 1: what might influence it in childhood, and how we might
Speaker 1: prevent it from declining in later life. His studies of
Speaker 1: intelligence have been published in journals such as Psychological Science,
Speaker 1: Current Biology, Child Development, and Intelligence. Thanks you being on
Speaker 1: the show, Stuart, my pleasure. Hi is it Edinburgh? Did
Speaker 1: I toy? Miss? We would say Edinburgh, which I realize
Speaker 1: Americans have real difficulty with. But Edinburgh Edinburgh, Okay? That's
Speaker 1: very good. Yeah, I've tried to like mix it with
Speaker 1: the accent a little bit. Okay. I love I love
Speaker 1: getting my American friends to do at Scottish accents because
Speaker 1: very very they sometimes go English, they sometimes go Irish.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult for them to get a Scotch accent, right,
Speaker 1: they could go many directions. So you're Scottish by background. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm just from near Edinburgh. I'm one of these really
Speaker 1: boring people that goes to the university near where he's from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it happens to be a world class university. It
Speaker 1: says not just you're being very modest there. It's a
Speaker 1: good place and it's a good psychology department. We've got
Speaker 1: some great people including I mean, I imagine we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss this, but we've got people like Ian Deary
Speaker 1: in our department, who's a big researcher in the world
Speaker 1: of intelligence. I guess we'll talk about our Loath and
Speaker 1: birth cohort studies at some point. Oh, yeah, which is
Speaker 1: what I'm working on at the moment. Great. So, how
Speaker 1: did the scottishill ads such as yourself get interested in
Speaker 1: intelligence research? Well, I think being in the presence of
Speaker 1: people like Ian Deary actually is very influentious. So we
Speaker 1: had the end when I did my undergrad degree, we
Speaker 1: had Ian Deary give us his lectures and he's a
Speaker 1: fantastic lecturer, fantastic speaker. I don't know if you've seen
Speaker 1: him talk. There's plenty of videos online if anyone wants
Speaker 1: to go and look those up. But he's extremely inspiring.
Speaker 1: And so I did my PhD at Edinburgh as well,
Speaker 1: not with thean, but as I was doing my PhD,
Speaker 1: I kind of gravitated towards intelligence research because we started
Speaker 1: doing some individual differences stuff and then we got chatting
Speaker 1: and we talked about this data that he had available,
Speaker 1: and so it's one of the it's one of the
Speaker 1: most interesting studies around. And so that's kind of where
Speaker 1: I ended up. So you didn't enter you did your
Speaker 1: undergrad there as well, right, I did again, super boring grads,
Speaker 1: PhD and post dog on the same right, the whole shebang.
Speaker 1: So you didn't enter as a fresh faced freshman like
Speaker 1: saying I need to study the determinants of IQ. That's
Speaker 1: all not at all, I know. I was interested in
Speaker 1: psychology more generally, and in fact I did my undergraduate
Speaker 1: dissertation on psychopaths, psychopathy and predicting like people's It was
Speaker 1: a kind of it was a kind of cognitive psychology
Speaker 1: type experiment where we're sort of predicting people's reactions to
Speaker 1: fear stimuli and things like that. So it wasn't even
Speaker 1: IQ wasn't even a big part of that. And it's,
Speaker 1: as I say, I slowly sort of shifted towards doing
Speaker 1: intelligence research from there. Sure, so your book is very enjoyed.
Speaker 1: It It's an easy read. I highly recommend it for
Speaker 1: people who want a sensible introduction to the topic. You
Speaker 1: kind of ended the book on the question why is
Speaker 1: intelligence research so controversial? But I'd like to start this
Speaker 1: interview with that question because I think it kind of
Speaker 1: paves the way for a lot of our discussions today
Speaker 1: why this is certainly the case in the United States
Speaker 1: of America and is it still I didn't find it
Speaker 1: as controversial when I so, as you know, I did
Speaker 1: my master's thesis with Nick Macintosh and go into capers.
Speaker 1: I didn't find that research as controversial over there. In fact,
Speaker 1: I found the media was the media was fascinated with
Speaker 1: the research, but I didn't find like they actually treated
Speaker 1: as those controversial or racists or sexist. So do you
Speaker 1: do see that in your own country it's coin Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: you do see it a little bit. And especially when
Speaker 1: you bring any kind of biological aspect, whether it's brain
Speaker 1: related or genetics related. Whenever you bring any of that
Speaker 1: stuff in, people get this kind of this kind of
Speaker 1: specter of determinism starts to appear and people really start
Speaker 1: to freak out. Well, let's unpack that. Let's unpack that,
Speaker 1: because I'm not convinced that I think there's and I
Speaker 1: really want us to get at the root of this,
Speaker 1: because I saw a study, you know, studies that they're
Speaker 1: on the biology of compassion. No, it's not controversial. People
Speaker 1: people are like, you love that research. See I told
Speaker 1: you that kindness is in neat, right, and people like that.
Speaker 1: So there's something specific about the biology of intelligence I
Speaker 1: think is uniquely different. So I think there's a I
Speaker 1: mentioned this in the book a little bit. I think
Speaker 1: there's a kind of historical problem with intelligence research or
Speaker 1: intelligence testing in the UK because of the way that
Speaker 1: the education system used to be here. We had the
Speaker 1: eleven plus test up until the nineties, I think, and
Speaker 1: it was an IQ test which you had to do
Speaker 1: when you were eleven, which determined whether you would get
Speaker 1: into a grammar school, which is the school for you know,
Speaker 1: people who are going to go on and study more
Speaker 1: difficult subjects, no pressure classic exactly, or you would go
Speaker 1: to a secondary modern and that was the other kind
Speaker 1: of school. And so the weird thing about that is that, well,
Speaker 1: perhaps not the weird thing. The bad thing about that
Speaker 1: was that the secondary moderns were really really badly resourced.
Speaker 1: They were kind of notoriously bad, falling apart. Teachers were
Speaker 1: not so good, you know, didn't have any resources for
Speaker 1: the kids. They were supposed to prepare people for more
Speaker 1: vocational career paths, and they didn't do that at all.
Speaker 1: And grammar schools got all the focus, all the attention,
Speaker 1: all the resources. And so I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people who saw that system and felt that pressure and
Speaker 1: in some cases failed the eleven plus themselves and ended
Speaker 1: up in a really bad school come to view IQ
Speaker 1: tests as a kind of a tool for dividing people
Speaker 1: and separating people. And so we don't have that education
Speaker 1: system anymore in the UK. That's we have comprehensive schools
Speaker 1: now where everyone goes to the same school. There are
Speaker 1: a few grammar schools that are still selective, mainly in England.
Speaker 1: There are a few grammar schools where you know you
Speaker 1: have to do the IQ test to go in. And
Speaker 1: there obviously are private private schools that you can send
Speaker 1: your kids to you if you pay, but normally people
Speaker 1: go to a comprehensive school where people of all abilities
Speaker 1: are all together. And so yeah, I think there's a
Speaker 1: generation where the eleven plus and generally IQ testing represents
Speaker 1: a way to split people up and divide them, and
Speaker 1: I think that's where a lot of the reaction comes in.
