Optimal IQ's for Various Groups
BY ROBERT A. LINDSAY | DECEMBER 23, 2011 · 11:08 PM
Hey Rob! The 106 figure given for East Asians is highly suspicious. It seems like these are taken directly from SAT's in which East Asians are overrepresented vs. all other groups that are underrepresented (save Jews and Indians).
105 in fact seems to be the absolute bottom end of East Asian IQ, which what poorest provinces of China as well as Mongolia get.
Zhejiang’s IQ was determined to be 115-116 (Raven’s).
This is Zhejiang’s (52 million people) performance on the recent PISA. It’s roughly 1 full SD over the highest white scores.
Koreans and Japanese reaction times far outperform their alleged 105-106 IQ’s (110-112 for adults has been found, and most recently 110 was found for Nagoya or another city in Japan)
WNs, neo-Nazis and Klansmen grudgingly admit to higher East Asian IQ’s but refuse to acknowledge that
1) Chinese and Sino-Tibetans are genetically distinct from other high IQ groups like the Koreans and Japanese
2) the North Chinese and Mongols are far more “pure-blooded” as far as East Asians go than either Koreans or Japanese
3) the place where Chinese most likely evolved into what they are, Tibet, is one of the coldest places on earth. It’s called the third pole for a reason.
4) IQ tests are biased in their age norming
5) the dumbest whites simply are not tested
6) East Asian societies are far more egalitarian than people realize, which means there’s much less of a rural-urban gap and much less selection bias
All non-white IQ’s are essentially grossly understated due to some combination of bias or poor nutrition.
I’d put optimal genotype IQ as follows:
North Coastal China: 115-118
South Coastal China: 112-116
Generalized Japanese/Korean: 110-112
Generalized Northern Euros: 97-102
Generalized Southern Euros: 92-102
Generalized Indian: 92-96 (they suffer from poor environment)
Sub-Saharan Africans: 85ish (malnutrition and poor education, but age bias favors them)
Everyone else (excl. Ashkenazi/Eastern Euros) I’d take Lynn’s latest and then tack on some 5-10 points. The IQ of Chinese in the traditional centers of learning and wealth are grossly underestimated.
This is nice stuff. Finally, an optimistic post about IQ. It is amazing that the people of Zhejiang have IQ’s of 116, but it doesn’t necessarily surprise me. I had always heard that the E. Asian IQ was 105, but the East Asians I kept meeting seemed so much smarter than that. A lot of them seemed smarter than I was! The numbers just did not seem to add up.
Another thing I noticed was the effortlessness of E. Asian achievement. My East Asian friends used to laugh at me for studying.
“Bob? Why do you study? We never study. Haha.” They got straight A’s.
“You never study?” I would ask.
“Maybe a little bit, the night before a test.”
This is something I have always known about smart people. My Mom used to work for a psychologist as a secretary. He administered IQ tests, among other tests.
He was brought up to believe that the high scorers studied all the time. So he would ask them if they studied a lot. The highest scorers often said that they hardly ever studied because the work was simply too easy. Often those scoring much lower said that they studied all the time, but still struggled to barely make good grades. He was getting ready to throw out the whole “People are smart because they study all the time,” thing.
He was also very liberal. But after giving IQ tests for 25 years, he was starting to wonder. The Jews and Asians scored highest, then the Whites, and then the Blacks. He also said that Mormons were “very nice, but dumb.” Welcome President Romney.
Asian scores may indeed be higher than what they seem, but this remains to be demonstrated. Surely the Zhejiang scores are very high. This makes the Zhejiang people as smart as Jews, with 3 times the population. The Protocols of the Elders of Zhejiang anyone?
It is interesting that the Chinese may have evolved in Tibet, one of the coldest places on Earth. That is if we are to put any weight on the cold = high IQ theory of IQ. I am not sure about huax’s points 4-6. I am also not sure about his optimized phenotypic IQ scores for Asia. However, the ones for Europe may be about right.
For India, he may be onto something. Indian IQ’s are low – at 82, lower than US Blacks at 87. However when Indians move to the West, the resulting scores tend to be ~92-96. There is of course the question of selection bias – that we are only getting the smartest of Indians. Yet Indian IQ’s are just as high in the UK, where any old Indian can immigrate, and they have not had boatloads of IT immigrants.
