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Race and intelligence

Posted: 2008-10-17 03:59am
by His Divine Shadow
I was having a debate about the idea of intelligence and races and someone made the claim that whites and asians are more intelligent than blacks even when factoring in for enviromental conditions. I was given a link to this article citing three studies, I'd like some help in rebutting it, I am infact at work right now so I won't be able to read it in detail just now:

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/004064.html
I won't be discussing the obvious mental abilities of South Asian-Americans due to their relative newness and unusual selectivity, but, as seen in Scott's post below, a frequently raised explanation for why American ethnic groups differ in performance, such as why East Asian-Americans score higher than white Americans in academics and on IQ tests, and also why African-Americans score lower, is that the differences are due to different cultural values (Warren Bell and Jonah Goldberg also raised the culture objection over at National Review to Cochran and Harpending's Ashkenazi paper). There are a number of reasons to doubt this. For one, the sociological literature doesn't seem to show it. As Stanley Sue and Sumie Okazaki pointed out in their 1991 American Psychologist paper, Asian American Educational Achievements: A Phenomenon in Search of an Explanation, the parenting styles and values found in East Asian-American homes tend to correlate with lower test scores when they are found in white homes. Further, even according to what we see in Roland Fryer's newest paper on "acting white", the idea that blacks have a culture of lower academic values, which is increasingly being embraced by liberals thanks to John Ogbu, is at least highly exaggerated and simply cannot account for the IQ gap. In fact, despite their lower performance, which is genuine, multiple lines of evidence point to African-Americans valuing academics nearly as much as white Americans, if not equally so (for instance spending just as much time on homework. A number of lines of evidence are discussed by Ludwig and Cook in The Black-White Test Score Gap, which you can read here). But an even more profound revelation that causes doubt about cultural explanations is that behavioral genetic experiments show us that home and parental environments don't seem to matter at all. As fantastic as it may be, at least three big studies now show us that unrelated children raised in the same household, as well as parents and their adoptive children, differ in IQ as much as any two strangers randomly picked from the general population. There are IQ similarities in biological families, but we find that once genes are accounted for, there is no residual left to explain.

So there are many good reasons to doubt cultural explanations a priori, but a more direct test is available. One possible way to control for distinct ethnic values is simply to raise the children of higher or lower scoring racial backgrounds in another ethnocultural environment of purportedly different values. If ethnic differences are caused by ethnically different parents, as asserted by gene-disparaging psychologists such as Richard Nisbett, then such a test should settle the issue. The transracial adoption data we have so far doesn't appear to support Nisbett.

One longitudinal study, the only one of its kind, of black children raised in white homes, showed that by highschool these adoptees scored no differently on IQ tests than African-Americans raised by their biological parents. Meanwhile three studies of Asians [1] raised in white families showed higher than average test scores. A problem with these latter three papers of Asian adoptees is that they didn't use control samples of white adoptees. Did the Asian children just score higher because adoptees in general score higher?

A newer study published in the American Journal of Orthopsyciatry allows us to compare adopted white children with, at least small samples of, transracially adopted Asian children to try and answer this question. An advantage of this study is that it used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health which means it was able to compare developmentally mature adoptees in grades 7-12, instead of children at ages like 4 or 6 when differences are less stable. Comparing 350 white adoptees with 24 Asian transracial adoptees, and (a mere) 8 black transracial adoptees, the authors found differences on a number of different dimensions that went in the same direction they usually do, despite the controlled ethnic upbringing (lower scores mean better grades, less learning problems, less delinquency, and more self-esteem):

++++++++++++++++++++Asian Adoptees+++White Adoptees++Black Adoptees
Grades+++++++++++++++1.72 (A-)+++++++++++2.25 (B+)+++++++++2.67 (B-)
Learning problems+++++++1.06++++++++++++++1.12+++++++++++++1.34
Delinquency++++++++++++0.16+++++++++++++0.20++++++++++++++0.25
Self-esteem++++++++++++2.07+++++++++++++1.96++++++++++++++1.78

The small sample sizes cry out for a larger replication (along with the Scarr adoption study which only had 21 black children, but had the advantage of an additional 55 black-white mixed race children who fell in between the white and black children on all academic variables), and other aspects of this study are not compatible with other published studies (i.e. contrary to the Moore study, also used as cultural evidence by Nisbett, it also showed that adopted black children raised in black households performed similarly, even somewhat better than, the transracially adopted black children in this study). But still the differing levels of performance of the transracially adopted black and Asian in this study are compatible with other adoption experiments which show similar results, and casts further doubt on the theory that ethnic differences are due to differences in upbringing unique to separate American ethnic groups (further evidence for this was also demonstrated with another method by Rowe and Flannery who found no unique correlation patterns in the developmental data of different ethnic groups).

