High IQ and Askenazi Jews

[pconroy]

Very interesting article, which confirms my opinions that high IQ's in Askenazi Jews were produced by positive selection over the last 1,300 years, particularly by the medieval laws in Europe prohibiting usuary (money lending) among Christians, and only allowing Jews to perform this occupation:

harpend.dsl.xmission.com/Documents/Ashkenazi.IQ.pdf


Originally posted under the heading, "The Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence" at Vetinarilord's blog:
vetinarilord.blogspot.com/2004_08_15_vetinarilord_archive.html

[pconroy]

No comments, eh?

I guess I should have gone with my original title:

"Medieval Pope creates Master Race"

[jojocircus]

So what the article states is that the smartest Jewish people go the best jobs and had more children and better health. Probably after this became established, Jewish people then started to really value intelligence. They would push education and marrying a smart spouse. The the selection pressure would be heightened even more. I believe the culture's value on intelligence was very important in having a high group IQ.
Jews in the US might start to absorb the greater culture. The US culture really values things like youth and appearance. This will greatly affect how Jewish people marry. Therefore, the high IQ phenomenon will vanish in a couple generations.

[IranianLion]

So how come the Ashkenazi Jews had one of the lowest average IQs among ancestry groups when they first came to the USA? This was reported in an article posted in the Race and IQ thread.

Surely, had they been evolving superior intelligence for more than a thousand years the Jewish immigrants would have shown this practically off the bat (especially in mathematical performance where language skills are not too much of a hindrance)?

Besides, I think they must of had lower average IQ than other European ancestry groups which immigrated at around the same time, no?

[Melnorme]

IranianLion said:

So how come the Ashkenazi Jews had one of the lowest average IQs among ancestry groups when they first came to the USA? This was reported in an article posted in the Race and IQ thread.

I think this may be an urban legend, or a one-time incident ( ie, a conclusion drawn from just one single IQ testing ).

[IranianLion]

Melnorme said:

I think this may be an urban legend, or a one-time incident ( ie, a conclusion drawn from just one single IQ testing ).

I don't think it was either Mel unless the article is lying. But it does say the Ashkenazi quickly improved their IQ scores. I wonder why...


Ethnicity and IQ.
by Thomas Sowell, Vol. 28, American Spectator, 02-01-1995, pp 32.

...

Even before Professor Flynn's studies, mental test results from American soldiers tested in World War II showed that their performances on these tests were higher than the performances of American soldiers in World War I by the equivalent of about 12 IQ points. Perhaps the most dramatic changes were those in the mental test performances of Jews in the United States. The results of World War I mental tests conducted among American soldiers born in Russia--the great majority of whom were Jews--showed such low scores as to cause Carl Brigham, creator of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, to declare that these results "disprove the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent." Within a decade, however, Jews in the United States were scoring above the national average on mental tests, and the data in The Bell Curve indicate that they are now far above the national average in IQ.

Strangely, Herrnstein and Murray refer to "folklore" that "Jews and other immigrant groups were thought to be below average in intelligence. " It was neither folklore nor anything as subjective as thoughts. It was based on hard data, as hard as any data in The Bell Curve. These groups repeatedly tested below average on the mental tests of the World War I era, both in the army and in civilian life. For Jews, it is clear that later tests showed radically different results--during an era when there was very little intermarriage to change the genetic makeup of American Jews.

...

[Melnorme]

Well, I'm loathe to use such arguments, but the tests may have been discriminatory ( I believe I read something to that effect on Gene Expression ). With questions that only rural 'farm boys' would know how to answer, and stuff like that. It certainly sounds like Mr. Brigham had an agenda.

And where did this 'popular belief' come from?

[pconroy]

The results of World War I mental tests conducted among American soldiers born in Russia--the great majority of whom were Jews--showed such low scores as to cause Carl Brigham, creator of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, to declare that these results "disprove the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent." Within a decade, however, Jews in the United States were scoring above the national average on mental tests, and the data in The Bell Curve indicate that they are now far above the national average in IQ.

I think you have your answer right there - they were recent immigrants from Russia and probably didn't understand English and certainly the tests in those days would not have been "Culture Fair". So after learning English in the army and 10 years of experience in the US their scores improved dramatically.

In past times it was common for the US to recruit soldiers directly from new immigrant groups. For instance during the Civil War, illiterate Irish immigrants arriving in the North East ports were told to sign papers joining the Union (Yankee) army - often they were send directly by train from the immigrant ships to the front lines. In all 150,000 new Irish immigrants fought on the Union side and 50,000 on the Confederate side. So it is entirely probable that these practices were also used on illiterate Jews (in terms of English) arriving in the US.

[pconroy]

jojocircus said:

Jews in the US might start to absorb the greater culture. The US culture really values things like youth and appearance. This will greatly affect how Jewish people marry. Therefore, the high IQ phenomenon will vanish in a couple generations.

I think this is already happening, at least in New York it is very evident.

So I think social isolation created the high IQs and social inclusion and assimilation will lower them - but not completely, as people tend to marry people close to their own IQ in general.

[gbloco]

the jump in jewish iq from first to second and third generations may well be explained by improved diet. russian diets were famously poor (though jews still enjoy a substantial iq advantage over the similarly malnourished ethnic russians). presumably this is also one of the main explanations for the flynn effect (and increasing average heights worldwide).

as for jewish outmarriage and iq dilution, i think that is likely to take a long time. while jews no longer feel constrained to marry other jews they tend to be much more discriminatory in mate selection -- witness the new york dating scene, almost entirely based on educational background/career prospects/wealth. my jewish friends who are going out with goys nearly always stick to someone from a similar social level. similarly i have a lot of successful half and quarter jewish friends.

[IranianLion]

gbloco said:

the jump in jewish iq from first to second and third generations may well be explained by improved diet. russian diets were famously poor (though jews still enjoy a substantial iq advantage over the similarly malnourished ethnic russians). presumably this is also one of the main explanations for the flynn effect (and increasing average heights worldwide).

as for jewish outmarriage and iq dilution, i think that is likely to take a long time. while jews no longer feel constrained to marry other jews they tend to be much more discriminatory in mate selection -- witness the new york dating scene, almost entirely based on educational background/career prospects/wealth. my jewish friends who are going out with goys nearly always stick to someone from a similar social level. similarly i have a lot of successful half and quarter jewish friends.

That's a heck of a long way to go due to dietary changes isn't it?

And would dietary changes be so dramatic from the second to third generation of Ashkenazi immigrants? I am doubtful (I've never heard of famine in the US f.e.).

I think more information is needed before we can come to any definite conclusions. We don't know how long these Ashkenazi soldiers had been in the US, if they were illiterate or not, whether they were malnourished and so on.

[jojocircus]

Try moving to a foreign country where you don't know the language. Then take an IQ test in that country's language. Now let's see how well you do.

[Solomon]

^That's a great point.