Iltasanomat
(Finnish newspaper) wrote today, how we Finns are smarter than
other Europeans. This is not of course any kind of news to us. We have naturally noticed it when we
have been in contact with the people from more stupid nations :)
In this story there is though one negative connotation. We can not always take advantage of that quality when we are in tough competition in this world.
Iltasanoma’s article, however, is the old warming up, the magazine claimed about the Finns higher intelligence as early as in June.
According this article the scientists estimate the Finnish high-IQ due to the effects of history. Ice Age raised the IQ of the Finns, because smart people "survived and were more likely to continue the family line."
Another moment, when Finnish intelligence improved, was, according to scientists, the bad crop failures and the ensuing great famine in the late 1600’s, when one third of the population was killed. The article estimates that "wealthy people are more likely to be smarter" and that the disastrous famine hit, especially the disadvantaged. A similar effect was, according to scientists, a war called Suuri Pohjan Sota (1700-1721), in which a large number of the poor young Finnish men were killed. Also the fact that industrialization came to Finland later (in the European dimension), raised the Finnish population’s intelligence. According to the article the public health advances that came with the industrialization reduced the importance of the survival of wealth, which lowered the average intelligence.
According to the article, Finland's school success in the PISA studies is a sign of Finns’ higher IQs compared with other Europeans.
The study, called Solving the puzzle of why Finns have the Highest IQ, but one of the lowestnumber of Nobelprizes in Europe can be found in Intelligence magazine pages. It was written by researchers at the University of Oulu :Edward Dutton, Jan te Nijenhuis, and Eka Roivainen. Here is the summary:
In this story there is though one negative connotation. We can not always take advantage of that quality when we are in tough competition in this world.
Iltasanoma’s article, however, is the old warming up, the magazine claimed about the Finns higher intelligence as early as in June.
According this article the scientists estimate the Finnish high-IQ due to the effects of history. Ice Age raised the IQ of the Finns, because smart people "survived and were more likely to continue the family line."
Another moment, when Finnish intelligence improved, was, according to scientists, the bad crop failures and the ensuing great famine in the late 1600’s, when one third of the population was killed. The article estimates that "wealthy people are more likely to be smarter" and that the disastrous famine hit, especially the disadvantaged. A similar effect was, according to scientists, a war called Suuri Pohjan Sota (1700-1721), in which a large number of the poor young Finnish men were killed. Also the fact that industrialization came to Finland later (in the European dimension), raised the Finnish population’s intelligence. According to the article the public health advances that came with the industrialization reduced the importance of the survival of wealth, which lowered the average intelligence.
According to the article, Finland's school success in the PISA studies is a sign of Finns’ higher IQs compared with other Europeans.
The study, called Solving the puzzle of why Finns have the Highest IQ, but one of the lowestnumber of Nobelprizes in Europe can be found in Intelligence magazine pages. It was written by researchers at the University of Oulu :Edward Dutton, Jan te Nijenhuis, and Eka Roivainen. Here is the summary:
Highlights
- Finland does very well in PISA, but has very few Nobel Prize winners.
- Finns have the highest IQ in Europe but the smallest SD.
- Finns have high Conscientiousness and Agreeableness.
- This explains why they do well in education, but not in measures of significant creative achievement.
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Abstract
- Finland has been noted to perform consistently very well in the international PISA assessments for many years, but it also has a relatively low per capita number of Nobel Prize winners. We draw upon a large body of proxy data and direct evidence, including the first ever use of RTs to calculate the Finnish IQ and the first ever use of the WAIS IV and PISA scores in the same capacity. Based on these data, we hypothesize that Finns perform so consistently well in PISA because they have a higher IQ overall than other European countries and exhibit a specialized slow life history strategy characterized by high Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, and low Psychoticism and Extraversion. Most of these traits predict educational success but all would suppress genius and creativity amongst this population. We connect the present distribution of phenotypic traits amongst the Finnish population with evolutionary change starting in the Pleistocene, accelerating in the Holocene, and continuing into the present day. We argue that this profile explains why Finns are relatively poorly represented in terms of science Nobel laureates.
