Hive Mind - How Your Nations Iq Matters So Much More Than Your Own

Informationen zum Autor Garett Jones is Associate Professor of Economics at the Center for Study of Public Choice, George Mason University. Garett's research and commentary have appeared in The New York Times , Wall Street Journal , Washington Post , Forbes , and Businessweek . Klappentext Over the last few decades, economists and psychologists have quietly documented the many ways in which a person's IQ matters. But, research suggests that a nation's IQ matters so much more. As Garett Jones argues in Hive Mind, modest differences in national IQ can explain most cross-country inequalities. Whereas IQ scores do a moderately good job of predicting individual wages, information processing power, and brain size, a country's average score is a much stronger bellwether of its overall prosperity. Drawing on an expansive array of research from psychology, economics, management, and political science, Jones argues that intelligence and cognitive skill are significantly more important on a national level than on an individual one because they have "positive spillovers." On average, people who do better on standardized tests are more patient, more cooperative, and have better memories. As a result, these qualities--and others necessary to take on the complexity of a modern economy--become more prevalent in a society as national test scores rise. What's more, when we are surrounded by slightly more patient, informed, and cooperative neighbors we take on these qualities a bit more ourselves. In other words, the worker bees in every nation create a "hive mind" with a power all its own. Once the hive is established, each individual has only a tiny impact on his or her own life. Jones makes the case that, through better nutrition and schooling, we can raise IQ, thereby fostering higher savings rates, more productive teams, and more effective bureaucracies. After demonstrating how test scores that matter little for individuals can mean a world of difference for nations, the book leaves readers with policy-oriented conclusions and hopeful speculation: Whether we lift up the bottom through changing the nature of work, institutional improvements, or freer immigration, it is possible that this period of massive global inequality will be a short season by the standards of human history if we raise our global IQ. Inhaltsverzeichnis Contents and AbstractsIntroduction: The Paradox of IQ chapter abstract IQ differences across people within a country predict only modest differences in wages, but average differences in IQ-type scores across countries predict massive differences in productivity across country. This is the paradox to be explained, and the explanation propels the book forward. 1Just a Test Score? chapter abstract The chapter offers a rapid overview of modern IQ research, drawing heavily on recent textbooks published by Oxford and Cambridge University presses. The most important fact about IQ is that skills predict skills: as a practical matter, all mental abilities that a typical person thinks about as parts of "intelligence" are at least weakly positively correlated. So people with higher math scores tend to have higher verbal scores and are usually faster at solving wooden block puzzles. IQ also predicts wages and worker skill, as labor economists and human resource professors routinely find. But social intelligence, while a subject of popular discussion, is a weaker predictor of typical job outcomes than IQ. 2A da Vinci Effect for Nations chapter abstract Can national average IQ scores really be compared across countries the way that math and science tests routinely are? Is test bias too much of a problem to make the scores useful? Psychologists have debated the value of national average IQ estimates, but the result of the debate is a surprising consensus: outwardly fair tests appear to document lower average scores in the world's poorest regions, though sc...

Product details

• Authors: Garett Jones
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.11.2016
• EAN: 9781503600676
• ISBN: 978-1-5036-0067-6
• No. of pages: 224
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Psychology > Miscellaneous; Social sciences, law, business > Business > Economics