The optimal Black IQ may indeed be ~85. The US Black IQ is 87, but they have 15% White admixture. The UK Black IQ (mostly Jamaican) is 86, but they have 9% White admixture. At any rate, African and Caribbean IQ’s can conceivably rise to ~85 under optimal conditions. A lot of people are pessimistic about Africa, but in terms of IQ, the future may indeed be bright. We could be seeing substantial IQ rise in Africa in the future. Considering all of Africa’s problems, rising IQ can only benefit the continent.
It’s depressing to think that Black IQ may have ceilinged out in the US and UK. Nevertheless, Western Blacks have benefited greatly from moving to the West. If they had stayed in Africa or the Caribbean, their IQ’s would be 67-71. They love to complain about Western racism, but it looks like in addition to a lot of racism, we also donated about 15 IQ points to them. And you’re welcome.
46 responses to “Optimal IQ’s for Various Groups”
Raskolnikov
I think 105-107 for East Asians is more accurate. PISA is not an IQ test after all. Singapore Chinese score 107, the same as Chinese in Hong Kong.
I saw a news article on Thai IQ not long ago, Thailand now scores 99, with Bangkok scoring an impressive 104. One Thai province. Thai IQ is a lot higher than it was in 1997 when it was in the low 90s. One Thai province scored a whopping 109.
huax
I believe that cold climate alone only accounts partially for higher IQ. High group IQs are the results of the following (in no specific order), I believe:
1) Food scarcity, extreme climate, anything that challenges the typical person to use intelligence to survive
2) Genocide, esp selective genocide, kinda ties in with the first
3) Civilization and cultural selection
4) Malnutrition, especially iodine deficiency, are huge
5) Education is minor but significant in all of the tests I’ve looked at
Southern India (and Northern India) have been settled for a long time. Many Indian caste subgroups are highly intelligent despite climate, in my opinion, because they have been self-segregated, literate and social for thousands of years. Intelligent people when given the chance to compete will inevitably win out and have more children. Even now the smartest Indians are richer than god and the least intelligent ones are (sadly) dying by the millions.
Likewise I imagine Arabs and East Africans have average IQs of at least 90. I would personally put “Eskimos” at 100+, but I agree that their IQ has been limited by small population size and thus a lack of specialization and social competition.
To explain China you have to understand that they’ve been a meritocratic society for thousands of years. The rich and powerful would scour the countryside for promising young men and then basically pay their way to success in return for favor once they became officials, which for Chinese men usually means lots of children at the end (though not so often with multiple wives, that was usually reserved for emperors).
Not only that, but whenever nomads committed mass murder against sinicized settlements (usually part Chinese and part non-Chinese) they would more or less kill everyone that wasn’t an intellectual or that they couldn’t recruit into their army.
China and East Asia in general is an extremely tough environment in general, resource poor, relatively little good agricultural land, no natural resources, miserable coastline, unpredictable weather, lots of earthquakes, etc.
Raskolnikov
I think 105-107 for East Asians is more accurate. PISA is not an IQ test after all. Singapore Chinese score 107, the same as Chinese in Hong Kong.
afaik Singaporean Chinese are at 108, but Singaporean Chinese are the descendants of Hokkien laborers with a small number of elite migrants thrown in, but also significant Malay admixture. Lee Kuan Yew himself made mention of this when speaking with a Chinese delegation, and as with many things he was right, China is indeed growing a lot faster than Singapore was as at a similar period in time.
PISA, TIMSS, SAT scores all support a higher-than-106 IQ score for East Asians in general. But what about wealth?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_wealth
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/the-200-trillion-world-who-owns-all-the-wealth/249788/
When WNs tabulated GDPs vs IQ they were relatively satisfied with their results, but offered a lot of crackpot theories on why East Asians “underperformed”. The truth is, developed East Asia has an average per capita net worth of ~120-240, not counting the balance owed to them via international investments.
If you look at the link, 127 million Japanese own 27 trillion (+ net 3 trillion from their overseas assets minus money owed domestically to foreigners). 300 million Americans own 58 trillion, and 450 million West Euros own 55 trillion.
