Today i learned that Intelligence is heritable and it was a gut punch knowing my parents.
Can anyone clue me in on how it’s expressed or is it a soft cap?
Are highly hifted children anomalies or is it just a good expression of genes?
In: Biology
As I understand it, the heritability aspect is an observation applicable to large populations. Individuals can still have notable IQ differences from their parents due to differences in environment & education, especially the younger they are.
There’s also the Flynn Effect. Every 10 years, average IQs go up 2 or 3 points, and scoring is adjusted to make the average fit the curve and keep the middle at 100. So what was an IQ of 100 in 1924 would be a 70 today: borderline developmentally disabled. But those people in the 1920s were fine—completely functional, generally intelligent, if not occasionally outright geniuses who far surpassed their parents in achievement. Meanwhile, consider what it means for your generation. If the trend holds, you’re probably already at least 6 IQ points ahead of your parents, right?
My kid is adopted and struggles with self-doubt over what may be inherited from the awful birth parents. My job as a parent is not to indulge the doubts. My kid and their siblings are all bright, charismatic and thriving, because they’ve got supportive families and schools. It doesn’t matter if there’s a good chance they won’t be getting a scholarship to MIT; they’ve already surpassed their birth parents in every other way that matters.
Try to look at it like this: Kids inherit the best parts of their parents. If your parents had grown up in a better environment, they still may not have scored high on IQ tests, but they could still have been good people living fulfilling lives. If you got the best parts of what they were, you will almost certainly surpass them. Whether that manifests as a higher score on an IQ test, or just a better life by some other measure, who knows.
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