Speaker 1: And then when you add biology on top of that,
Speaker 1: you're saying, well, okay, I'm determined to fail my eleving plus,
Speaker 1: I'm determined not to get into school. And of course
Speaker 1: that's not what it means, but I think that's how
Speaker 1: it's understood by a lot of people. Good good that,
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that you said that. So it's good to,
Speaker 1: I think, separate all these different threads of research and
Speaker 1: application on intelligence research. So, for instance, you know, I've
Speaker 1: tried to wear multiple hats and try to tell people
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily contradictory from each other. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can be in mentally interest in understanding the science of
Speaker 1: intelligence and do very good research on that, and then
Speaker 1: you can also be very interested in the best mechanisms
Speaker 1: for selection for various programs and things. And they're separate issues.
Speaker 1: One if you do one doesn't mean that you're not
Speaker 1: allowed to do the other or absolutely absolutely, And I
Speaker 1: know that we know that things can have you know
Speaker 1: that effects in the scientific listaure that are really well replicated.
Speaker 1: When you try and roll them out practically, they can
Speaker 1: have terrible consequences. So I was thinking about this the
Speaker 1: other day and when I read some stuff on breast
Speaker 1: cancer screening. So there's a lot of controversy about whether
Speaker 1: breast cancer screening, which we know that we can to
Speaker 1: some degree, you know, screen for breast cancer. And there
Speaker 1: are those vans that turn up in you know, supermarket
Speaker 1: parking lots and you'll scan people and so on. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you have that in the UK. In
Speaker 1: the US, it happens here that can create so many
Speaker 1: false positives that actually it can be a dangerous thing
Speaker 1: to people go in and have surgery when they don't
Speaker 1: need it, and so on. So the practical rule out
Speaker 1: of that scanning and that sort of selection process was
Speaker 1: actually really quite at least it arguably very very negative.
Speaker 1: So just because we know something in the scientific literature
Speaker 1: is predictive to some extent, it doesn't mean that we
Speaker 1: should automatically roll it out and start using it to
Speaker 1: select people and so on. So you know, there isn't
Speaker 1: a logical necessity from theory to practice. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think that we've had some seminal figures throughout the history
Speaker 1: of education in our country, in my country, I should
Speaker 1: see our country in my country where the two did
Speaker 1: become synonymous. And so yeah, the history is intertwined with
Speaker 1: all of this. So I'm really glad we're discussing. You know,
Speaker 1: what was Terman for instance, I mean, his own theory
Speaker 1: was that if you're going to select for genius, you're
Speaker 1: going to select for giftedness, you know, take his tests
Speaker 1: and take the stand for benet and that's what he
Speaker 1: focused on. That's this one person making this decision. His
Speaker 1: test did happen to be reliable and valid, and it's
Speaker 1: still isable or valid. But you could have equally have
Speaker 1: seen someone else, you know, who came up with a
Speaker 1: test of character in some way and a test of
Speaker 1: you know, just a conscientiousness personality test and showed correlations
Speaker 1: between that in academic achievement and said that's what we
Speaker 1: need to do to do single selection. So I think
Speaker 1: the ultimate, you know, and the best approach is to
Speaker 1: look at multiple perspectives. But yeah, it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: if you study the science of intelligence you're evil. Doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you're that you even have an opinion about how
Speaker 1: it should be applied whatsoever. Most intelligence researchers I've met,
Speaker 1: by the way, don't have an opinion. Yeah. Absolutely, they're
Speaker 1: interested in understanding because intelligence is a kind of not
Speaker 1: uniquely but very human capacity that we're all interested in
Speaker 1: understanding how it's insentiated in the brain, and how it
Speaker 1: works biologically, and how even the structure of it looks
Speaker 1: in a in a coulrestive psychological sense. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: you can be totally interested in that without having any practical,
Speaker 1: you know, aspirations to your research. Part of it is
Speaker 1: and you do such a good job cutting this down
Speaker 1: on Twitter is like media sensationalistic media headlines, Right, You're
Speaker 1: very good at calling people out on that, And I
Speaker 1: think it's important. I think there's a role for for
Speaker 1: you a big role because you know, I see pressure myself,
Speaker 1: like when you know, whenever I want to write something,
Speaker 1: a book or something, and I'm just just say, I
Speaker 1: just want to talk about how interesting the research is.
Speaker 1: Is no, no, tell us what are the five practical takeaways?
Speaker 1: And it's like do I have to exactly exactly? So
Speaker 1: I felt some pressure and putting, you know, putting this
Speaker 1: into the end of the book is you know, why
Speaker 1: should we study this stuff? And you know, one of
Speaker 1: the main ones I had there was because it's interesting,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the that's one of the main reasons.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't seem to be a reason that the
Speaker 1: media and the publishers find an interesting reason in itself.
Speaker 1: Not just media and publishers, but grant funders too, write
Speaker 1: people who know, when you write a grant to apply to,
Speaker 1: you know, in the in the US and the Institute
Speaker 1: of Health in the UK, the research councils, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got to have something in there about how to
Speaker 1: how your research is going to be practically applied and
Speaker 1: how it's going to be super important for medical research
Speaker 1: or whatever it has to be. And and so that's
Speaker 1: easier in some in some aspects of selling research than others. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, if you do cognitive aging stuff like I've
Speaker 1: been doing, there's there's there's a clear practical consequence to
Speaker 1: the research there, which we can discuss later if you want.