The Results showing higher grades for the Asian adoptees is particularly interesting, becuase of the control of white adoptees unique to this study. If Asian academic success was really due to some special set of academic values inculcated by Asian parents (something not demonstrated by the data to begin with), then why do Asians do better academically than whites even when they are raised by white parents? The authors of this paper contend the Asians might have done better academically because the parents may have believed Asians had genetically higher IQs and therefore had higher expectations for them. The authors provide no evidence for this idea except the adopted Asian children's own greater optimism about their academic futures! Quite the tenuous conclusion to take from that fact, but even allowing their interpretation, given that behavior genetic evidence shows that such parental attitudes have no effect on children's scores, there is good reason to doubt this ad-hoc attempt to squeeze cultural rationalizations even into ethnically controlled data. It would be incorrect though to say this matter has been resolved.

Update 06/12/05

I was curious how the adoption data from the new study compares with the high-school grade-point averages (GPAs) of Asians, whites, and blacks in the general population, so I compared it with this data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Since the gaps fluctuate somewhat year to year I averaged the data from 1990, 1994, 1998, and 2000 (It's only high-school graduates, so the gaps should be a little reduced). I wasn't interested in the absolute scores but the differences between ethnic groups, which I've listed below.

Adoption............................................General

Asian-White: 33 points........................Asian-White: 15 points

White-Black: 42 points........................White-Black: 36 points

Black-Asian: 75 points........................Black-Asian: 51 points

The gaps are surprisingly similar! Contrary to "culture" theory, the ethnic academic gaps are almost identical for transracially adopted children, and to the extent they are different they go in the opposite direction predicted by culture theory. The gap between whites and Asians fluctuated from 19 to .09 in the NAEP data while the gap in the adoption data is from 1/3 to 3 times larger. This is consistent with the Sue and Okazaki paper above which showed that contrary to popular anecdotes, the values that lead to higher academic grades are actually found more often in white homes. In other words Asian-Americans perform highly despite their Asian home cultural environment not because of it. And though the sample is meager, I find it interesting that the gap between the black and white adopted children was virtually identical (within just 4-6 points) to the gap between whites and blacks in the general population, just like in the Scarr adoption study.

[1] Clark, E. A., & Hanisee, J. (1982). Intellectual and adaptive
performance of Asian children in adoptive American settings.
Developmental Psychology, 18, 595–599.

Frydman, M., & Lynn, R. (1989). The intelligence of Korean children
adopted in Belgium. Personality and Individual Differences, 12, 1323–1325.

Winick, M., Meyer, K. K., & Harris, R. C. (1975). Malnutrition and
environmental enrichment by early adoption. Science, 190, 1173–1175.

The Scarr study also had a small sample of "Asians", but on closer examination a large percentage of them were actually absurdly labeled Native Americans! Amerindians are only "Asians" in the sense that we are all "Africans". The "Asians" in her study unsurprisingly did not score very high.

Re: Race and intelligence

Posted: 2008-10-17 10:47pm
by Darth Wong
One of the problems with this issue is that it is so emotionally charged. The majority of people nowadays dismiss the idea of a correlation between race and intelligence simply because they find it so offensive.

Like it or not, it is unscientific and irrational to examine the issue of race and intelligence by starting from the assumption that any correlation must be false. The problem comes about when people try to apply such correlations by prescribing corresponding social policies: the variance in intelligence is sufficiently great that if you were to take two Bell curves of intelligence, offset them by 5%, and then overlay them, something like 99% of the two curves' areas would overlap. So the correlation could be real, without lending credence to racist social policies.

Re: Race and intelligence

Posted: 2008-10-17 11:36pm
by Mayabird
There have been some studies on race and intelligence that demonstrated that there's a racial difference when the people tested expected there to be a difference. Give a set of average black students and intelligence test and tell them it's an I.Q. test, and they score below average white students. Give them an intelligence test and tell them it's a game, and they score comparably (or even higher) than the white students. (I don't remember if there was any difference between the I.Q. scores and game scores among the white students). Being told, at some level or another, that they're intellectually inferior makes people actually perform at an inferior level, for whatever reason.

It also works for gender. One test involved Asian women solving math problems. If they were told ahead of time something about Asians being smarter, they performed above-average. If they were told that women do badly at math, they scored below average.

If that's not an environmental factor, I don't know what is.


It IS possible, all things being equal after every single factor is dealt with, that some 'races' are more intelligent (for whatever definition of intelligence you use, and there are many) than others. Of course, all things aren't equal at all, and the socioeconomic and cultural factors right now are most likely far stronger than any actual genetic differences in play.

