Intelligence and National Achievement

  • Raymond B. Cattell, ed.

$34.95

Hardcover book. 166 pages
ISBN: 0-941694-14-3
Stock Number: 0442

In this work, four scholars present impressive evidence to establish that a nation’s level of economic, social and cultural achievement is determined in large measure by the average intelligence level of its people. This book is packed with information that has important implications for the well-being of all countries, including data on the intelligence levels of people in various occupations.

The six scholarly articles in the volume are:

“Introduction: The Contemporary Awakening,” by Raymond B. Cattell. “The Role of Psychological Testing,” by R. B. Cattell. “Test Scores as Measures of Human Capital,” by Barbara Lerner. “Fertility Differentials and the Status of Nations: A Speculative Essay on Japan and the West,” by Daniel R. Vining, Jr. “Population Intelligence and National Syntality,” by R. B. Cattell and Jerry M. Brennan. “Some Changes in Social Life in a Community With a Falling Intelligence Quotient,” by R. B. Cattell

In the book’s final essay (first published in 1938) Cattell identified changing birth patterns in Britain, and notably changes in the number of children by people of various social-economic groups. He showed that more intelligent people were having fewer children, and less intelligent people were having more children. As result, Cattell found, the average intelligence level of the British population was falling at the rate of one I.Q. point per decade.

This would bring significant changes in British society, he predicted, including a decline in educational performance, a rise in education costs, an increase in the pool of the basically unemployable and permanently unemployed, an increase in delinquency, a lowering of moral standards, a lowering of the nation’s cultural level, and even “an increase in the percentage of people adopting extreme or uncompromising political view-points.”

Developments in British society in the decades since that piece was written, as well as new findings, have largely validated Cattell’s research and sober predictions.

Raymond B. Cattell (1905-1998), editor and primary author of this work, was an influential and esteemed psychologist. He was regarded as one of the world’s leading personality theorists

Born and educated in Britain, he lived and worked for most of his life in the USA. He received his Ph.D. from the University of London. After a brief stint at Harvard University (1941-43), he was appointed research professor of psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana (1945), a position he held until becoming emeritus professor in 1974. Cattell was a prolific writer in the field of psychological measurement. Personality and Learning Theory, two volumes (1979–80), is considered his most important work.

In 1997, the American Psychological Association (APA) decided to honor Cattell, then 92 years old, with its prestigious "Gold Medal Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Science of Psychology.” Ideology-driven leftist academics and activists quickly denounced the decision, and demanded that it be withdrawn. Cattell then declined to accept the award, and a few months later he died.


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