Speaker 1: But when you're just wanting to understand for the sake
Speaker 1: of understanding, it's much more difficult. You do feel that
Speaker 1: pressure to kind of say, well, I guess in some
Speaker 1: way it's going to be helpful for understanding selection, and
Speaker 1: then you get into selection immediately and it's really tough. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's a big pressure in the media and
Speaker 1: from funders, and you know, you see this when scientists
Speaker 1: write pressure releases about their work. You see people saying, oh,
Speaker 1: this new genetic variant that we've found is going to
Speaker 1: lead to massive breakthroughs in medical research to help people
Speaker 1: with dementia, and you know, really, is it or is
Speaker 1: it just one small step on the way to to
Speaker 1: to doing that? And so it's a big pressure and
Speaker 1: it's one of the major problems in you know, in
Speaker 1: science and scientific publishing at the moment, is this pressure
Speaker 1: to big up your findings and make them seem way
Speaker 1: more important than they actually are. Yeah, I'm really glad
Speaker 1: you said that. And you know, these genetic findings we're
Speaker 1: talking correlations or effect sizes that are like so minuscule
Speaker 1: that in terms of like if you're going to sensationalize it, geez, Like,
Speaker 1: that's the least finding you should sensationalize, because I mean,
Speaker 1: if you like, just think about the statistically, like if
Speaker 1: you put a confidnsiderable around some of those single gene
Speaker 1: correlations with a trait, I mean we're saying, like you've
Speaker 1: a better chance of developing a disorder with that gene
Speaker 1: if you like, I'm sure we can come up with
Speaker 1: something funny, you know. So, Yeah, I mean we're starting
Speaker 1: to make much more progress with the genetics stuff, and
Speaker 1: now you can you can kind of gloam together all
Speaker 1: these genetics findings that we've had into a pologenetic risk scores,
Speaker 1: and there's lousical stuff on that, which again we can
Speaker 1: discuss if you want. We've got some calls stuff we
Speaker 1: could talk for five days. Absolutely, But yeah, often some
Speaker 1: some humility I think is required in a lot of
Speaker 1: these a lot of these studies, but the structure of
Speaker 1: the scientific system, unfortunately is not really set up like
Speaker 1: that because we're always trying to get papers in high
Speaker 1: impact journals, We're always trying to get new grants and
Speaker 1: so on, and so you know, bigging up your finding
Speaker 1: is a kind of pervasive problem. And you know that's
Speaker 1: why when we see these headlines and when we see
Speaker 1: news stories that scientists are quoted in and so on,
Speaker 1: we do have to have some degree of skepticism about
Speaker 1: these findings. Absolutely. So, now that we got that out
Speaker 1: of the way, maybe we should say, what is intelligence?
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm talking about that. What parameters or boundary conditions
Speaker 1: do you put around this seemingly nebulous concept, do you know?
Speaker 1: I mean I opened the book with this kind of
Speaker 1: consensus definition of intelligence from the yeah, the Govers paper,
Speaker 1: which I think is a nice definition, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's if you've got there yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: ability to catch on stuff. But maybe I should read
Speaker 1: it because they don't have a perfectly memorized yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Just I've got the PDF of my book here and
Speaker 1: can go through. I gave way all my copies of
Speaker 1: the book. I don't actually have any companies. Yeah cool,
Speaker 1: so yeah, here it is. Yeah, I didn't have any
Speaker 1: more copies of my book Wired at Create, and I
Speaker 1: had and I wanted to buy a present for someone.
Speaker 1: I went to the bookshere. I was like, bloody hell,
Speaker 1: this costs two may five dollars to buy my book.
Speaker 1: I bought five copies and I ended up paying one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty dollars. And I was and I haven't
Speaker 1: done any royalty statements yet at all, because I haven't
Speaker 1: paid back the advance and I probably won't for a while.
Speaker 1: So I literally paid one hundred and thirty dollars for
Speaker 1: writing the book. Yeah, yeah, I feel Yeah, here we go.
Speaker 1: The definition intelligence is a very general mental capability that,
Speaker 1: among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems,
Speaker 1: think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.
Speaker 1: Is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or
Speaker 1: test taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper
Speaker 1: capability for comprehending our surroundings, catching on, making sense of things,
Speaker 1: are figuring out what to do now. I present that
Speaker 1: definition in on Gifted, and I say, it's one thing,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a reasonable definition of intelligence. By
Speaker 1: the way, it's one thing to say that's a reasonable
Speaker 1: definitely telligs. And then it's also another thing to accurately
Speaker 1: measure it or to really yeah, and you know these
Speaker 1: are things obvious to you, but you know maybe are listeners.
Speaker 1: It's use it's useful to distinguish that, you know, I
Speaker 1: think what that definition is nice. It captures our intuitive
Speaker 1: theories when we say someone's smart or someone's not smart.
Speaker 1: But then it gets trickier when you start, you know,
Speaker 1: going to the nittgree of each one of those components
Speaker 1: and be like, what's the best way of measuring that? Yeah? Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And you know some testers are better and some testers
Speaker 1: are better at doing that. And I know you discussed
Speaker 1: in the book and the idea of intelligent testing that
Speaker 1: is not just intelligence testing, but intelligent testings, right, And
Speaker 1: you know, I think anyone who just has tested some
Speaker 1: kids or whatever on these kind of tests will will
Speaker 1: know that the situation that they're in can often change
Speaker 1: the IQ by quite some substantial margin. Right, there's going
Speaker 1: to be a true IQ that that person has. And
Speaker 1: I'm doing finger quotes and people won't be able to
Speaker 1: see it. I'm doing finger quotes that have actually one
Speaker 1: never knows what true yeah, because of error. But there's
Speaker 1: always going to be error, and there's always going to
Speaker 1: be error, and a lot of that error is to
Speaker 1: do with the kid's motivation, whether they're looking out the
Speaker 1: window at the time of doing the test or concentrating
Speaker 1: on it, the attitude and the capability of the tester
Speaker 1: to get them to concentrate and put them in the
Speaker 1: right their bedside manner. In many ways, you would say
Speaker 1: if you were talking about a medical situation. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm totally with you that measurement can have a serious
Speaker 1: effect on this, and not even just that kind of measurement,
Speaker 1: but the actual physical aspects of the tests. So the
Speaker 1: psychometrics of the test. We've got this big sample now
Speaker 1: in the UK UK Biobank it's called which is going
Speaker 1: to be five hundred thousand people, all tested using conc
Speaker 1: of tests, the test themselves and a bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 1: By the way, I mean, it's a huge study with
Speaker 1: all sorts of measures. The congctive part is just one
Speaker 1: part of it. But the tests themselves are very very brief,
Speaker 1: they're very very easy. They go by in the blink
Speaker 1: of an eye, and so they don't really have very good,
Speaker 1: as we would say, psychometric property. They don't really get
Speaker 1: to measuring all that stuff you just said about catching on,
Speaker 1: thinking of new you know, reasoning through problems and so on.
Speaker 1: And so we're actually now actively putting some new tests
Speaker 1: into that sample, and we're going to retest some of
Speaker 1: the people with some better tests. So there's all these
Speaker 1: problems that I think a lot of people don't don't realize.
Speaker 1: They think that an IQ test is an IQ test,
Speaker 1: and that's you know, it's whatever they've had experience with.
Speaker 1: But in psychology, a lot of the trouble when you're
Speaker 1: reviewing papers, when you're reading papers in the in the
Speaker 1: psychology literature is saying, well, how have you measured IQ?
Speaker 1: And is the test you're using adequate? And was it
Speaker 1: tested in a decent way? Was it tested in a
Speaker 1: way that the people are going to be motivated to
Speaker 1: succeed and paying attention and so on? So yeah, I
Speaker 1: absolutely agree. Cool, And I thought of a question I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you tell me if this question even
Speaker 1: makes sense to you, can ones intelligence succeed their true
Speaker 1: IQ score? It's partly phiosophical, it's something that we could
Speaker 1: never answer scientifically, but I want to know, you know,
Speaker 1: what if in terms of because, for instance, I don't
Speaker 1: equate IQ with the idea with the construct of intelligence.
