Here is a brief portion of a mini-interview featured by Amazon during which David Shenk responds to questions about his latest book, The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQ.
Photo © Alexandra Beers
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Q: You assert in the book that everything we’ve been told about genetics, talent, and IQ is wrong. Everything? How so?
It is a bold statement, and it reflects how poorly the public has been served when it comes to understanding the relationship between biology and ability. The clichés we’ve been taught about genetic blueprints, IQ, and “giftedness” all come out of crude, early-20th century guesswork. The reality is so much more interesting and complex. Genes do have a powerful influence on everything we do, but they respond to their environments in all sorts of interesting ways. We’ve now learned a lot more about the developmental mechanisms that enable people to get really good at stuff. Intelligence and talent turn out to be about process, not about whether you were born with certain “gifts.”
Q: You also state that the concept of nature versus nurture is over. Scientists, cognitive psychologists, and geneticists are moving towards an idea of ‘interactionism.’ What does this mean? If the battle of genes versus environment is over, who has won? Which is more important?
They both won, because they’re both vitally important. But the new science shows us that they do not act separately. Declaring that a person gets X-percent of his/her intelligence from genes and Y-percent from the environment is like saying that X-percent of Shakespeare’s greatness can be found in his verbs, and Y-percent in his adjectives. There is no nature vs. nurture, or nature plus nurture; instead, it’s nature interacting with nurture, which is often expressed by scientists as “GxE” (genes times intelligence). This is what “interactionism” refers to. A vanguard of geneticists, neuroscientists, and psychologists have stepped forward in recent years to articulate the importance of the dynamic interaction between genes and the environment.
Q: You describe genes and environment as a sound board. How so?
In the past, we’ve been taught that each distinct gene contains a certain dossier of information, which in turn determines a certain trait; if you have the blue-eyed gene, you get blue eyes. Period.
It turns out, though, that the information contained inside genes is only part of the story; another critical part is how often genes get “expressed,” or turned on, by other genes and by outside forces. It’s therefore helpful to think of your genome as a giant mixing board with thousands of knobs and switches. Genes are always getting turned on/off/up/down by hormones, nutrients, etc. People actually affect their own genome’s behavior with their actions.
Q: How do these new findings affect the concept of the “The Bell Curve”–that we live in an increasingly stratified world where the “cognitive elite,” those with the best genes, are more and more isolated from the cognitive/genetic underclass? Is that idea now completely obsolete?
Yes, it is obsolete. The idea that there is a genetic super-class that has a corner on high-IQ genes is nonsense. This comes out of a profound misunderstanding of how genes work and how intelligence works, and also from a misreading of so-called “heritability” studies. I am not saying that genes don’t affect intelligence. Genes affect everything. But by and large I think the evidence shows that people with low intelligence are missing out on key developmental advantages.
Q: Lewis Terman invented the IQ test at Stanford University in 1916. He declared it the ideal tool to determine a person’s native intelligence. Are IQ tests accurate? What are the benefits and fallout of the IQ test?
IQ tests accurately rank academic achievement. That’s quite different from identifying innate intelligence, which doesn’t really exist. Tufts intelligence expert Robert Sternberg explains that “intelligence represents a set of competencies in development.” In other words, intelligence isn’t fixed. Intelligence isn’t general. Intelligence is not a thing. Instead, intelligence is a dynamic, diffuse, and ongoing process.
The IQ test has valid uses. It can help teachers and principals understand how well students are doing and what they’re missing. But the widespread belief that it defines what each of us are capable of (and limited to) is disabling for individuals and society. People simply cannot reach their full potential if they honestly believe that they are so severely restricted.
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David Shenk is the national bestselling author of five previous books, including The Forgetting, Data Smog, and The Immortal Game. He is a correspondent for The Atlantic.com, and has contributed to National Geographic, Slate, The New York Times, Gourmet, Harper’s, The New Yorker, NPR, and PBS. His new book, The Genius in All of Us , has been called “engrossing” by Booklist (starred review) and “empowering…myth-busting” by Kirkus.
Shenk’s work inspired the Emmy-award winning PBS documentary The Forgetting, and was featured in the Oscar-nominated feature Away From Her. He has advised the President’s Council on Bioethics, and is a popular speaker. His original term “data smog” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2004.
To visit David’s Amazon page, please click here.