Monday, January 28, 2019

Data: Current trends might be selecting for low self-discipline

In my view, people in the human biodiversity (HBD) community have a tendency to focus on the importance of IQ to the exclusion of other traits.  Don't get me wrong: general intelligence is IMPORTANT, but so are traits like conscientiousness. 

One reason why we don't write much about personality traits is that the science is not as developed. We typically have to rely on self-report data to measure personality, and such an approach has obvious limitations.

I agree with the view that educational level reflects conscientiousness as well as intelligence.  It's takes planning and self-discipline to stay in school and to spend so much time learning about topics that only we nerds find interesting.

Here's a bar graph depicting the current mean number of offspring for women ages 40-55 by years of education completed (General Social Survey, N = 1,443):
















I assume that people with only a few years of education are immigrants from countries where this sort of thing is common.  Women with less than a high school education average more than three kids.  Compare this to the mean of 1.4 kids for those with 20 years of schooling.

Consciousness as well as IQ are heritable, so if I'm right that educational level reflects both, current social trends are selecting for low intelligence AND low self-discipline.  Not good.

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