Speaker 1: I do say IQ is something and it's something important,
Speaker 1: and it's reliable and valid. These tests are reliable, valid,
Speaker 1: and it measures a significant slice of cognitoobility. But I
Speaker 1: wouldn't actually from a conceptual point of view, I would
Speaker 1: put in things like intellectual engagement like I talk about
Speaker 1: in the book, or like a drive for curiosity in
Speaker 1: touch of curiosity and stuff. So I do wonder, can
Speaker 1: someone's let's say your true let's say we measure you perfectly,
Speaker 1: reliably and valid. I know it's impossible. Let's say theoretically,
Speaker 1: let's do a thought experiment. Let's say your IQ is
Speaker 1: your true IQ is one ten. Let's just throw that
Speaker 1: out there. And in the real world, let's say you
Speaker 1: become a Nobel Prize wing physicist. Let's do it. Let's
Speaker 1: do a thought experiment. Now, would someone say, Wow, you've
Speaker 1: really cheated. That person's really cheated cheated the laws of nature? No,
Speaker 1: I mean do you know what I mean? Do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Yeah, I think there's probably some
Speaker 1: boundary where there won't be very many Nobel Prize winners
Speaker 1: with IQ's as low as that. So there's probably some
Speaker 1: boundary where you can't get a Nobel Prize or be
Speaker 1: Mozart or Beethoven or or or Brands or malor if
Speaker 1: you're below a certain level. I those thresholds might differ
Speaker 1: by the main for instance, quite quite absolutely. But I
Speaker 1: think definitely if you take into account all the other
Speaker 1: psychological aspects that are important, as you said, academy engagement,
Speaker 1: various aspects of personality, conscientiousness or grit as I see
Speaker 1: it's being called these days. And I know there's some
Speaker 1: disagreement over whether grit is just contrasentiousness, conscientious what's something
Speaker 1: else or right, there's there's contradictory it's probably just a
Speaker 1: facet of conscientiousness. Yeah, I think. I mean, there's some
Speaker 1: there's some evidence that would say it's something it's something
Speaker 1: separate in some evens that would say it's the same.
Speaker 1: I mean, I haven't made my mind up but that
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think it's enough enough research that.
Speaker 1: But anyway, if you take into all these things, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think someone's achievements in the real world can go
Speaker 1: beyond what we would predict from their I level. Absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: given a constellation of other psychological aspects. So I think
Speaker 1: maybe the crux of the issue though, is how do
Speaker 1: you conceptualize that situation? So do you conceptualize it? It
Speaker 1: sounds like you could satialize the situation as well that
Speaker 1: person has brought in other characteristics to achieve what they did,
Speaker 1: whereas I'm throwing out the idea that maybe it's they've
Speaker 1: brought in other aspects of their actual intelligence that wasn't
Speaker 1: captured well by that test. Yeah, I think that's, uh,
Speaker 1: just get semantic at the end of the day. Is
Speaker 1: that I think it might and I think it might
Speaker 1: get to the point where it's more useful to kind
Speaker 1: of differentiate split things up, yeah, can reduce things a
Speaker 1: little bit. So I always imagine these things as a
Speaker 1: kind of a little diagram with boxes and lines, where
Speaker 1: there's the really the you know, the cognitive aspects, and
Speaker 1: even within the cong of aspects, you're going to have
Speaker 1: spatial ability that's been shown to be really important for
Speaker 1: some creative perfect right sure, And you're going to have
Speaker 1: you know, veriable ability, and you're going to have mathematical ability,
Speaker 1: and all these different abilities that are all correlated together
Speaker 1: because they're part of the general factor of intelligence. I
Speaker 1: see those as having lines that that, you know, arrows
Speaker 1: that point into whatever you want to call it, accomplishment
Speaker 1: in your life. But I also see arrows for conscientiousness
Speaker 1: coming in there, which is a you know, a non
Speaker 1: cognitive or the word I like to use is conative.
Speaker 1: I doan you've seen that. Richard Snow used that term, right, right, don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think it gets used enough. It's great word.
Speaker 1: And you know, other arrows for other parts of people's
Speaker 1: you know, backgrounds, so things like their social up there,
Speaker 1: they're you know, the social class of their parents and
Speaker 1: so on. Then some of that can be traced back
Speaker 1: to genetics, and some of that's going to be traced
Speaker 1: back to different environments and so on, and eventually you're
Speaker 1: going to I kind of view the sciences building up
Speaker 1: to eventually understanding both the biological and environmental aspects of
Speaker 1: how people accomplish things in real life. And we're only
Speaker 1: at the very start of understanding that now, especially if
Speaker 1: you want to know, you know, specifically, what the biological
Speaker 1: pathways are they're involved. We're just making tiny steps into
Speaker 1: understanding that. But yeah, I kind of you think, I
Speaker 1: kind of want to reduce things to the lowest level
Speaker 1: and build this big complex diagram of what makes someone
Speaker 1: achieve well in their life. Yeah, no, that's that's totally fair.
Speaker 1: And I knew this interview would go better if we
Speaker 1: just did it like this, like organically, as opposed to
Speaker 1: I mean, I have this whole page of questions, but
Speaker 1: I knew it would go better if we if we
Speaker 1: did it if we did it like this. So I
Speaker 1: want to talk through some myths in this book that
Speaker 1: you debunk. And these myths, what they are is they're
Speaker 1: just extreme statements, right, I mean, that's what they are.
Speaker 1: And I find a lot of scientists really just are
Speaker 1: looking for the kind of the most the most reasonable statement,
Speaker 1: you know, but that's not the statement that ever gets publicity. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, Dean Simonton did this study where you found
Speaker 1: that the only ideas that ever made it through the
Speaker 1: next generation about the nature nurture to be where those
Speaker 1: came from people who either said it's all nature or
Speaker 1: it's all nurture. Everyone else. Everyone else just gets forgotten
Speaker 1: and ignored. Yeah, and I say something so much that
Speaker 1: the book that there's all these people, you know, screaming
Speaker 1: each other on the really hard environmental line and the
Speaker 1: really hard biological line, and the people who are just
Speaker 1: doing the day to day work and you know, publishing
Speaker 1: you know, important studies and so on, but that aren't
Speaker 1: making extreme statements, are kind of standing on the sidelines,
Speaker 1: kind of wondering what's going on. They're not the people
Speaker 1: usually that want to, you know, jump into a big
Speaker 1: political argument about this stuff, you know, between right wing
Speaker 1: and left wing people who are arguing over this stuff,
Speaker 1: because unfortunately, that's one of the problems is it gets
Speaker 1: correlated with you know, political beliefs and so that, and
Speaker 1: it becomes even more explosive because of that. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the extreme statement are often so for instance,
Speaker 1: I wur a review of a book that came out
Speaker 1: in the UK, and I don't know how Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: very aware of that review. A lot of people are
Speaker 1: sharing on Facebook. You're kind of here to be said. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is a book by Oliver James, who's a
Speaker 1: clinical psychologist in the UK, who I think is is
Speaker 1: just completely wrong on genetics. He makes very extreme statements
Speaker 1: where he says things like the new biological studies of
Speaker 1: intelligence or psychological traits have shown that there is no
Speaker 1: genetic effect on any psychological trait. And it's just like,
Speaker 1: you know, comically extreme statements like that that just cannot
Speaker 1: possibly be right given all the research that there is
Speaker 1: that are thrown out there. And yet he appeared on
Speaker 1: the media a lot in the UK. He was on
Speaker 1: the BBC, sometimes with someone there to argue with him,
Speaker 1: but sometimes completely unchallenged to spread this stuff. I kind
Speaker 1: of despair when I see this stuff, because there's a
Speaker 1: reasonable position that takes into account the evidence that says, look,
Speaker 1: there are genetic effects on psychological behaviors. It's one of
Speaker 1: the most important things that we know about behavior genetics.