The average Hong Konger or Singaporean Chinese is even richer than the average Japanese. Hong Kong is so rich that if they took JUST the money foreigners owed them, bought everything they owned domestically, and then split the remainder among the citizenry, they’d be able to write a check for $115,000 to every single man, woman, child and baby in Hong Kong. And that’s in nominal terms. 10% of Singaporean and Hong Kong Chinese are also dollar millionaires.
Taiwan is similar, on a nominal basis they have $120k per capita, but PPP becomes $240k. Likewise, China’s GDP has been growing 8-10% but their *wealth* has grown 15% or more every year.
The problem with using GDP as a proxy for success in IQ debates is that GDP is not wealth. If you earn $100,000 and waste 80% of it, you’re not smarter than a guy who lives just as well with half your income. GDP also includes the cost of crime and damages, which is why GDP always rises sharply after natural disasters or during wars.
Hacienda
“GDP also includes the cost of crime and damages, which is why GDP always rises sharply after natural disasters or during wars.”
Most Americans couldn’t tell you what GDP stands for. But if you wave a flag in front of them, they enlist and fight to topple statues. It’s actually far, far simpler than anything you learned in school. FAR simpler.
In fact school is confusing because you do the things you just did above. Like try to explain away a confusion about GDP. My point is there is no confusion because nobody thinks about it in the first place. Not in America, anyway.
I believe the solution to the world’s problem is an updated form of Gehghis Kahn. Lot’s of fucking for Asian men. But this time we don’t have to do the messy business of killing Eurasians. :”Just do it”.
huax
This is targeted specifically at the WNs/HBers and other faux intellectual frauds who smugly use GDP as a measure of value or wealth, when it is neither.
And I definitely do not want to see East Asian men screwing around with women of other races including Southeast Asians.
Hacienda
“And I definitely do not want to see East Asian men screwing around with women of other races including Southeast Asians.”
I think I know why, but why?
huax
Because the women are usually brought back into the husband’s nation, and their offspring will be lower IQ, less healthy, more prone to crime, etc. East Asia is far too small as it is, as small groups of herders and hunters were forced off their land by teeming Caucasoid hordes.
I guess as long as you don’t do it in East Asian land and keep the half-breeds away there’s no harm to it.
Hacienda
“keep the half-breeds away”
That’s remarkably passive approach to life.
How then do you settle the woman shortage in China? If women leave and the men stay?
I’ve met lots of Chinese men in my life, truth is very few, very very few of them strike me as being remarkable. Actually very humdrum. Blacks are far more interesting personality wise than Asian men. On the excitement scale I rank blacks>whites>Asian men. On the thoughtfulness scale, the opposite. An thoughtfulness is boring, anyway. Whites seem to be the best at being Grecian. Building statues and geometric things, beauty contests, organized judging, being mounted by tuxedoes and other garments.
huax
There is a woman shortage everywhere.
huax
Lots of redundancy and poor editing in that post but I think it’s still readable
NonKoolAidDrinker
When did Caucasoid hordes force East Asians off their land? Are you talking about Russians in Siberia? You guys stole Southeast Asia from Australoid people and Central Asia from Caucasoid people. The average Caucasoid has more East Asian dna than the other way around. Do the math.
huax
Nope, everything from Northeastern Europe to Argentina was Amerind or Northeast or East Asian territory until the natives were swarmed and genocided by Caucasoids.
NonKoolAidDrinker
What a pathetic lie. Central Asia was Caucasoid until the eastern expansion of Mongoloid groups like the Huns and Mongols. Southeast Asia and Austroneasia was Austroloid and Negrito until Mongoloid people migrated south from Southern China.
I don’t think NE Europe was ever Mongoloid majority. It was probably the western edge of a gradational Cauc/Mong mixed area that extended from northern Scandinavia to Eastern Siberia. Most Arctic Eurasians are somewhat mixed between Caucasoid and Mongoloid to varying degrees.
huax
Well I just looked at the data and supposedly Taiwanese have $180,000 per capita nominal, which would be $360,000 in PPP, which sounds insane to me but I haven’t investigated for several years now.
