The New Mental Landscape: Are People Getting Smarter?

In the 21st century, humanity seems to be at the peak of productivity, education, and technological savvy. It’s no surprise that studies show a rise in global IQ. But this raises several questions. For example, what do we really mean by intelligence? Which type is most important today—verbal, emotional, logical, interpersonal, or something else? What do we gain from enhanced abstract thinking, and what might we lose as it increasingly shapes our perception of the world?

Observe people waiting in a long supermarket line or drivers stuck in traffic, and you might quickly lose faith in humanity and its collective IQ. Reality shows and websites like “People of Walmart” only reinforce this impression. Many popular and underground songs echo the sentiment, “Only stupid people are breeding.” Apparently, this applies to many of us.

Today, people are more tech-savvy than ever before. We’ve never been more productive, educated, or technologically advanced. My high school teacher once said that when Einstein was developing the theory of relativity, only a handful of people worldwide were literate enough to understand it. Just one generation later, every student was learning about it in high school and could grasp it—at least well enough to pass a test.

We receive conflicting information from different sources, making it hard to say definitively whether humanity as a whole is getting smarter, aside from individual cases of foresight and personal experience. Let’s look at what research tells us. What’s really happening here? As is often the case, the deeper you dig, the more complex the issue becomes.

What Is Intelligence?

First, there’s debate over the very definition of “intelligence.” Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner introduced the concept of “multiple intelligences,” a key idea in education for several years. These include verbal, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal (relating to others), intrapersonal (understanding one’s own feelings, thoughts, and beliefs), naturalistic (understanding the external world), and existential intelligence (grappling with deeper questions of life).

Traditionally, vocabulary size was seen as a marker of intelligence, and it’s been shown to correlate with IQ. However, a 2006 study found that Americans’ vocabulary has been shrinking since its peak in the 1940s. It’s worth noting that vocabulary tests often have a cultural bias.

The Global IQ Trend

If you consider IQ the most important measure, note that it has been steadily rising worldwide. But there’s an interesting trend: IQ is increasing in developing countries, while growth in developed countries may be slowing. In a 2015 study by King’s College London published in the journal Intelligence, psychologists examined the state of global IQ. The study spanned over 60 years and collected IQ scores from 200,000 people in 48 countries. Researchers found that global IQ has risen by 20 points since 1950.

The biggest gains were seen in India and China. Overall, developing countries experienced growth thanks to improved education and healthcare systems. This phenomenon is known as the Flynn Effect, named after political scientist James Flynn, who predicted in 1982 that better living conditions would lead to higher collective IQ. Multiple studies have confirmed the Flynn Effect. Based on King’s College London’s analysis, experts concluded that IQ rose rapidly in developing countries, while the pace slowed in the U.S. and other developed nations. It’s possible that developing countries will eventually close the IQ gap.

The Rise of Abstract Thinking

Another reason for rising IQ is that the human brain continues to evolve toward more abstract thinking. Flynn cites a study in which Russian rural residents (whose lifestyle, according to the researchers, closely resembled that of our ancestors) were asked: “All bears are white where there is always snow. On Novaya Zemlya, there is always snow. What color are the bears there?” Most respondents said they didn’t know, since they’d never been there, or that they’d only seen black bears—refusing to complete the logical syllogism.

Another example: if you asked someone in the 19th century what rabbits and dogs have in common, people were unlikely to say they’re both mammals or warm-blooded. Instead, they might say both are furry or used by humans. These cases show that people used to rely more on real-world experience than on abstract, logical, or “scientific” reasoning. Flynn said this shift in our abilities today illustrates “nothing less than the liberation of the human mind.”

Flynn writes: “The scientific worldview, with its vocabulary, systematization, and separation of the logical and hypothetical from concrete comparisons, began to penetrate the minds of post-industrial people. This paved the way for mass university education and the emergence of intellectual professionals, without whom our current civilization would be unthinkable.”

What’s Next for Human Intelligence?

Will we ever reach the limits of what humans can comprehend? Will changes in our environment reshape our mental landscape? And what about the monumental changes the next industrial revolution will bring with the rise of robots and artificial intelligence? No one knows the answers to these questions.

Older generations often complain that young people lack “common sense.” As the saying goes, when something is gained, something else is lost—this principle holds true in nature and in life. Perhaps as our thinking becomes more abstract, we tend to lose some practical aspects of our abilities. As each generation becomes less like the previous one, their new skills help transform the world in ever more dizzying, sophisticated, and fascinating ways.