The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein, Charles A. Murray
Authors: Richard J. Herrnstein, Charles A. Murray
Tags: United States, General, science, Social Science, History, Psychology, Sociology, Political Science, Education, Life Sciences, Genetics & Genomics, Educational Psychology, Intelligence Levels - United States, Nature and Nurture, Intelligence Levels - Social Aspects - United States, Intellect, Intelligence Levels
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different levels of technical curiosity through the use of boxed material (you have already come across some examples), notes, and appendixes. Because we expect (and fear) that many readers will go directly to chapters that especially interest them rather than read the book from cover to cover, we also insert periodic reminders about where discussion of certain key topics may be found.
PART I
The Emergence of a Cognitive Elite
The twentieth century dawned on a world segregated into social classes defined in terms of money, power, and status. The ancient lines of separation based on hereditary rank were being erased, replaced by a more complicated set of overlapping lines. Social standing still played a major role, if less often accompanied by a sword or tiara, but so did out-and-out wealth, educational credentials, and, increasingly, talent.
Our thesis is that the twentieth century has continued the transformation, so that the twenty-first will open on a world in which cognitive ability is the decisive dividing force. The shift is more subtle than the previous one but more momentous. Social class remains the vehicle of social life, but intelligence now pulls the train.
Cognitive stratification takes different forms at the top and the bottom of the scale of intelligence. Part II will look at the bottom. In Part I, we look at the top. Its story line is that modern societies identify the brightest youths with ever increasing efficiency and then guide them into fairly narrow educational and occupational channels. These channels are increasingly lucrative and influential, leading to the development of a distinct stratum in the social hierarchy, which we hereby dub the Cognitive Elite. The isolation of the brightest from the rest of society is already extreme; the forces driving it are growing stronger rather than weaker. Governments can influence these forces but cannot neutralize them.
This does not mean that a member of the cognitive elite never crosses paths with a person with a low IQ, but the encounters that matter tend to be limited. The more intimate or more enduring the human relationship is, the more likely it is to be among people similar in intellectual level. That the brightest are identified has its benefits. That they become so isolated and inbred has its costs. Some of these costs are already visible in American society, while others lie over the horizon.
Human society has always had some measure of cognitive stratification. The best hunters among the Bushmen of the Kalahari tend to score above the average of their tribe on modern intelligence tests and so, doubtless, would have the chief ministers in Cheop’s Egypt. 1 The Mandarins who ran China for centuries were chosen by examinations that tested for understanding of the Confucian classics and, in so doing, screened for intelligence. The priests and monks of medieval Europe, recruited and self-selected for reasons correlated with cognitive ability, must have been brighter than average.
This differentiation by cognitive ability did not coalesce into cognitive classes in premodern societies for various reasons. Clerical celibacy was one. Another was that the people who rose to the top on their brains were co-opted by aristocratic systems that depleted their descendants’ talent, mainly through the mechanism known as primogeniture. Because parents could not pick the brightest of their progeny to inherit the title and land, aristocracies fell victim to regression to the mean: children of parents with above-average IQs tend to have lower IQs than their parents, and their children’s IQs are lower still. Over the course of a few generations, the average intelligence in an aristocratic family fell toward the population average, hastened by marriages that matched bride and groom by lineage, not ability.
On the other hand, aristocratic societies were not as impermeable to social mobility as they tried to be. They allowed at least some avenues for ability to
PART I
The Emergence of a Cognitive Elite
The twentieth century dawned on a world segregated into social classes defined in terms of money, power, and status. The ancient lines of separation based on hereditary rank were being erased, replaced by a more complicated set of overlapping lines. Social standing still played a major role, if less often accompanied by a sword or tiara, but so did out-and-out wealth, educational credentials, and, increasingly, talent.
Our thesis is that the twentieth century has continued the transformation, so that the twenty-first will open on a world in which cognitive ability is the decisive dividing force. The shift is more subtle than the previous one but more momentous. Social class remains the vehicle of social life, but intelligence now pulls the train.
Cognitive stratification takes different forms at the top and the bottom of the scale of intelligence. Part II will look at the bottom. In Part I, we look at the top. Its story line is that modern societies identify the brightest youths with ever increasing efficiency and then guide them into fairly narrow educational and occupational channels. These channels are increasingly lucrative and influential, leading to the development of a distinct stratum in the social hierarchy, which we hereby dub the Cognitive Elite. The isolation of the brightest from the rest of society is already extreme; the forces driving it are growing stronger rather than weaker. Governments can influence these forces but cannot neutralize them.
This does not mean that a member of the cognitive elite never crosses paths with a person with a low IQ, but the encounters that matter tend to be limited. The more intimate or more enduring the human relationship is, the more likely it is to be among people similar in intellectual level. That the brightest are identified has its benefits. That they become so isolated and inbred has its costs. Some of these costs are already visible in American society, while others lie over the horizon.
Human society has always had some measure of cognitive stratification. The best hunters among the Bushmen of the Kalahari tend to score above the average of their tribe on modern intelligence tests and so, doubtless, would have the chief ministers in Cheop’s Egypt. 1 The Mandarins who ran China for centuries were chosen by examinations that tested for understanding of the Confucian classics and, in so doing, screened for intelligence. The priests and monks of medieval Europe, recruited and self-selected for reasons correlated with cognitive ability, must have been brighter than average.
This differentiation by cognitive ability did not coalesce into cognitive classes in premodern societies for various reasons. Clerical celibacy was one. Another was that the people who rose to the top on their brains were co-opted by aristocratic systems that depleted their descendants’ talent, mainly through the mechanism known as primogeniture. Because parents could not pick the brightest of their progeny to inherit the title and land, aristocracies fell victim to regression to the mean: children of parents with above-average IQs tend to have lower IQs than their parents, and their children’s IQs are lower still. Over the course of a few generations, the average intelligence in an aristocratic family fell toward the population average, hastened by marriages that matched bride and groom by lineage, not ability.
On the other hand, aristocratic societies were not as impermeable to social mobility as they tried to be. They allowed at least some avenues for ability to
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