Re: Race and intelligence

Posted: 2008-10-18 12:56am
by Count Chocula
A further complicating factor in the black vs. white issue in the US is the unfortunate fact that, for the time when slavery was extant in the US, intelligence was bred out of American blacks. Too much intelligence in a slave is bad, don'tcha know? For example, it was illegal for blacks to know how to read and write in the 1800s. Physically, however, the opposite seems to have occured - on average, black athletes are faster and stronger than their white equivalents, which explains the makeup of modern pro football teams.

Re: Race and intelligence

Posted: 2008-10-18 03:27pm
by Saxtonite
Count Chocula wrote:A further complicating factor in the black vs. white issue in the US is the unfortunate fact that, for the time when slavery was extant in the US, intelligence was bred out of American blacks. Too much intelligence in a slave is bad, don'tcha know? For example, it was illegal for blacks to know how to read and write in the 1800s.
Don't forget what arguably happened, killing off the 'smarter' slaves. The Breeding and other left-overs from Slavery are STILL strong (another example is arguably Sickle-Cell's prevalence in Afro-Americans is from selection during the slave trips). Paper Bag parties and colonial mentality, etc too. The Willie Lynch letter isn't true, but what was described in the letter was true.

http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/wil.html
(if that doesn't work or you don't like it use this pdf file)
http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/BPP_Book ... Slave!.pdf
Physically, however, the opposite seems to have occured - on average, black athletes are faster and stronger than their white equivalents, which explains the makeup of modern pro football teams.
"White boys can't jump" :mrgreen:

Though wasn't Basketball in the US during the 1930s dominated by Jews, so it could be other factors too?

Re: Race and intelligence

Posted: 2008-10-18 03:43pm
by Mayabird
Count Chocula wrote: For example, it was illegal for blacks to know how to read and write in the 1800s.
Evolution is not Lamarkian and therefore this statement is completely nonsensical in terms of genetics.

You might have a point about "intelligence being bred out" if the slavers systematically killed off intelligent slaves before they could have kids or selectively bred stupider slaves, except I only know of the breeding for strength. Not all slaves worked in the fields, though. "House slaves" who could do accounting or clerical work were often highly prized and well-treated, much more so than the field workers. Their kids would have a greater chance to survive in good health. And anyway, it didn't last for enough generations to have a truly obvious effect.

Also, most African-Americans are actually mixed race. Slavers were quite fond of raping their slave women whenever they felt like it, and that often lead to pregnancy (ever heard of the term "mulatto"? Mixed-race children, part black and part white, but always considered black for purposes of discrimination, though often treated better.)

Re: Race and intelligence

Posted: 2008-10-19 02:49am
by Count Chocula
My wife is Cuban, hence of mixed blood. I myself am an eastern European/American Indian blend. Call me a mutt.

Declaring a group ineligible to learn how to read and write, regardless of their ability, is a cultural issue. I have no opinion on the genetics involved, other than to apply the adage "the nail that sticks out gets hammered." There are plenty of intelligent blacks in the US, just as there are plenty of stupid whites. Eli Whitney was a black man, and he invented the device that revolutionized Southern agriculture.

When you look at the number of patents issued, and the tech-based corporations that are in the US, you see far more whites than blacks. I'm not saying this is right or proper, but it seems to corroborate that blacks in the US were ruthlessly selected by their owners for strength over intellect.

Re: Race and intelligence

Posted: 2008-10-19 03:08am
by GrandMasterTerwynn
Count Chocula wrote:When you look at the number of patents issued, and the tech-based corporations that are in the US, you see far more whites than blacks. I'm not saying this is right or proper, but it seems to corroborate that blacks in the US were ruthlessly selected by their owners for strength over intellect.
No, it doesn't. The number of generations of selective breeding (evolutionary pressure) required to produce a true slave-race with average intelligence that is distinctly below the average for the rest of the human species is likely far greater than the handful of generations slavery existed in the United States. It also ignores the well-known fact that black people in the United States carry significant genetic information from their former masters on the account of slave-owners raping, and otherwise taking liberty with, their slaves.

What you stated does corroborate is the notion that the culture and society of the United States is still broadly discriminatory towards black people, even if it doesn't come right out and say it.

Re: Race and intelligence

Posted: 2008-10-19 03:14am
by Count Chocula
Crap, I hope we're not still that discriminatory. We need all the smart folk we can get, with a chance to do something with their smarts.

Re: Race and intelligence

Posted: 2008-10-19 03:51am
by Saxtonite
Count Chocula wrote:Crap, I hope we're not still that discriminatory.
the reaction to Katrina suggests that.

