- Psych concluded publication with Volume 6, Issue 1. It has been succeeded by Psychology International, which has a revised scope and a new editorial direction and is now published here. To preserve historical data integrity, the information on this webpage is retained but will no longer be updated.
Beyond Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability
Special Issue Information
This Special Issue is closed and no longer accepting submissions.
Fully 13 years have passed since Rushton and Jensen (2005) published their review of race differences in cognitive ability. The article now has over 500 citations. Rushton and Jensen’s (2005) work was impactful, partly because it carefully pitted culture-only versus hereditation models of the cause of race differences in intelligence. The authors were also thorough (the article is 60 pages long) in that they reviewed literature across ten “categories of evidence” regarding which model was possibly true. Ultimately, Rushton and Jensen (2005) concluded that “some genetic component [exists] in Black–White differences in mean IQ.”
Were they correct? What newer research has or will come to bear on this question? The special issue seeks high-quality scientific contributions regarding either Rushton and Jensen’s (2005) overall conclusion, or any of the ten categories of evidence they reviewed. Multiple perspectives are welcome. So too are reviews, new empirical evidence on the question(s), and articles that expand the scope beyond just Black / White comparisons. The contributions may focus on individuals as the unit of analysis, or feature aggregate-level (e.g., nations, regions, states) data.
The question is critically important because IQ is arguably the most powerful variable in social science. As such, group differences on IQ correlate with group differences on a host of variables (e.g., education, income, health, crime) that together seem to comprise human well-being. Without understanding the source of group-mean differences, we cannot make progress toward maximizing human well-being for everyone.
The ten categories of evidence include:
- The worldwide distribution of test scores,
- The g factor of mental ability,
- Heritability,
- Brain size and cognitive ability,
- Transracial adoption
- Racial admixture
- regression
- related life-history traits
- human origins research
- hypothesized environmental variables
Keywords
- Intelligence
- Group differences
- Race
- Ethnicity
- Nature / Nurture
- Well-being
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Published Papers
Psych - ISSN 2624-8611