Speaker 1: It's been called a law of behavior genetics that all
Speaker 1: psychological traits have some genetic influence. How we interpret that, though,
Speaker 1: is extremely important, and how we understand how these genetic
Speaker 1: effects are manifested in different environments and how the environments
Speaker 1: have effects on behavior, you know, is all part of
Speaker 1: the science of this, and so making a statement like
Speaker 1: there are you know, these things are one hundred percent
Speaker 1: in environmentally determined is just silly. Likewise, saying that there
Speaker 1: are one hundred percent genetically determined is silly too, Although
Speaker 1: there are far fewer people that say that. I just
Speaker 1: think that a lot of people think that people are
Speaker 1: saying that when they talk about genetics, they think whenever
Speaker 1: you mentioned genetics that what you mean is, oh, well
Speaker 1: that's one hundred percent determined, that's that's exactly right. And
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to think this through. I wonder like
Speaker 1: if we did like some sort of study, like could
Speaker 1: we find that it'd be inevitable that the most reasonable
Speaker 1: position is always going to be the most ignored position.
Speaker 1: Can we logically think this through because it's the average
Speaker 1: position and in order to stand you need to be unique,
Speaker 1: or you need to say something to stand out in
Speaker 1: order to get the attention of the media. You know,
Speaker 1: you could see like need experimental studies where we actually
Speaker 1: try to test to that hypoposis, you know. Or I
Speaker 1: bet some political you know, scientists could look at how,
Speaker 1: you know, politicians who make although I think there's some
Speaker 1: argument in politics where you know that the people in
Speaker 1: the center are certainly for a time in America. Are
Speaker 1: we talking about America for a second, I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: the UK. You know, someone who's very successful, like Tony
Speaker 1: who won three elections, pitched to this to the center,
Speaker 1: and you know, didn't go the extreme right or the
Speaker 1: extreme left pitch in the center. Nowadays though, you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of politicians that are getting influenced
Speaker 1: who are very very left wing, like Jeremy Corbyn in
Speaker 1: the in the UK, or very very right wing like
Speaker 1: the from Nationale in France, and we could discuss Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: I guess. I mean that's the obvious, so that's probably
Speaker 1: the center. It's not always that's true. Yeah, I put
Speaker 1: that out there cheekly because I just wonder if that's
Speaker 1: a hypothesis. But I but that's the same question. But
Speaker 1: then I and you said, that's a question, fair question.
Speaker 1: It's a fascinating, quascinating question. Think about how you know,
Speaker 1: how ideas that are extreme or moderate get kind of
Speaker 1: fed into the kind of stream of societal discussion. So fascinating.
Speaker 1: But it no more I think about it. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1: It's not going to explain like one hundred percent of
Speaker 1: the variants, and in this particular instance, because there is
Speaker 1: something unique about the saying something people want to hear
Speaker 1: as well, So there's that element too. And like you said,
Speaker 1: the person who like is unique. Like if my hypothesis
Speaker 1: was like you could also predict that the person who
Speaker 1: uniquely says that's one hundred percent genes would be popular too,
Speaker 1: But that person's usually crucified and not really popular at all.
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm just trying to do the counter
Speaker 1: argument to what I said. And so there is something
Speaker 1: about that, right about saying that, you know, the new
Speaker 1: science says, So people convert that in their head to think, oh,
Speaker 1: that means there's hope for all of us. Is that
Speaker 1: is that what it is? They say? I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's absolutely what it is you until you step back
Speaker 1: and really think about it. So, you know, this Oliver
Speaker 1: James book about it was mainly about parenting, so he
Speaker 1: actually phrased it in the terms that you said, there
Speaker 1: is hope because parents can completely determine the psychological traits
Speaker 1: and mental health of their children. Now to him that
Speaker 1: might sound hopeful, but to me that sounds quite possibly
Speaker 1: offensive to parents who have you know, who have children
Speaker 1: with autism and so on, who for many many years
Speaker 1: were blamed for you know, being refrigerator mothers and so on,
Speaker 1: were blamed for their children's you know, and autistic traits.
Speaker 1: And we now know that a lot of that is
Speaker 1: substantially under genetic control, and so the kind of the
Speaker 1: blame is lifted off the of the parents because it
Speaker 1: never should have been on there. And so what all
Speaker 1: over James and people like him who don't want there
Speaker 1: to be a genetic effect on these traits, what he
Speaker 1: is doing is is kind of adding this this blame back,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't ever ever, you know, come out outright
Speaker 1: and say you are this means that autism is caused
Speaker 1: by parenting. But the implication is there, and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a kind of an ugly thing to think about.
Speaker 1: I think. No people have these intuitive things that and
Speaker 1: they just immediately like captures their emotions, so they're not
Speaker 1: thinking through the implications. I mean stam Picker obviously and
Speaker 1: blank Slate talks about this a great length, but that
Speaker 1: have you all thought about what it would mean if
Speaker 1: we actually live in society where genes didn't determine, eric
Speaker 1: influence anything exactly. That would be a horrible world. Governments
Speaker 1: could completely control their citizens, you know, outcomes by using
Speaker 1: propaganda and so on. I mean, it's what it's what
Speaker 1: the ussre and so on so to do to fully
Speaker 1: control as people. So where are we at right now?
Speaker 1: You're on the cutting edge of this with the nature
Speaker 1: nurture and development of intellectual capabilities. Where are we right
Speaker 1: now in that Well, there's some big papers that have
Speaker 1: come out recently that are now starting to find the
Speaker 1: start of the genetic basis for differences in people's cognitive abilities.
Speaker 1: So we know, I guess we should say just in
Speaker 1: case anyone who's listening is not familiar with this stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, we know that there are genetic effects on
Speaker 1: things like intelligence because of twin and family studies, so twins, adoptees,
Speaker 1: and family pedigree studies. We know from looking at these
Speaker 1: kind of research designs that a lot of the variation
Speaker 1: and you know, the reasons people differ in their intelligence
Speaker 1: is due to genes, but we don't know specifically what
Speaker 1: those genes are. So we've been looking for a long
Speaker 1: long time to try and find out what these genes are.
