Part 1 dealt with the positive outcomes that result from having an higher than average intellect or possibly an IQ in the stratosphere. In Part 11 Herrnstein and Murray discuss the various ways differing levels of cognitive relate to America's most pressing social problems. As one might expect, high cognitive ability is generally associated with socially desirable behaviors while low intelligence usually is associated with less desirable ones.
The authors point out that "generally associated with" does not mean "coincident with." For most of the topics they address, cognitive ability accounts for only a small to middling variation among people. Thus, you cannot predict what a person will do solely from his IQ. However, large variations in social behavior separate differing groups of people when the groups differ intellectually on average.
The authors will argue in the upcoming pages of The Bell Curve that intelligence itself, not just its correlation with social status, is responsible the observed group differences in the antisocial behaviors that plague our nation today. The material to be addressed will be controversial. For example, is low intelligence responsible for irresponsible childbearing and bad parenting behaviors. Most scholars in childbearing and parenting do not think so. Could low intelligence be the cause of unemployment or poverty? Only a smattering of economists have even considered the possibility.
This neglect points to a gaping hole in the state of knowledge about social behavior. In is not that cognitive ability has been considered and found inconsequential; rather it is that the relationship of social behavior and intellect has barely been considered at all!
Until a few years ago there were no answers to many of the questions that are addressed in The Bell Curve, or only very murky ones. No one knew what the relationship of intellect to illegitimacy might be or even the connection of cognitive ability to poverty. Despite the millions of mental test given, few of the systemic surveys performed, and sometimes none, were designed to allow analysts to determine how IQ was related to a given behavior. In coming to their conclusions concerning intellect and social and economic outcomes, the authors rely heavily on the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience of Youth (NLSY). The study, which began in 1979, followed 12,686 young people aged 14 to 22 and the data presented in The Bell Curve was compiled in 1990.
Sociologists have broken down measured intellect into five classes shown in the table below. The range in IQ is 50 at the low (very dull) end of the distribution and 150 at the high (very bright) end of the distribution. By convention the average or mean IQ of distribution is set at 100.
Class IQ range classification % of population
1 125-150 Very bright 5
2 110-125 Bright 20
3 90-110 Normal 50
4 75-90 Dull 20
5 50-75 Very dull 5
Realize that those of you who have read The Bell Curve or have followed this review on my blog, live in a world that most likely looks nothing like the one depicted by this distribution (bell curve). In all likelihood, your friends and associates belong in class 1 and whose you consider to be unusually bright would be in the top one percent of the distribution while those who you consider to be unusually slow are somewhere in class 11. Most likely you have never encountered a person with an IQ between 50 and 75 unless, of course, you watch the nightly news on MSNBC (my conclusion, not the authors).
The basis tool for studying something in the social sciences is called regression analysis. There is a result to explain, for example poverty, called the dependent variable. The things that might cause poverty (educational disadvantage, inadequate nutrition, low IQ etc.) are called the independent variables. Regression analysis tells us how much each of the independent variables actually affects the result, in this case poverty, taking into consideration all of the different things that might be expected to cause poverty.
The book, The Bell Curve, is all about the relationship of inherited intelligence to behavior. After observing a statistical relationship between a behavior like childbearing or unemployment to intelligence the next question that comes to mind is, What else might be the source of the relationship?
In the case of IQ, the first thing that springs to mind is socioeconomic status. To what extent is an observed relationship, like intellect and illegitimacy really founded on the environmental factors under which a person grew up (the parents socioeconomic status), rather than his inherited intelligence? Why is this important?
Here's why. If the independent relationship of IQ to a social behavior is small, there is no point in pursuing the issue further. However, if the role of IQ remains large irrespective of socioeconomic status (environmental factors) inherent in a social behavior then it is worth thinking about because it may cast past public policy (school bussing, head-start etc.) in a new light and, by so doing, avoid costly mistakes in the future.
In the next eight chapters the authors limit their studies of intellect to social behavior to non-Latino whites. They do this to strengthen their central point, that cognitive ability effects social behavior without regard to race or ethnicity. The influence of race and ethnicity are the subject matter of Part 111.
Comment:
We are about to enter a forbidden place where only a few brave hearts have been willing to venture, the land of extreme political incorrectness. Many, if not most, of the population today find it impossible to believe that we humans were not all born equal in all things. To them leveling the playing field, especially in educational opportunities, is the key to all of the social ills we face. Our country has squandered $22 trillions of dollars trying to make things right, equal, over the past 50 or so years in an vain effort to help the down-trodden, all to know avail. One does not have to be an Einstein to realize that the more we have invested the worse our social problems have become.
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