Subscriber Preview: Taking the Flynn Effect Seriously

What exactly do rising IQ scores over time mean?

Herrnstein and Murray famously coined the “Flynn effect” in The Bell Curve:

We call [the worldwide phenomenon of rising test scores] “the Flynn effect” because of psychologist James Flynn’s pivotal role in focusing attention on it, but the phenomenon itself was identified in the 1930s when testers began to notice that IQ scores often rose with every succ…