My general stance on IQ is that it’s far malleable than WNs want to believe. It’s highly variable over the years even for whole groups of people. If only the smartest blacks were given aid or assistance their average IQ would probably rise to 90-100 in a few generations.
Raskolnikov
Yeah you’re right, Singapore Chinese score 108 while Singapore Malays score 92, I predict that Singapore Indians would score in between given their academic performance which is between that of Chinese and Malays, though I don’t see any evidence that their “labourer” ancestry makes any difference. The English middle class are mostly descended from English labourers, who in turn descend from peasants, it doesn’t seem to have affected their IQ.
huax
One thing is that Chinese laborers derive from a well-established (thousands of years) underclass. Likewise they already had some degree of Southeast Asian admixture (as do I) even before they intermingled with the Malays.
Both of these factors are likely to lower IQ significantly.
Bay Area Guy
Ah, everyone’s favorite East Asian equivalent of a nordicist HBDer is back. I’ll let other commenters have at it.
LOL.
Raskolnikov
Korean don’t seem to be any more intelligent than South Chinese, so I don’t know where huax is getting this Southeast Asian admixture lowering IQ from. Also note the article I linked to on Thailand’s IQ, that brings into the question the assumption that Southeast Asians have a genetically lower IQ.
Here it is again.
That’s a near 7 point rise since 1997.
huax
Southeast Asians aren’t stupid. But yes, they do have a genetically lower IQ than North and East Asians. I’ve always said that the Viets and possibly Thais are smarter than whites. That said North Chinese and Koreans aren’t the same thing, the mixtures are different – and Koreans as a whole have a significant amount of Ainuid/Southeast Asian blood as the Japanese do.
BAG
Ah, everyone’s favorite East Asian equivalent of a nordicist HBDer is back. I’ll let other commenters have at it.
I brought some tampons and kleenex because I knew you might show up, but I’ll take that straw man off of your hands. Merry Christmas.
Gay State Girl
Huax
If this is so, why the need to prove it? Why not shut up and enjoy your high IQs without flaunting it. That is what I find most admirable about East Asian society. I always said that hubris would be the undoing of the West.
I have a feeling that the majority of pure East Asians wouldn’t even look at you. “The rejects of society become its biggest patriots.”
huax
Because most East Asians deny it. East Asians need to realize that their IQ is a rare gift and that other races are more prone to violence due to nature and that they won’t just change for the better with time.
That said even if someone is a moron, it doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to live. That’s where East Asians and whites differ, whites and blacks love to feel superior.
Bay Area Guy
whites and blacks love to feel superior.
Sounds like a certain commenter on this blog.
Bay Area Guy
@ GSG
Agreed. If Huax were really so secure about the supremacy of East Asians, he wouldn’t feel the need to come onto predominantly white blogs and throw temper tantrums in the process of defending his precious Asians. He sounds just like the whiny, hysterical WN’s he claims to hate so much.
And Huax keeps accusing me of strawmen arguments. Is there anything I really say about Huax that is a strawman?
I mean let’s see. I say that Huax is an East Asian chauvinist and the East Asian equivalent of an HBDer.
Am I wrong? Huax has CONSISTENTLY said that East Asians are the most intelligent, moral race. He consistently says that both blacks and whites are dumb, inferior and subhuman races. He doesn’t have a high opinion of Southeast Asians either, and sees them as low IQ people who can’t compete with the Chinese. And of course, he thinks that East Asians are that much better because of their genes.
He thinks that Chinese people are absolutely perfect in terms of their intelligence, morals, etc (his only critique of the Chinese is that they’re too kind to outsiders, which he highlights as evidence of their supreme morality). And again, this is due to genes.
So come on, Huax. What strawman have I burned down? Do you really deny the above? If so, I can fish out plenty of statements you’ve made in the past.
huax
East Asian chauvinist and the East Asian equivalent of an HBDer.
Don’t exist.
Huax has CONSISTENTLY said that East Asians are the most intelligent, moral race
So? It’s true. Even if I were black or a talking dolphin I would still say the same.
He doesn’t have a high opinion of Southeast Asians either, and sees them as low IQ people who can’t compete with the Chinese.
