Nature Or Nurture - On IQ

This is a post with a lot of quotes (with no permission) along with the sources.

An interesting point to note is the difference in the importance given to IQ by Goleman and by authors Herrnstein and Murray. A major theme in this post is "IQ or EQ?."

http://www.affirmativeactionhoax.com/pdfs/Goleman.pdf

Quote:

1. "The tendency toward a melancholy or upbeat temperament – like that toward timidity or boldness – emerges within the first year of life, a fact that strongly suggests that it too is genetically determined. Like most of the brain, the frontal lobes are still maturing in the first few months of life, and so their activity cannot be reliably measured until the age of about ten months or so. But in infants that young … the activity of the frontal lobes predicted whether they would cry when their mothers left the room. The correlation was virtually 100 percent."
2. "Standard IQ tests begin to be used after children start school; and the odds are two to one that an adult’s IQ will be within three points of his IQ at eight."

Quote from https://www.aei.org/publication/bell-curve-20-years-later-qa-charles-murray/  (interview with Murray - coauthor of "Bell Curve") - this is wonderful reading but I wonder how accurate it is.

1. "None of us has earned our IQ. Those of us who are lucky should be acutely aware that it is pure luck (too few are), and be committed to behaving accordingly. "
2. " The reaction to “The Bell Curve” exposed a profound corruption of the social sciences that has prevailed since the 1960s. “The Bell Curve” is a relentlessly moderate book — both in its use of evidence and in its tone — and yet it was excoriated in remarkably personal and vicious ways, sometimes by eminent academicians who knew very well they were lying. Why? Because the social sciences have been in the grip of a political orthodoxy that has had only the most tenuous connection with empirical reality, and too many social scientists think that threats to the orthodoxy should be suppressed by any means necessary. Corruption is the only word for it." 
3. "Herrnstein and Murray establish their basic case that intelligence test scores are highly correlated with important social phenomena, ranging from academic success to infant mortality, which is far higher among babies whose mothers are in the bottom quarter of the IQ distribution. Empirical data from a wide variety of sources establish that even differing educational backgrounds or socioeconomic levels of the families in which individuals were raised are not as good predictors of future income, academic success, job performance ratings, or even divorce rates, as IQ scores are."
4. "Herrnstein and Murray present massive, unequivocal evidence that childhood IQ scores correlate closely with adult income. "
5.  "Herrnstein and Murray point out that if population A has an average IQ of 100 and population B of 97, then 31% more of the former have IQs over 120 than the latter and 42% more over 135. "
6. "The correlation between an occupation’s status and the rank order of the average IQ of its members is .90-.95. The average IQ of the members of high-status professions has also remained remarkably constant over decades.11 For example, the average IQ of doctors has remained at about 125 for four decades." 
7. "Teachers give higher marks to girls/women than to boys/men in subjects in which boys/men attain higher marks on standardized achievement tests. This is true even in college, professional and graduate school."
8. "Teachers also overestimate the IQs of girls relative to boys. Lewis Terman chose high-IQ children for the study that I outlined by first asking teachers to choose the three brightest children in their classes. He then gave them an IQ test. Of the children that the teachers chose, nearly twice as many of the girls than the boys had IQs below 140 (Jensen 1980: 627). The reason is that girls tend to be better behaved, readier to follow instructions without questioning them, neater, more pleasant and better at routine aspects of subjects. For example, in mathematics, girls make fewer errors in arithmetic computation (addition, multiplication, etc.), but boys are better able to solve problems that require mathematical reasoning." - Can't help but wonder - is this point (and the previous bullet) accurate? I do understand that girls' maturity is often mistaken for intelligence.
9. "Another factor that diminishes correlations between school performance and occupational success is the tremendous difference in academic standards among schools. A study by the U.S. Department of Education in 1994 found that students who got A’s in English in some schools had, on average, the same reading scores as students in other schools who got C’s or D’s." 
10. "Ability at arithmetic computation has little connection with mathematical reasoning ability or general intelligence. Albert Einstein had difficulty balancing his check book. Conversely, Mrs. Shakuntala Devi, who can multiply two 13-digit numbers in 28 seconds and compute the eighth root of a 14-digit number in ten seconds, has an above average but not exceptional IQ."
