Scientists make a distinction between crystallized intelligence all the stuff you've been taught and remember and fluid intelligence your ability to learn new stuff.
IQ tests generally measure crystallized intelligence more, so changes in schooling that de-emphasize memorization might be driving a decline in scores.
If this explanation is true, students remain as smart as ever just way more reliant on Google. The bottom line, however, is that the cause of the decline remains a mystery. Whatever it turns out to be, however, we should all probably start worrying about what our sedentary , screen addicted, junk food-munching lifestyles might be doing to our brains.
Place your bets: what do you think is behind the recent mental decline of humanity? Top Stories. Top Videos. Getty Images. Sponsored Business Content. A series of three experiments conducted by Cardiff University in Wales determined that chewing gum " impairs short-term memory for both item order and item identity.
A Kent State University study tested more than obese individuals before and after they had bariatric surgery. Men's Health reports that "before the surgery, most subjects showed below-average memory skills. But 12 weeks after surgery Researchers at Cal Berkeley changed the sleep schedule for hamsters every three days for a month and the hamsters produced 50 percent fewer neurons than they did on a normal sleep schedule.
A recent study performed by Environmental Health Perspective, a journal published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, concluded that " children in high-fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ scores than those who lived in low-fluoride areas.
In businesses around the world, it's fairly common to toss ideas around at meeting to help stimulate creative and productive activity. But a Virginia Tech study revealed that " group settings can diminish expressions of intelligence, especially among women.
A wide-ranging study by the University of Manitoba found that more than five percent of all mental disorder is caused by being spanked or other forms of childhood physical abuse. If you believe the U. Army, PowerPoint presentations are making us stupid. Commanders in the Army told the New York Times in that the Microsoft program " stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making. A study by the journal Pediatrics showed that children who watched fast-paced cartoons like SpongeBob performed poorer at a mental test than those who watched an educational show or those who drew.
In addition to the numerous other harmful effects secondhand smoke causes, children who are exposed to enough of it could end up with lower IQs and lower achievement in school and on test scores , according to Central Michigan University. The Yale Stress Center concluded this year that stressful situations "can reduce the number of connections between neurons in the brain and impair the ability of managing tense events in the future ," as reported by The Morning Call. Cumulative stress, Yale found, can cause a decrease of gray matter in the brain's prefrontal cortex and "can impair the brain's ability to store information and respond to the environment.
If you're an older individual, taking Ambien a sleeping pill and Xanax used to ease stress and anxiety could become extremely harmful, according to doctors at AARP.
These drugs could cause "memory loss even amnesia , dementia and suicidal thoughts " among users and "both Xanax and Ambien slow down the central nervous system. While a higher IQ correlates with skills such as numeracy, which is essential to understanding probabilities and weighing up risks, there are still many elements of rational decision making that cannot be accounted for by a lack of intelligence. Consider the abundant literature on our cognitive biases.
It is now clear that a high IQ does little to help you avoid this kind of flaw, meaning that even the smartest people can be swayed by misleading messages. People with high IQs are also just as susceptible to the confirmation bias — our tendency to only consider the information that supports our pre-existing opinions, while ignoring facts that might contradict our views. Nor can a high IQ protect you from the sunk cost bias — the tendency to throw more resources into a failing project, even if it would be better to cut your losses — a serious issue in any business.
This was, famously, the bias that led the British and French governments to continue funding Concorde planes, despite increasing evidence that it would be a commercial disaster. Besides a resistance to these kinds of biases, there are also more general critical thinking skills — such as the capacity to challenge your assumptions, identify missing information, and look for alternative explanations for events before drawing conclusions.
These are crucial to good thinking, but they do not correlate very strongly with IQ, and do not necessarily come with higher education. Given these looser correlations, it would make sense that the rise in IQs has not been accompanied by a similarly miraculous improvement in all kinds of decision making.
As I explain in my book on the subject, a lack of rationality and critical thinking can explain why financial fraud is still commonplace, and the reason that millions of people dish out money on quack medicines or take unnecessary health risks.
For our society, it can lead to medical errors and miscarriages of justice. It may have even contributed to disasters like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and global financial crises. It is also contributing to the spread of fake news, and the huge political polarisation on issues like climate change — preventing us from finding an agreed solution before it is too late.
How do we avoid future disasters like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill if we don't embrace critical thinking? Considering the sweep of human history to date, then, we can see how our brains grew to live in increasingly complex societies. And modern life, while allowing us to think more abstractly, does not appear to have corrected our irrational tendencies.
We have assumed that smart people naturally absorb good decision making as they go through life — but it is now clear that is not the case. But we might also make a more concerted and deliberate effort to improve those other essential skills too that do not necessarily come with a higher IQ.
We now know that this kind of thinking can be taught — but it needs deliberate and careful instruction. That could save countless lives. But why not teach these skills in early education? Wandi Bruine de Bruin, now based at Leeds University Business School, and colleagues have shown that discussions of decision making errors can be incorporated in the history curriculum of high school students , for instance.
Not only did it improve their performance of a subsequent test of rationality; it also boosted their learning of the historical facts too. Others have attempted to revitalise the teaching of critical thinking in schools and universities — for instance, a discussion of common conspiracy theories teaches students the principles of good reasoning, such as how to identify common logical fallacies and how to weigh up evidence.
Having taken those lessons, the students appear to be more sceptical of misinformation in general — including fake news. These successes are just a small indication of what can be done, if rationality and critical thinking are given the same kind of respect we have traditionally afforded our other cognitive abilities.
Ideally, we might then start to see a steep rise in rationality — and even wisdom — in tandem with the Flynn effect. If so, the temporary blip in our IQ scores need not represent the end of an intellectual golden age — but its beginning.
Join more than one million Future fans by liking us on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter or Instagram. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc. Deep Civilisation Brain. Share using Email. By David Robson 10th July
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