I said before that I like most Southeast Asians. But it’s true that their IQ is 90-100ish.
He thinks that Chinese people are absolutely perfect in terms of their intelligence, morals
Nope. Straw man. I said East Asians are the most intelligent and moral. That says almost nothing considering people in general can be pretty bad.
And again, Huax, are you so fucking thick that you don’t see the irony that all you’re doing is regurgitating what WHITE scientific racists of the past believed?
Don’t cry so much 
LOL, you can’t even demonize whites without resorting to HBD arguments that WHITES came up with in the first place.
You mean whites came up with the concept of creativity? That’s classical white delusion. HBers say it because they’re idiots and don’t know their heads from their asses. I say it because it’s true.
I’m curious, why do you claim that Asians are the most moral? How are you quantifying morality?
huax
Lowest murder rates, lowest rape rates, lowest spousal and child abuse rates, doesn’t steal money from poorer nations, haven’t started any wars recently, don’t pollute as much.
Generally don’t lie, cheat or steal as much, and don’t need a fake god to behave themselves.
huax
And they tend to do well on the wallet/cell phone test, esp. adjusted for population density
Quote: he (Huox) thinks that East Asians are that much better because of their genes.
Bruce (Lahn) we know it’s not driven by personal bias.” That is because Asians “don’t score at the top” in the frequency of the brain-gene mutations
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115040765329081636-T5DQ4jvnwqOdVvsP_XSVG_lvgik_20060628.html?mod=blogs
huax
Yep – Asian isn’t a race, but if taken as a whole this is true. Whites and caucasoids in general also have many mutations that lower IQ.
Bay Area Guy
Don’t exist.
Besides the one Chinese dipshit I’m conversing with right now, apparently not.
Don’t cry so much
Huax, don’t flatter yourself. I’m not crying at all. I just think you’re one of the most delusional, insane people I’ve ever met, and it’s fun tweaking you.
huax
You’re the only one mad here, as usual. We can tell because you’ve already declared five or six times that you’d never talk to me again, which is the internet equivalent of rescinding invitations to your tea party.
Bay Area Guy
And again, Huax, are you so fucking thick that you don’t see the irony that all you’re doing is regurgitating what WHITE scientific racists of the past believed?
So much for Asian creativity. LOL, you can’t even demonize whites without resorting to HBD arguments that WHITES came up with in the first place.
LoveUk
Just personal observation from what I have witnessed in contemporary American Schools in large metropolitan areas such as New York. Highest SAT scores and ability to enter best Universities such as (MIT, Harvard)
1. Japanese (smallest group)
2. Chinese (largest group) Vietnamese
3. Koreans
4. American Jews
5. Hindus / Pakis
6. Eastern European Immigrants (including Russian Jews)
7. Affluent Whites
Ditto for Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Blacks, Italian Americans, Trailer Trash Whites other Latinos including Brazilians
Raskolnikov
It seems that these mythical “pure” East Asians with ultra high IQs exist neither in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore. There maybe an isolated group living close to the Arctic circle with extreme epicanthic eye folds that have yet to be discovered yet with “genetic” IQs in excess of 115, practicing an advanced primitive culture. Please go and look for them.
huax
Korea + Japan + Taiwan + Hong Kong + Singapore = 235 million, hey, that accounts for the other 1,365 million, because I desperately want to believe it!
Read what I said before, “Koreans” and “Japanese” are a nationality made up of several distinct ethnic groups just as “Chinese” are. But Koreans and Japanese are less likely to distinguish themselves based on very obvious phenotypical differences, whereas Chinese are separated based on sheer geographic size. The purer East Asians are concentrated in pockets of China (around 700 million of them) that most whites don’t have exposure to.
Raskolnikov
huax where are you getting these numbers from? Can you link me to a study that shows that e.g. Koreans are “impure” East Asians while some Chinese are “pure”?
You sound a lot like Nordicist (not to mention a Chinese nationalist!) when you talk about purer East Asians in pockets of China. I suppose you can identify them by physical features alone right!
According to you, South Chinese aren’t pure East Asian either. So who are these fabled creatures?
huax
Sound like a Nordicist? That’s deeply insulting because Nordicists are fucking retards. Perhaps the biggest retards to ever live. But yes, I may sound like it on the surface.