Speaker 1: For ages. We had kind of this kind of candidate
Speaker 1: gene idea where you know, there was some theory gene
Speaker 1: that would be associated with intelligence, which turns out actually
Speaker 1: it turns out to be very very difficult to replicate
Speaker 1: a lot of these findings. There's one that we know
Speaker 1: that seems to replicate almost every time, which is APPOEE,
Speaker 1: which increases risk for Alzheimer's disease. It also seems to
Speaker 1: lower comfortability, especially in older people, even outside of Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker 1: But other than that, we don't really know, and so
Speaker 1: we have to now put together these massive studies, these
Speaker 1: genome wide association studies. GUS is the necron which people
Speaker 1: might have seen in the media to try and uncover
Speaker 1: these genetic effects, because none of them are very big,
Speaker 1: they're all very very small effects. There might be tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of very very very small genetic effects and
Speaker 1: intelligence that all kind of add up to the reason
Speaker 1: people differ. So some of them might be, you know,
Speaker 1: increase the myelination of neurons a little bit. Some of
Speaker 1: them might be responsible for neurogenesis in childhood, some of
Speaker 1: them might be responsible for being receptive to information. All
Speaker 1: sorts of things like that all add up to make
Speaker 1: someone intelligent. And also a lot of them might stop
Speaker 1: damage from happening to the brain. So it's like a
Speaker 1: kind of an idea where everyone has a certain level
Speaker 1: of intelligence, and then some of the genes are damaging
Speaker 1: and we want to avoid those damaging genes to have.
Speaker 1: So it's a really really complex picture. But a couple
Speaker 1: of studies have appeared recently, one by US on this
Speaker 1: UK Biobank sample, which is one hundred thousand people have
Speaker 1: been genotype so far, we found several hits. That is,
Speaker 1: we found several genes that are genetic variants I should say,
Speaker 1: that are related to differences in intelligence. I wish the
Speaker 1: IQ testing was a bit better in that sample, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned before. But there's also another study on the
Speaker 1: way it's going to appear I think in the next
Speaker 1: few months, that has an even bigger sample and that
Speaker 1: finds even more genetic variance linked to intelligence. And I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how much I can say about that study
Speaker 1: because it's still not released. I know it's been accepted
Speaker 1: at a journal, it's not peer yet, but it finds
Speaker 1: a substantial number of these letter variants in the DNA
Speaker 1: that relates to intelligence. So we're making progress. It's slow progress,
Speaker 1: and I think the only way that we're really going
Speaker 1: to start to advance our knowledge of this is if
Speaker 1: we drill down further than these GUS studies, So we
Speaker 1: drill down into what are these genes actually doing. So
Speaker 1: is this a gene that, as I say, you know,
Speaker 1: is related to neurogenesis. Is it a gene that's related
Speaker 1: to some other synaptic mechanism in the brain. And to
Speaker 1: do that, we're going to have to do more lab studies.
Speaker 1: We're going to have to work with neuroscientists and biologists.
Speaker 1: We're going to have to do things like growing stem
Speaker 1: cells to test the differences between intelligent and less intelligent
Speaker 1: people's brains. There's going to be a whole panoply of
Speaker 1: scientific methods that we're going to have to use to
Speaker 1: really understand what's happening here. But for now, we're making
Speaker 1: slow progress in understanding genetics. Now I say slow, but
Speaker 1: it's only slow in terms of, you know, we have
Speaker 1: to wait several months between every paper like these are
Speaker 1: coming pretty fast now. The first ever genome wide association
Speaker 1: study of a kind of social trait like intelligence was
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, and with a larger one in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: We published one last year in twenty fifteen. We've now
Speaker 1: published another one twenty sixteen. There's going to be another
Speaker 1: one in a few months, so they're coming pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: but it becomes little more difficult to put together these
Speaker 1: large samples to have the satistical power to detect these
Speaker 1: small effects. But we're getting there. Yeah, we're getting there.
Speaker 1: And I was going to just cheekily say, so, what's
Speaker 1: the practical implication of these findings? I'm just joking. Well, no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a fair question, but it's like, it's
Speaker 1: obviously not the only reason why you're doing this research.
Speaker 1: So no, absolutely, And we've discussed you know, the desire
Speaker 1: for practical stuff, but the design designer babies. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean that's as I say in the book, right, we
Speaker 1: need to have a serious talk now, like a serious
Speaker 1: debate in's society about these findings, because they're coming. There's
Speaker 1: nothing that we're going to you know, we're not able
Speaker 1: to stop this research from happening, and we need to
Speaker 1: just discuss now what's happening in terms of our ethical
Speaker 1: obligations here. But what I was going to say was,
Speaker 1: we found these you know, this this genetic basis, and
Speaker 1: what we can do now is we can take the
Speaker 1: genetic basis that's discovered in one study and then apply
Speaker 1: it to another set of people using what's called a
Speaker 1: pologenic risk score. So basically, you say, well, okay, you've
Speaker 1: got an A here, and we know that A people
Speaker 1: are slightly hiring intelligence. And you've got a C here,
Speaker 1: and we know that C people are of lower intelligence.
Speaker 1: And add those up across maybe four hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand letter variants in the in the genome, and then
Speaker 1: I could apply it to you or me or anyone else,
Speaker 1: and that gives you this pologenic score for intelligence or
Speaker 1: educational attainment or whatever you happen to look at, and
Speaker 1: then you can use that score to predict other stuff.
Speaker 1: So we've just submitted a paper for publication that uses
Speaker 1: one of these pologenetic scores to predict people's mortality. Actually,
Speaker 1: the method we use was predicting their payarents mortality or
Speaker 1: longevity if you want to put it right, you know,
Speaker 1: positive spin on it. So actually using this, even though
Speaker 1: we've only got a little part of the picture in
Speaker 1: terms of genetics, we can still make meaningful predictions about
Speaker 1: people's lives from these What are we talking what's the
Speaker 1: effects size there? So the effect size was that if
Speaker 1: you are one standard deviation higher on the Pologenic profile
Speaker 1: score for educational attainment, your parents were four percent less
Speaker 1: likely to be dead at any at any point. So
Speaker 1: like people who are if you split and if you
Speaker 1: split the A up into kind of thirds of the
Speaker 1: of the of the data, people in the highest third
Speaker 1: of the apologenetic score had parents that lived er point
Speaker 1: seventy five years longer. Okay, so the course of a
Speaker 1: year longer than people who are in the lowest third.
Speaker 1: So we think this is a really quite big effect.
Speaker 1: So that's under review. How does that compare to effects
Speaker 1: in the medical literature on like cholesterology and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: Like I don't actually, I don't actually know if anyone's
Speaker 1: used this direct approach and looking at cholesterol genes or so.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's plenty of large effects we know
Speaker 1: on mortality and things like smoking, right, social class. But
Speaker 1: i Q is not the same level as smoking. Sure,
Speaker 1: and i Q i Q is there, but we're not
Speaker 1: we're not talking about measurements of i Q. We're talking
Speaker 1: about measurements of genetics that we know that are related
Speaker 1: to IQ, which is which is a totally different thing.
