FLYNN EFFECT

Flynn Effect



Flynn Effect

What are the best explanations for the 'Flynn Effect' - or indeed, are there any good explanations for this phenomenon?

Introduction

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the explanations of Flynn Effect. The Flynn Effect has been observed by James Flynn who was a political scientist and had been working in New Zealand. He has identified that there is a continuous increase of score of multiple groups of individuals on the basis of standard intelligence since the last ten years. However, the previous researchers could not pay proper attention on these trends. The reason is that IQ scores are determined by calculating the average scores of the current groups. According to the definition, the average is 100. A person making scores of 20% more than the average would be entitled to achieve an IQ of 120. But, in case of the comparison of a person's score with the average for the corresponding groups, it is necessary that the final score should be about 130. Flynn was the first scientist who has systematically made the cross-generational comparisons.

Discussion

The Flynn effect has been originated by Richard Lynn in 1977 and has been documented in the name of James R. Flynn in 1984. This effect is mainly related to the global increase of IQ scores of about 3 IQ points for ten years. This is the reason why people today make higher scores of IQ tests which have been conducted previously as compared to the people who have taken these tests in previous times (Andrich, 1994). Since that time, the Flynn Effect has been approved by different researches and scientists. However, this pattern has become successful and it had been approved for all intelligence tests i.e. three IQ points per decade. This pattern has been used on 20 different countries whose data was available (Flynn, 2000a). These countries are mainly Canada, United States and various other European Nations. However, there were some variations on increase of rate based on the country and the type of test. From the application of this data a highest rate had been observed in Belgium, Israel and Holland i.e. 20 points per generation. However, the lowest rate was in Denmark and Sweden which was 10 points per generation. Though, there was some limitation in the data, but there seem to be an increase in the acceleration. For example, the score of Holland has increased from 1972 to 1982 by over 8 points. There was a test named Raven Progressive Matrices in which Flynn have identified that there is a distance of a complete century. According to Flynn, a person scoring among the best 10% in a century before would be considered among the 5% of the weakest people in this era. This means that a person who has been considered as intelligent a century before, now considered as a weakest person. However, there are some unexpected implications of these results for the relationship between age and intelligence (Dickens, ...