11. "Innumerable carefully conducted studies involving huge numbers of people have found, without exception, that IQ scores are remarkably accurate predictors of academic, occupational, social, and emotional success decades after the tests were taken." - this is a repetition of the same point.
12.  "The Psychological Abstracts contains some 11,000 citations of studies on the relation of educational achievement to IQ. If there is any unquestioned fact in applied psychometrics, it is that IQ tests have a high degree of predictive validity for … scores on scholastic achievement tests, school and college grades, retention in grade, school dropout, number of years of schooling … probability of receiving a bachelor’s degree."
13.  "Everyone who explains the importance of IQ emphasizes that the more important intelligence is for an activity, the narrower is the range of the IQs of the people doing it and, consequently, the lower the correlation between IQ and successful performance among them [wowowow, extremely interesting]. So the correlation between SAT scores and college grades is highest at colleges with open admission and lowest at MIT and Caltech. Since only extremely academically able students go to graduate school, the average correlation between scores on the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), which is taken for applicants to graduate school, and grades in graduate school is only .30. Scores on the quantitative section of the GRE do not correlate at all with the grades of graduate students of mathematics at Berkeley. The reason is that their scores on the quantitative section of the GRE are all in the upper 2% of applicants to graduate schools. Similarly, as the article Goleman cited points out, the reason that IQ does not correlate with performance at the Bell Labs attests to the paramount importance there of what IQ measures for success. Everyone working in the Bell Labs has an extremely high IQ."
14. "Extravagant claims as to the power of emotional intelligence to predict success in the workplace appear to fly in the face of our existing research base. For instance, Barrick and Mount conducted a meta-analysis of 117 criterion-related validity studies of how the Big Five personality dimensions predict job behaviour. The 117 studies yielded 162 samples with a total of 23,994 individuals. The Big Five dimensions include emotionality, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and neuroticism. … Many of these factors overlap with what Goleman and Bar-On described as emotional intelligence. For example, agreeableness … is not an important predictor of job performance, even in those jobs containing a large social component (e.g., sales or management) … The overall correlations [of the Big Five together] topped out at r = .15, or 2% or 3% of the variance – rather less than the 20 to 80% suggested in popular writings."
15. "However, the article Goleman cited for the Marshmallow Test (Shoda, et al., 1990) reported that the results Goleman outlined were not for self-control. The children were exposed to various desirable objects, only one of which were marshmallows. They were divided into four groups, distinguished by whether the rewards were exposed or hidden and whether the children were advised as to how to distract themselves or were not. The remarkable correlations between adolescent emotional, social, and academic strengths and SAT scores that Goleman emphasized did exist, but only for those children who were exposed to the rewards and resisted them without having been advised on how to distract themselves. In the outline of their article, on its first page, Shoda et al., summed up the study as, “Experimental analyses of the cognitive-attentional processes that affect waiting in this situation helped to identify conditions in which delay behaviour would be most likely to reflect cognitive and attentional competencies.” So the adolescent strengths, which Goleman said were predicted by children’s ability to resist temptation, were in fact predicted by their ability to devise cognitive strategies, not by any emotional factor." 
16. "The average IQ of high school graduates is 105-106. That means that a person with a 100 IQ has to struggle to finish high school; but only 7% of people with only high school diplomas have as high an IQ as the median average college graduate and only 1% as high as the average person with a PhD, MD, or LLB. (Those people with IQs of 85 and below who have obtained high school diplomas score no higher than fifth or sixth grade level on standard achievement tests."
17.  "So a few businesses are owned by people with IQs of 100, but they must be either exceptionally simple, like booths in flea markets, or businesses they inherited and allow other people to run." - This is in response to the statement that a person with IQ 150 (or thereabout) works for a person with IQ 100 (meaning the business owner didn't have high IQ but perhaps had higher EQ than his employee with high IQ).