Speaker 1: And that's a very good point. And those are pretty
Speaker 1: large effects considering what you're looking at. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And we replicate that in three different large samples we're
Speaker 1: really quite excited about it actually, about that, about that
Speaker 1: finding showing that you can usually so if I was
Speaker 1: an insurance company, I would be thinking, huh, how do
Speaker 1: we use these scores to you know, give people a
Speaker 1: higher or lower premium? Which is a scary thought, but
Speaker 1: it's something that again we're going to have to start considering.
Speaker 1: If we know what these genetics are, people are going
Speaker 1: to want to use this information, and so so we
Speaker 1: need to we need to talk about the you know,
Speaker 1: the ethics of of of of using that and have
Speaker 1: a proper debate on this stuff. And I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people are put off by this, and and
Speaker 1: I really don't want to do want to think about it,
Speaker 1: but the science is advancing to the point that we're
Speaker 1: going to have to talk about There are a lot
Speaker 1: of Yeah, absolutely, I mean there's so many a couple
Speaker 1: of things nobody want to talk about, like global warming.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to talk about it. You know, a classic example,
Speaker 1: classic says, let's just it's something that we can't really
Speaker 1: observe happening, so let's just not talk about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's a slow process that is very
Speaker 1: difficult to observe. You know, right in front of us
Speaker 1: right now, so someone else can deal with that. It
Speaker 1: does seem like nobody really wants to talk about intelligence differences.
Speaker 1: You know, my colleague, who I do have respect for,
Speaker 1: a lot of respect for, Angela Duckworth, does work on
Speaker 1: GRIT as you know, her office is actually right next
Speaker 1: door to mine. So yeah, I hear about GRIT a lot.
Speaker 1: But this is nothing to say about her, but has
Speaker 1: to say about the public. So we have no problem
Speaker 1: time about differences in GRIT. We do kind of sweep
Speaker 1: under the rug differences in cognitiobility. But there's no evidence
Speaker 1: that I've ever seen that GRIT is any more or
Speaker 1: less immutable or can be developed than IQ, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no evidence of that whatsoever. Absolutely spot on, and
Speaker 1: that's you know, the reason people are scared about to
Speaker 1: think about IQ is that they get this kind of oh, well,
Speaker 1: it must be immutable because we know it's related to genetics.
Speaker 1: But there was a paper published by Kylie Rimfeld and
Speaker 1: Robert Pluman just recently, maybe a month ago, that showed
Speaker 1: that GRIT measures of GRIT are substantially heritable too, and
Speaker 1: in fact they also showed that they don't really predict
Speaker 1: academic achievement beyond stuff that we already know likes conscientiousness.
Speaker 1: Although there is a paper from our departments Timothy Bates,
Speaker 1: Tim Bates, Yeah, who does seem to show that it
Speaker 1: does predict. And and I would add the cool thing
Speaker 1: about his paper is he actually a creative creativity creative achievement.
Speaker 1: That's right, yeeah. Yeah. So in terms of me personally,
Speaker 1: I love that paper, no wonder So, yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: friend and colleague of mine does does really great stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah uh And so yeah, the debate that I would say,
Speaker 1: the jury is still out on that. But but what
Speaker 1: I wonder about, and in relation to what we've been discussing,
Speaker 1: is the the kind of antagonistic way that a lot
Speaker 1: of the GRIT stuff is is framed. So often you'll
Speaker 1: hear things like, you know, GRIT really knocks IQ out
Speaker 1: of the park when it comes to when it comes to,
Speaker 1: you know, predicting academic achievement, or there's a well about
Speaker 1: GRIT is like the antidote to the cult of IQ.
Speaker 1: We'll go deeper than that, because this is a let's
Speaker 1: look an overarching pattern here. So when Daniel Goldman's book
Speaker 1: was a runaway bestseller, the cover said why emotional intelligence
Speaker 1: matters more than IQ. When when Howard Garner's but Frames
Speaker 1: of Mind came out and it became an instant bestseller,
Speaker 1: they marketed it as why multiple intelligences why a single
Speaker 1: intelligence doesn't exist? So there's something like like these runaway
Speaker 1: best sellers, all they all kind of pit it directly
Speaker 1: against IQ as opposed to say, well, because is it
Speaker 1: because of the boring to say, like, oh, well, success
Speaker 1: is complex. It's going to be a combination of I mean,
Speaker 1: I say that in my book never became a bestseller.
Speaker 1: So yeah, no, I mean I think, seeing well, we
Speaker 1: could probably build a structural equation model out of many
Speaker 1: many But is that the truth? Is that the truth?
Speaker 1: I edited an academic volume called The Complexity of Greatness
Speaker 1: Beyond Talent or Practice. Like five people have read that,
Speaker 1: but it is expensive, So maybe that's one of these
Speaker 1: academic books. Yeah, But I mean it's like, in the
Speaker 1: conclusion of that book is, yeah, greatness the determines the
Speaker 1: greatest complex But the best sellering books are the ones
Speaker 1: that have the following cadence to it. I did X
Speaker 1: and X researcher I taught in the classroom. I And
Speaker 1: what I saw is that it wasn't intelligence, it wasn't talent,
Speaker 1: it was X. And whatever that X is, that's gonna
Speaker 1: be a best selling book, absolutely, right, am I Right?
Speaker 1: I think I think that is the kind of cynical
Speaker 1: strategy that's used by marketers. That they know that people
Speaker 1: a like a like a new novel idea, they be
Speaker 1: they like something that means that they can manipulate it,
Speaker 1: that they can change it, that they can they can
Speaker 1: you know, pull themselves up by the bootstraps. And they
Speaker 1: also hate the idea of intelligence and differences between people
Speaker 1: in something as outdated and boring and and and discredited
Speaker 1: as intelligence. And so yeah, And I guess I wonder
Speaker 1: with people who are taken in by that if they
Speaker 1: just took a step back and thought, you know, do
Speaker 1: we think that people who you know, the kid in
Speaker 1: your in your school class who's just absolutely you know,
Speaker 1: racing through all his math stuff or or writes these
Speaker 1: beautiful essays that she hands him to the teacher like
Speaker 1: half an hour before everyone else, do we think that
Speaker 1: that's not a meaningful difference between someone who's really really struggling.
Speaker 1: And do we think that that that that doesn't tell
Speaker 1: us anything about that person who's going to do in
Speaker 1: the future. Not in every single case. Obviously there are
Speaker 1: there are exceptions in every way, but do we not
Speaker 1: think it tells us anything? And so I often want
Speaker 1: to ask people that and see what they're see what
Speaker 1: their reaction is. Absolutely, so, look, I want to be
Speaker 1: mindful of your time and the listener's time. And I
Speaker 1: have five hundred and fifty five more questions. So maybe
Speaker 1: another maybe some other time, me and you could just
Speaker 1: like drink a drink a beer and just chat. Sure,
Speaker 1: because I really enjoyed this chat. I want to end
Speaker 1: with this, which I think ties up a lot of this.