But I don’t assign anything special to purity. North Chinese are relatively pure for better or worse and only by chance. But it’s the slightly mixed ones that do the best on IQ tests (coasts), like in Shandong where they are mixed North Chinese and a little Altaic, or in the classical South where they are partially Austronesian.
South Koreans are likewise not pure, you can see this simply by moving around in South Korea. The way they see it at least is that there are dark and light skinned Koreans, to me that’s Southeast Asian/Ainuid admixture. That doesn’t mean there aren’t pockets of “pure Altaic” Koreans, there are and there are millions upon millions of them. Same goes for the Japanese. However, if we’re talking nations taken as a whole then yes Japan and Korea are almost as heterogeneous as China as a whole is.
As far as where the “pure Chinese” are, they’re in a relatively limited corridor from North Sichuan to the Loess Plateau. They’ve had relatively little interaction with sizable non-East Asian groups. I’d say there are roughly 200, 300 million of them.
Raskolnikov
So you aren’t basing it on genetic studies? Everything I’ve seen puts Koreans and North Chinese in the same cluster East Asian cluster. A darker skin doesn’t imply admixture either.
huax
They’re relatively close with some points touching. It’s the Northeast and Coastal North Chinese that are closer to Koreans, the Northerners are close to Tibetans, Yi, Naxi, etc.
NonKoolAidDrinker
“Lowest murder rates, lowest rape rates, lowest spousal and child abuse rates, doesn’t steal money from poorer nations, haven’t started any wars recently, don’t pollute as much.
Generally don’t lie, cheat or steal as much, and don’t need a fake god to behave themselves.”
LOL!!! YEAH, THE MONGOLS WERE VERY “MORAL” PEOPLE. THEY NEVER STOLE ANYTHING FROM WEAKER TRIBES/NATIONS. THE HUNS WERE VERY “MORAL” PEOPLE. THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE WERE VERY “MORAL” PEOPLE.
EAST ASIANS AREN’T MORALLY SUPERIOR, THEY’RE JUST CONFORMISTS. IF THEIR SOCIETY IS LAW ABIDING THEN THEY’RE LAW ABIDING. IF THEIR SOCIETY IS WARLIKE THEN THEY’RE WARLIKE.
Gay State Girl
“don’t need a fake god to behave themselves.”
Perhaps you could explain the growing popularity of Christianity in East Asian countries and among EA immigrants in the West.
huax
Yes, it’s so popular that 1-2% of the population of China and Japan are Christian.
I went to two different primary schools in Kenya- one with a lot of very poor black kids whose parents weren’t educated and one with kids of Ministers and senior officials. What struck me was that the poor black kids seemed way smarter than us privileged middle class types. But, they’d have to drop out by age ten. A few could get to High School as ‘pupil-teachers’ (this is also how things happened in the U.K back in the Nineteenth Century) but that meant spending the better part of their career out in some remote village being bossed around by the Tribal elders.
Is low IQ a defence against being shat upon by life? If it’s really true that India and Thailand have lower average IQ than China, maybe its because both countries had a worse caste system. In the Indian case, stupidity is actually considered something divine and we’re happy paying a lot of money to really stupid Godmen or women to learn the profound Yoga of being stupid.
Frankly, the way things are now in Europe, with Post Grads unable to get jobs, pay off their student loans, get a mortgage, get married and so on- they’d have been better off investing in glue sniffing or solvent abuse rather than hitting the books.
Shawn
I made a comment about intro/extroversion and where E. Asians fit (a little off topic but interesting). Here is my comment if you are interested:
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2011/12/asian-admissions-statistical-prediction.html#comment-393766127
Mike Pereira
I believe there is a strong genetic component. From what I have read, the IQ of males is strongly linked to the x chromosome inherited from the mother. I’ve had about a million autosomal base pairs of my DNA tested in addition to the X chromosome and it appears that my X chromosome is about 75% East Asian (Chinese). My brother did not inherit this chromosome and he is of average intelligence like most of my family (mestizos).
I do not wish to publish my IQ online, but I attended a top university in the country for undergrad and am now studying medicine.