18.  "Among the NEA’s positions is that standardized tests are “similar to narcotics” in “maiming” children. In 1947 the influential yearbook of the NEA’s Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development stated, “Far too many people in America, both in and out of education, look upon the elementary school as a place to learn reading, writing and arithmetic.” Schools must put “human relationships first.” “It is the responsibility of the schools to be alert to the symptoms of strong emotions, to assist children in working out socially acceptable ways of expressing emotions.” Consequently, “We are going to have to change our ideas about the things we expect of teachers … She will help the children learn how to work together … She will listen to each child … and will help find what he needs … to grow.” The same demands were expressed in nearly every publication on education of the 1940s. The new approach required not only a reorientation of what teachers do, but also - 29 - an army of non-teachers to minister to children’s emotional and social needs and problems. Not only were many non-academic subjects introduced after World War II, but the vocabulary and sentence structure in school texts was radically simplified. For example, the average sentence-length in sixth, seventh and eighth grade readers declined from twenty words before World War II to fourteen in 1993. The 1947 NEA yearbook promised that the reward for following their approach would be, “Poverty, malnutrition, economic injustice, intolerance, ignorance will all yield to a dynamic program of education in the hands of socially literate teachers”. As Goleman showed so convincingly, it was when American schools were converted to teaching emotional and social skills that the emotional and social health of American adolescents began their precipitous decline." Whoa..
19. " Since the 1970s, many American states have required prospective public school teachers to pass standardized qualifying examinations. The core of these tests are reading comprehension, solving mathematical problems, identifying main ideas and sequential steps, drawing inferences, etc. In other words, they are intelligence tests, and teachers’ scores on them correlate with their SAT scores. Numerous careful studies have found no significant positive correlation between student performance and class size, educational expenditure, student motivation, post-high school educational intention, self-esteem, teachers’ degrees or any other factor except one: their teachers’ scores on these competence examinations." WOWOWOW
20. "The most extensive study, of 105 school districts in North Carolina, found that among students of all races and socioeconomic backgrounds, a difference between school districts of only 1% in their teachers’ average performance on the National Teacher Evaluation examination produced a 5% lower failure rate of high school juniors on standardized reading and mathematics tests. Only one other factor had any effect. Students in districts with more students per class did slightly better than students in districts with smaller classes. So in teaching, as in every other occupation, success is correlated with a score on tests of general intellectual ability, not of specific job performance, let alone enthusiasm, emotional health or social skills."
21. "By 1993, when these people, all of whom were raised by their biological parents in non-poor homes, were 28-36 years old, 49 percent of the Very Dull women, 33 percent of the Dull women, 14 percent of the Normal women, 6 percent of the Bright women, and 3 percent of the Very Bright women had had an illegitimate child (pages 39-40). Since the average IQ of the children of the Very Dull women will be considerably lower than the children of the Very Bright women, they will have a much higher crime rate. It is for this reason that illegitimate children have a much higher crime rate than children who were raised by both their biological parents. " - very interesting. Illegitimate children are born more to dull women than to bright women. Dull people are more likely to become criminals? Is this largely true?
22. "The average income of lawyers, corporate executives, and accountants rises constantly, but the average income of laborers, waiters, and clerks does not. In twenty years after 1993, the difference in income between the members of these cognitive classes will be enormous; the difference in family income will be much greater than the difference in individual income; and the difference in net worth will be much greater than the difference in family income...Even the projected difference in net worth understates the difference in success between these cognitive classes, since, as Murray pointed out, many of the highest status occupations are not the most lucrative. The public’s rating of the status of occupations has been remarkably consistent for generations, and scientists and professors are invariably among the five occupations with the highest status. Consequently, the correlation between IQ and occupational status is closer than between IQ and income. " 