Speaker 1: This says on the cover all that Matters Intelligence? Now
Speaker 1: that was was that a marketing ployee? By the way, sadly,
Speaker 1: sadly that is not to be a hypocrite. Yeah, there is.
Speaker 1: There is a series of books called All That Matters.
Speaker 1: I know that it's one called like Modern Japan or
Speaker 1: that's hilarious because that's not what you're saying. I know
Speaker 1: exactly that said. By the way, I'm not saying that's
Speaker 1: really unfortunately, you know, introduce me on like little I've
Speaker 1: done little radio things wherever they say, su Richie, they
Speaker 1: although all intelligence all matters, And I go to the
Speaker 1: second I would say that this whole book is making
Speaker 1: the argument that's much more modest, which is intelligence matters.
Speaker 1: That's it, period. And I think that's what frustrates most
Speaker 1: intelligence researchers is that they're not making the argument that
Speaker 1: intelligence is all that matters. They're just making the argument
Speaker 1: that it matters. So I, you know, when I, when
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of how can I, you know,
Speaker 1: redefine intelligence bah blah and I and I quoted some
Speaker 1: of these other components like intellectual engagement and passion and
Speaker 1: three personal goals. My colleague Colin de Young made a
Speaker 1: very interesting point to me, which I still think about
Speaker 1: to this day. He said, you know, Scott, why are
Speaker 1: you trying to expand the concept of intelligence so much?
Speaker 1: Why don't you just make it your mission to just
Speaker 1: to explain to people its proper place and say that
Speaker 1: people value it too much in our school system and
Speaker 1: other areas. And you know, I didn't go that, Rudin,
Speaker 1: and I wrote this book gift that I can't with
Speaker 1: this more expand definition of intelligence. But I often wonder
Speaker 1: if I was wrong in that approach. I often wonder
Speaker 1: if if it actually would be a more worthy not mission.
Speaker 1: But you know, when I just when I talk about
Speaker 1: this stuff, just to make it clear that you know,
Speaker 1: this variable that a lot of that has been studied
Speaker 1: for the past one hundred years. It matters, It predicts
Speaker 1: various things, but it's certainly not all it matters, and
Speaker 1: it's the public and individuals who make more of it
Speaker 1: than probably the scientists themselves. Would that be fair, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think not necessarily just the public. But
Speaker 1: but you know, journalists and as I say, kind of
Speaker 1: as I said earlier, sort of antagonistic reactions to this
Speaker 1: stuff from other scholars and other and other disciplines. You know,
Speaker 1: for instance, go to any education school and tell them
Speaker 1: that you study IQ, and you know, they will freak out.
Speaker 1: You know, if you go to an education school and
Speaker 1: talk about this stuff, they just don't want to They
Speaker 1: don't want to hear it. I mean, it's often the
Speaker 1: case the education schools are going down that kind of
Speaker 1: quite political line, off in a very left wing political line,
Speaker 1: and they're not into this stuff. And when whenever they
Speaker 1: talk about IQ in public, they will denigrate the idea
Speaker 1: of it, they'll say, you know that this old you
Speaker 1: know cult of IQ, and and so on. So if
Speaker 1: we could get to the stage where people, as you said,
Speaker 1: understand that IQ is just one aspect of success, one
Speaker 1: aspect of academic performance, one aspect of life, and a
Speaker 1: very important one. It is too, I mean, for heaven's sake,
Speaker 1: it predicts how long you'll you know, an IQ test
Speaker 1: taking in Chelsey predicts how long you're going to live.
Speaker 1: But not so do other things. But so does loads
Speaker 1: of other stuff. And to build up a full picture
Speaker 1: of you know, the reasons people differ and the ways
Speaker 1: that we might be able to intervene to help people,
Speaker 1: we've got to we've got to take into account loads
Speaker 1: of stuff beyond IQ. But please just take into account IQ.
Speaker 1: I guess that's the message in my book. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: thanks for putting it in such an easily Well it
Speaker 1: was easy really for me. I don't know, because I
Speaker 1: know the research The plan is to make is to
Speaker 1: make it some you know, something that people can can
Speaker 1: read in just a couple of settings and or maybe
Speaker 1: even just one sitting and and just you know, be
Speaker 1: pointed on to some of the older stuff, the textbooks
Speaker 1: and some of the recent research. And so my bible,
Speaker 1: my bible when I was a twenty three year old
Speaker 1: or thereabouts, was Ian Darius Short History or short Brief
Speaker 1: Introduction to Intelligence. I mean that was my like, I
Speaker 1: remember reading that in the in the car of my parents.
Speaker 1: I actually have these memories, and so I think in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. You know, I'm sure you've made
Speaker 1: Ian proud, and this book is kind of like an
Speaker 1: update in that in that spirit, right, No, similar, it's
Speaker 1: you know, his book is brilliant and it's worth reading
Speaker 1: for anyone who's interested in this stuff. But it came
Speaker 1: out in two thousand and there's been a lot of advans.
Speaker 1: There have been a lot of advents. Oh my god. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was literally twenty one years old. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Right right there you go. And so this book I
Speaker 1: wrote was attempting to you know, I can't and there's
Speaker 1: no way that I could write as beautifully ass as
Speaker 1: Ian does. But it's attempting to update on some of
Speaker 1: the more recent stuff that's happened. You know, you have
Speaker 1: your own style and you should own that. You should
Speaker 1: own that. I mean, maybe what this interview by saying
Speaker 1: how I first met you it's because you flamed me
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and I thought you were saying some sensible
Speaker 1: things actually, so I said you because you know, I
Speaker 1: try to take my ego out of this stuff, because
Speaker 1: I'm interested in the truth as well. So I emailed
Speaker 1: you and I was like, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: said the stuff you said about me, I don't think
Speaker 1: that was one hundred cent truth, but I thought you had.
Speaker 1: You did tend to. Like when I looked at your
Speaker 1: whole body of tweets, I was like, wow, this is
Speaker 1: this He's saying a lot of interesting things except for
Speaker 1: that tweet about me. But it was something like a
Speaker 1: working memory study, like a trained working memory train study.
Speaker 1: They said that you were like, I think maybe a
Speaker 1: bit more positive, better than I would have been. I
Speaker 1: think that's it's probably it's funny, but anyway, it's a
Speaker 1: it's it's a delightful chatting with you today, And thanks
Speaker 1: for getting that show. Yeah great, Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope
Speaker 1: you found this episode just to stop provoking and interesting
Speaker 1: as I did. If you'd like to read the show
Speaker 1: notes for this episode or here past episodes, you can
Speaker 1: go to the psychology podcast dot com bumpy bony bo
Speaker 1: b