We discuss the global hereditarian hypothesis of race differences in g and test it on data from the NLSF. We find that migrants country of origin's IQ predicts GPA and SAT/ACT.

Keywords: National IQs, race differences, country of origin, NLSF
Posted: 3/24/2014

Attached files: Layout PDF, source PDF

The term "afro-Americans" is archaic and should probably not be used. Correct the correlations for range restriction and SLODR when possible (people who take, e.g., the GMAT tend to be high-IQ). This paper should be published after these corrections are made.

"African-Americans" is more commonly used and should be used here as well. It is understood that American blacks are partly white.

The term "afro-Americans" is archaic and should probably not be used. Correct the correlations for range restriction and SLODR when possible (people who take, e.g., the GMAT tend to be high-IQ). This paper should be published after these corrections are made.

I'll make the first change. As for correlation corrections, could you provide an example of someone who does this in regards to national IQ correlations? I actually don't know how to, since our migrant variable is a group level one; as we aggregated individual scores, our range is the range of scores of national diasporas; we have no idea what the unrestricted variance, which we would need to know to make the corrections, would be since we have no unrestricted national level samples of SAT/ACT takers -- in fact we have no other samples.

Perhaps just mention that your correlations are likely attenuated. Or perform another analysis using Rindermann's 'smart fraction' numbers as covariates.

[quote='Emil' pid='69' dateline='1395708786']

The term "afro-Americans" is archaic and should probably not be used. Correct the correlations for range restriction and SLODR when possible (people who take, e.g., the GMAT tend to be high-IQ). This paper should be published after these corrections are made.

I will mention the issue with attenuation. With regards to SLODR, I am not sure what you have in mind. Can you elaborate? Generally, we are planning to replication this analysis using non-elite samples e.g., the New Immigrant Survey, NLSY97, etc -- so we didn't attempt to make adjustments. It was more of an exploratory analysis.

SLODR weakens correlations between cognitive ability tests on the national level (Coyle, T. R., & Rindermann, H. [2013]. Spearman’s Law of Diminishing Returns and national ability. Personality and Individual Differences 55, 406-410).

Coyle and Rindermann's reported correlation is attenuated in strength by their silly median-split study design.

you cite [?]

ok, publish

p1

“Lynn and Vanhanen have also advanced the hypothesis …”

“but more generally the gaps between different races living in various countries are due in part to genetic factors …”

“for instance 50% of the differences in national IQs are due to genetic factors …”




p3

“We inspected scores by nativity status and U.S. defined race …”

“the relationship between cumulative GPA and tests scores did not vary by nativity …”

Test scores from what? SAT/ACT are mentioned in the abstract, but not in Methods section.



p5

All variables should be described and linked with their Table 5 abbreviations in the main text. “Gen12 Test Score,” “ANT2013 AQ,” MC2014 NGMAT”, etc, are not intelligible.

p6


“Similarly, we checked if the association between migrant skin color and migrant test scores was mediated by national cognitive measures.”

Hypotheses should be explicit. It is not established why you are checking this.



pp8-9


Before this becomes house style, I would recommend the standard American Psychological Association citation style for OpenPsych journals.

Reference 23 was never cited in the text.

p1

I made the requested changes except regarding the references, as we are using LaTeX citation method. See under BibTex.

Let me know if I have met your requirements.
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[quote='Chuck' pid='149' dateline='1396301928']

p1

Newer version.

I don't really like being a reviewer, but the newer version is noticeably improved.


p1

“The global hereditarian hypothesis and the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshman”

Why this title when your paper is more specifically testing the "Spatial Transferability Hypothesis"?



"In terms of race differences in g no other pair of races is as well studied as the 1.1 d IQ gap between African Americans and European Americans"

A gap is not ‘a pair of races'. Perhaps:
‘Given the longstanding popularity of intelligence testing in the United States, most discussion about the existence and causes of racial differences in psychometric g has centered on the ~1 standard deviation IQ gap between black and white Americans’.



"The idea is that if the global hereditarian hypothesis is true to a significant degree, for instance 50% of the differences in national IQs are due to genetic factors, then persons who travel to other countries should be similar in their IQ to their home country, everything else equal (e.g. no selective migration and IQ-environment interaction effects)."

This statement is tautological. Sans selective migration, of course the average IQ of migrants should be similar to the average IQ of their home country. Any theory would predict this.