Of course the question of nature vs nurture is different from the question of destiny vs free will. If we believe that everything that happened in our life (plus of course our genes) determines what we are and do, it could mean that there is little free will in our lives. Nurture doesn't translate to free will. A good link here.

An excellent quote from here:

"It has become possible to study the living brain, and researchers can now watch the decision-making "machinery" at work. A seminal experiment in this field was conducted by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s, wherein he asked subjects to choose a random moment to flick their wrist while he watched the associated activity in their brains. Libet found that the unconscious brain activity leading up to the conscious decision by the subject to flick his or her wrist began approximately half a second before the subject consciously decided to move. This build-up of electrical charge has come to be called "readiness potential." Libet's findings suggest that decisions made by a subject are actually first being made on a subconscious level and only afterward being translated into a "conscious decision," and that the subject's belief that it occurred at the behest of their will was only due to their retrospective perspective on the event. However, Libet still finds room in his model for free will, in the notion of the power of veto: according to this model, unconscious impulses to perform a volitional act are open to suppression by the conscious efforts of the subject. It should be noted that this does not mean that Libet believes unconsciously impelled actions require the ratification of consciousness, but rather that consciousness retains the power to, as it were, deny the actualization of unconscious impulses."

The last couple of lines are immensely fascinating - they allow for free will. The question that comes to mind is this: What causes the veto when it does take place? Which factors play a part? Is it purely random? Was it a thought or an emotion which lead to the veto? Was the thought or emotion voluntary?

Quote from here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2805246/

"Furthermore, because it is widely accepted among scientists that genes and the environment interact in complex ways to account for virtually all human characteristics (e.g., Moore, 2001), lay beliefs about the association between these factors have significance for scientific literacy."

As I am specifically interested in free will vs determinism rather than in the misleading title, I searched in Google for the terms scientific study of free will.

Quotes from this Wiki link:

• "It has been suggested that consciousness mostly serves to cancel certain actions initiated by the unconscious. On this model, consciousness is understood to have "veto" power over our behavior. However even the act of "vetoing" has been shown to be unconsciously initiated in some cases. An action like running a red light may be initiated, then vetoed in miliseconds, all unconsciously.The precise role of consciousness in decision making therefore remains unclear."
• "Researcher Itzhak Fried says that available studies do at least suggest consciousness comes in a later stage of decision making than previously expected - challenging any versions of "free will" where intention occurs at the beginning of the human decision process." 
• "The other studies described below have only just begun to shed light on the role that consciousness plays in actions and it is too early to draw very strong conclusions about certain kinds of "free will". It is worth noting that such experiments – so far – have dealt only with free will decisions made in short time frames (seconds) and may not have direct bearing on free will decisions made ("thoughtfully") by the subject over the course of many seconds, minutes, hours or longer. Scientists have also only so far studied extremely simple behaviors (e.g. moving a finger)"

Based on the last bullet point above, a question then arises: Where action takes place after a thought of several hours how does free will work? Are all such actions resulting from free will? The question I have is this: Are thoughts and emotions a result of free will? Are actions, even those that are preceded by hours or years of contemplation, decided solely by our thoughts and emotions - in which case where does free will fit in?

What causes thoughts: 

• http://engineering.mit.edu/ask/what-are-thoughts-made

What causes emotions:

• http://www.effective-mind-control.com/what-causes-emotions.html
• http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/5-ways-your-brain-influences-your-emotions.htm - very nice article

• "For some people, the inability to realize when they're experiencing emotions is a reality. People with alexithymia (Greek for "without words for emotions") have trouble identifying internal emotional states and describing their emotions to others. Alexithymia is caused by brain structure abnormalities, either present at birth or resulting from brain damage"
• "Scientists have actually seen firsthand what happens when the system of emotional balance provided by the brain's hemispheres breaks down. They've found that people who have had brain damage in the left hemisphere of the brain are at a higher risk for suicide because they're overwhelmed with negativity, while people who have had damage to the right hemisphere can be overly optimistic because they have trouble identifying negative emotions" 

Additional reading (added on 24-Jun-2016): 

1. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/mar/13/brain-scans-can-spot-criminals-scientists-say - as per article brain scan is different for a person who does something intentionally as against someone who does it accidentally.
2. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-we-control-our-thoughts/
3. http://www.effective-mind-control.com/intuitive-decision-making.html - nice article
4. http://outsmartyourbrain.com/find-your-emotional-triggers-on-this-list/
5. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/9267147/Its-nature-not-nurture-personality-lies-in-genes-twins-study-shows.html 
6. http://personalityspirituality.net/articles/what-is-personality/
7. http://open.lib.umn.edu/intropsyc/chapter/11-3-is-personality-more-nature-or-more-nurture-behavioral-and-molecular-genetics/ - nice article.
8. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/what-neuroscience-says-about-free-will/