It should come as no surprise that since the 1970s, there has been a significant decline in general IQ test scores.
Celebrating stupidity via the shows and movies we watch and the books we don’t read, offers up more than enough evidence to back the theory being asserted by Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rogeberg from Ragnar Frisch Center for Economic Research in Norway who conducted the research and published it in the journal PNAS.
To reach the conclusion that IQs are dropping, the team looked at the IQ test results of young men entering Norway’s national service in the years between 1970 and 2009. During that time frame, of the almost 750,000 tests analyzed, it was determined that test scores dropped, on average, seven points per generation.
But why?
According to the study, some of the reasons are likely due to environmental factors such as changes to the education system, and children reading less and playing video games more.
"The trends are not due to a changing composition of families, and that there is at most a minor role for explanations involving genes (e.g., immigration and dysgenic fertility) and environmental factors largely fixed within families (e.g., parental education, socialization effects of low-ability parents, and family size)," the researchers wrote in their study.
"Their influence is negligible compared with other environmental factors.”
What do you think is responsible for the worldwide decline of IQs?
My personal, at least partial, guess is the introduction of this dead-eyed, valley-girl speaking collection of morons.
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