"Since IQ is a known predictor and cause of many social and economic variables at the personal level, it should also be a predictor at the group level inside host countries. We call this hypothesis "the spatial transferability hypothesis""

What hypothesis? That immigrant group average IQ predicts social outcomes? That immigrant groups have IQ scores similar to their national averages? That immigrant IQ averages are persistent across generations? The Spatial Transferability Hypothesis isn't clearly articulated.

Another idea is to get rid of a Spatial Transferability Hypothesis, and just articulate a Global Hereditarian Hypothesis, and list your predictions about immigrant IQ as extending from this more general theory. Perhaps some of the predictions are simply compatible with hereditarianism, while others are incompatible with non-hereditarianism.


p3


“Research Questions”


"whereas Fuerst (2014) dealt with migrants to Europe, we focus on migrants to the U.S.A."

“by comparing national reflectance scores”

You should explain a “reflectance score” somewhere in the text, or use a more self-explanatory description: e.g. “… by comparing measurements of national and migrant skin color.

Awkward sentence. Perhaps:
“Sixthly, as an alternative test of the spatial transferability hypothesis, which predicts similarity between immigrants and their descendants, we decompose scores by race/ethnicity (White, Asian, Hispanic, Black) and generation (first, second, third); we also determine if the predictive validity of these scores differs across generations.”


“(g) Are migrant group entrance test scores associated with migrant group
skin color scores? (h) If so, do measures of national cognitive ability substantially mediate this association?”

Why does the spatial transferability hypothesis predict this? Hypotheses still need to be more explicit.


p8

“For the country of origin values, we used age 25-29 data for year 1980, as this would have been the approximate cohort which birthed the NLSF students; the data came from Barro-Lee's dataset.”

Citation?

“Based on these results, we can answer all of our research questions in the affirmative.”

"The idea is that if the global hereditarian hypothesis is true to a significant degree, for instance 50% of the differences in national IQs are due to genetic factors, then persons who travel to other countries should be similar in their IQ to their home country, everything else equal (e.g. no selective migration and IQ-environment interaction effects)."

This statement is tautological. Sans selective migration, of course the average IQ of migrants should be similar to the average IQ of their home country. Any theory would predict this.

"Since IQ is a known predictor and cause of many social and economic variables at the personal level, it should also be a predictor at the group level inside host countries. We call this hypothesis "the spatial transferability hypothesis""

It is unclear to me how this sentence (which also comes across as tautological) is relevant to your theory; the Spatial Transferability Hypothesis seems like a simple theory that isn't being clearly articulated.

I will make the other corrections. As for the above, I suppose that we weren't clear about our theoretical frame.

National differences in principle could be national level phenomena that don't characterize aggregate individual level differences. Or they could represent differences that emerge on the macro level from small aggregate individual level ones. A possible example of this is Rushton's super K. See, for example, the attached paper below. Other examples probably include national differences in personality, collectivism, etc. (e.g., China might be substantially more collectivistic than Denmark, but individual Han might not be much more so than individual Danes.) Insofar as these differences are not individual aggregate ones, they need not significantly transfer. The spatial transferability hypothesis is the hypothesis that traits do well transfer (i.e., that to a large extent first generation migrants bring their national traits with them) which is consistent with the view that national differences are aggregate individual ones rather than emergent national ones. Obviously, a hereditarian hypothesis is necessarily one which proposes aggregate individual differences, so a hereditarian hypothesis necessarily presumes spatial transferability. Of course, some environmental hypothesis do likewise, but it is erroneous to say that all do.

A hereditarian hypothesis also predicts spatial+generational transferability. Migrants bring their national IQs with them and then transmit this across generations. Of course, a subset of environmental hypotheses can explain cross generational diasporiac transmission, just as a subset of genetic hypotheses can accommodate the absence of this, but a hereditarian hypothesis necessarily requires this transmission, so determining whether this occurs necessarily is a test of the a hereditarian hypothesis. Also, this spatial+generational transferability hypothesis was historically the reason for supposing racial and national genealogically transmitted differences in the first place. In the 1700s Linnaeus puzzled: “Who would deny that the Ethiopian is of the same species as we humans ... and yet the Ethiopian brings forth black children in our countries." The answer proposed by others was that the differences were not immediately due to environment as often assumed but were imprinted on genealogical lines, allowing for cross generational transmission despite relocation.

I suppose that you take what we call the spatial transferability hypothesis for granted. I don't think that this should be done. National differences in e.g., criminality don't necessarily imply aggregate individual level ones and/or that sans selection first generation migrants will exhibit national level differences.

This interchange, though, makes clear that (a) we didn't explicate our position and that (b) explication is probably needed.

I'll see what I can do.