EDIT: and this vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRqcfqiXCX0&eurl

Re: Race and intelligence

Posted: 2008-10-20 07:20am
by Rye
To be honest, every time I've seen research into IQ by race it's given pretty much similar results. That's not what I'd expect if there weren't something to it and I feel a bit like a conspiracy theorist if my PC-side implies that all of these tests are influenced to a significant extent by racism on behalf of all the different scientists.

But yeah, as Mike says, the vast majority of all human populations will overlap, that big fat bit of the diagram is the average human intelligence and there's an imperfect distribution at the edges (which may favour European jews, for instance). A discriminatory social policy based on the edges, rather than the bulk average seems altogether nutty.

Re: Race and intelligence

Posted: 2008-10-20 08:22pm
by Alyrium Denryle
God damn it. This thread needs a lesson in quantitative genetics.

Let us assume for the sake of illustration that heritability is 50%

This means that half the variation you see in a distribution of intelligence (or the usual IQ proxy measure, IQ tests by the way are much better about dealing with linguistic biases now) is the result of variation in socio-economic conditions, nutrition and such, and half is accounted for by genetic variation.

To show what proportion of the difference between ethnic groups is the result of genetics and what is accounted for by environmental factors you need to control for environment. You do this by cross-fostering. Now we cant switch kids at birth, but we can control as many variables as possible by using kids who are at least in the same economic position, and who's parents have the same values (you can do this by using kids who's parents go to the same church or what have you. it is a convenience sample, but it works) You then measure their intelligence and run a bunch of statistical tests to figure out what proportion of the variability is due to measurable environmental differences vs genetics.

The second problem is that selective pressures in different environments will lead to different types of intelligence being selected for.

And no, interbreeding has probably not been sufficient to homogenize the genetic variation that might exist between ethnic groups (if it was, we would not have races at all). Moreover, these sorts of studies are typically done in the US, where people of non-white ethnic groups were excluded in immigration law, meaning that initial populations size was low. Can you say "Founder effect"?
.
Additionally the fact that there is more genetic variation within than between races doesnt mean a damn thing. Here is why.

You can consider races to be large monophyletic groups or clades, which have expanded their native range and populated different regions. They have had to adapt to different regions within this range, which creates a lot of within-race variation. But if you then homogenize a sample, and compare that to another race, the differences you see there, after smoothing out all the variation in the sample, is going to be far less than what you see within the race.

My point is, there probably are variations in intelligence (both type and magnitude) between races. But the key to this is that as Mike said, the normal distributions for each race also overlap considerably, and not all of the variation is due to genetics.

Re: Race and intelligence

Posted: 2008-10-30 02:38pm
by bozazz
Count Chocula wrote:My wife is Cuban, hence of mixed blood. I myself am an eastern European/American Indian blend. Call me a mutt.

Declaring a group ineligible to learn how to read and write, regardless of their ability, is a cultural issue. I have no opinion on the genetics involved, other than to apply the adage "the nail that sticks out gets hammered." There are plenty of intelligent blacks in the US, just as there are plenty of stupid whites. Eli Whitney was a black man, and he invented the device that revolutionized Southern agriculture.

When you look at the number of patents issued, and the tech-based corporations that are in the US, you see far more whites than blacks. I'm not saying this is right or proper, but it seems to corroborate that blacks in the US were ruthlessly selected by their owners for strength over intellect.

Hey Count. Just thought I'd clear up the misconception that Eli Whitney was African-American. He was actually Caucasian. His ideafor the cotton gin was developed when he observed slaves on the field pick cotton. Others also believed that hestole the invention from an African American Slave. Which might account for the misconception that Eli was African American. I definitely agree with you though that there are numerous intelligent African Americans. For instance someone that I do admire is Garrett A. Morgan who was a prolific inventor in his day and have patents for the gas mask and traffic signals. So the next time you go through a red light, I guess you can thank him for that :D

Re: Race and intelligence

Posted: 2008-11-02 04:43am
by Samuel
I think you are thinking of Washington Carver. As for this
When you look at the number of patents issued, and the tech-based corporations that are in the US, you see far more whites than blacks. I'm not saying this is right or proper, but it seems to corroborate that blacks in the US were ruthlessly selected by their owners for strength over intellect.
Well, blacks are only 10% if the population. And they are the people at the bottom. A good example of how much a differance that makes is the American natives. In the US they are at the bottom- literally worse of than blacks. In other Latin American countries their situation is differant. Obviously the differance are cultural and not genetic. Before someone points out that not all Indians are the same, I'd like to point ou they got to the Americas less than 15000 years ago. That is less than the time differance between any other group on Earth.

A better example would be the Polynesians. They spread out less than 2000 years ago and live in many differant positions.