# Other than IQ, are there any genetically-determined psychological differences between "races"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 28, 2012, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371 "2012-05-28T20:18:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/101 "2012-06-30T20:41:38Z")
Even if there are genetic markers which correlate well with psychological characteristics, this doesn’t mean the genes cause the psychology. Since other likely causes are social, you would need studies that isolate social causes from genetic causes–adoption studies, twin studies, etc. Does this Rushton have anything like that? (If not, am I right that even _granting_ the correlation he’d _still_ have nothing?) ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/102 "2012-06-30T20:52:01Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Again, as as been said on pages after pages in this thread, racial divisions are cultural, arbitrary, and make no sense neither from a scientific nor from a common sense point of view. > > So, “how did that happen?”. In the same way Americans decided that “African-Americans” were essentially all “blacks” despite them coming in all sort of skin shades and with all sorts of mixed ancestry. Somewhat dark-skinned Americans self Self-IDing as “black” isn’t any less weird than somewhat dark-skinned Dominicans not Self-IDing as such. What percent of African Americans are really misidentified darkly hued south Asians? I thought so. The classical racial divisions were based on the geographic race concept, consistent with zoology. The divisions, K=5, are logical as the populations grouped under them genetically cluster due to minimal interbreeding over the last 100 generations: > [@](#): > > Reconstructing demographic histories from long tracts of DNA sequence identity Kelley Harris 1 , Rasmus Nielsen 1,2 1 UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA, 2 University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark > > There has been recent excitement and debate about the details of human demographic history, involving gene flow that has occurred between populations as well as the extent and timing of bottlenecks and periods of population growth. Much of the debate concerns the timing of past admixture events; for example, whether Neanderthals exchanged genetic material with the ancestors of non-Africans before before or after they left Africa. Here, we present a method for using sequence data to jointly estimate the timing and magnitude of past genetic exchanges, along with population divergence times and changes in effective population size. To achieve this, we look at the length distribution of regions that are shared identical by state (IBS) and maximize an analytic composite likelihood that we derive from the sequentially Markov coalescent (SMC). Recent gene flow between populations leaves behind long tracts of identity by descent (IBD), and these tracts give our method its power by influencing the distribution of shared IBS tracts. However, since IBS tracts are directly observable, we do not need to infer the precise locations of IBD tracts. In this way, we can accurately estimate admixture times for relatively ancient events where admixture mapping is not possible, and in simulated data we show excellent power to characterize admixture pulses that occurred 100 to several hundred generations ago. **When we study the IBS tracts shared between and within the populations sequenced by the 1000 Genomes consortium, we find evidence that there was no significant gene flow between Europeans and Asians within the past few hundred generations. It also looks unlikely that the Yorubans of Nigeria interbred with Europeans or Asians in a population-specific way, though there may have been admixture between Africans and an ancestral non-African population**. That said I would agree that behavior traits can not define races. To the extent that there are racial differences in such traits it’s because the global genetic variance which codes for the patterns of morphological differences that differentiate races co-vary, if weakly, with global genetic variance that codes for behavior differences. ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/103 "2012-06-30T21:20:21Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > This discussion would, of course, also apply to any differential genetic predisposition to crime; which would not appear to be a function of intelligence, but often is brought up in related discussions. I would say that differences in criminality don’t appear to _fully_ be a function of differences in intelligence. [Ronald Fryer](http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer) (2010) recently replicated Neal and Johnson (1996) – who replicated Murray and Herrnstein (1994) – and showed that in the nationally representative NLSY 97, IQ differences explain a large portion of the crime differences. Quote: > [@](#): > > Table 3 employs a Neal and Johnson specification on two social outcomes: incarceration and physical health. The NLSY79 asks the ype of residence” in which the respondent is living during each administration of the survey, which allows us to construct a measure of whether the individual was ever incarcerated when the survey was administered across all years of the sample. The NLSY97 asks individuals if they have been sentenced to jail, an adult corrections institution, or a juvenile corrections institution in the past year for each yearly follow-up survey of participants. In 2006, the NLSY79 included a 12-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-12) for all individuals over age 40. The SF-12 consists of twelve self-reported health questions ranging from whether the respondent’s health limits him from climbing several fights of stairs to how often the respondent has felt calm and peaceful in the past four weeks. The responses to these questions are combined to create physical and mental component summary scores. Adjusting for age, black males are about three and a half times and Hispanics are about two and a half times more likely to have ever been incarcerated when surveyed. Controlling for AFQT, this is reduced to about eighty percent more likely for blacks and fifty percent more likely for Hispanics. Again, the racial differences in incarceration after controlling for achievement is a large and important number that deserves considerable attention in current discussions of racial inequality in the United States. Yet, the importance of educational achievement in the teenage years in explaining racial differences is no less striking. (Racial Inequality in the 21st Century: The Declining Signi\_cance of Discrimination) On the other hand, there seems to be some association between [genetic differences and criminality](https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/231609.pdf). ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/104 "2012-06-30T21:29:03Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > The facts an logic an scientifc references for this that I and others have-posted on this board are legion. > > Now can you please show us your evidence to the contrary? > > First, name your races. Then tell us what genetic commonality \>95% of members of that race share. > > Come on, you made the claim about lack of evidence. now put up. Name your races and tell us what genetic commonality the members share. > > This should be good. We already went through this. Races: Negroids, Caucasoids, Mongoloids, Australoids, and Americoids. Genetic commonalities: multivariate genetic similarity with respects to SNPs. ---
**Author:** ![Belowjob2.0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Belowjob2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belowjob2.0)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/105 "2012-06-30T22:05:55Z")
> [@Chuck11](#): > > We already went through this. Races: Negroids, Caucasoids, Mongoloids, Australoids, and Americoids. Genetic commonalities: multivariate genetic similarity with respects to SNPs. Repeating your claim isn’t the same as proving it. Could you at least make an attempt to answer Blake’s question? That is to say, can you demonstrate, with scientific evidence, why the claims made by this scientist are incorrect? https://www.youtube.com/embed/teyvcs2S4mI?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&list=UUPFnHiJx1P9UY05_F9sOu1g ---
**Author:** ![Belowjob2.0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Belowjob2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belowjob2.0)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/106 "2012-06-30T22:16:26Z")
> [@](#): > > Every time I read these discussions I feel intellectually raped. Losing an argument with people who are much better informed and generally smarter than you are isn’t akin to rape. I don’t know if you have a thought disorder or what, but it doesn’t speak well of your mental abilities. > [@](#): > > What percent of African Americans are really misidentified darkly hued south Asians? I thought so. Thought what? Are the voices in your head answering you back? Have South Asians, Arabs, and Pacific Islanders been mistaken for black Americans at times? Of course they have. Are you really staking your defense of discredited race theory on people being able to eyeball “races” correctly? This is such an obvious fail. ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/107 "2012-06-30T22:24:14Z")
> [@Belowjob2.0](#): > > Repeating your claim isn’t the same as proving it. > > Could you at least make an attempt to answer Blake’s question? That is to say, can you demonstrate, with scientific evidence, why the claims made by this scientist are incorrect? > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teyvcs2S4mI&list=UUPFnHiJx1P9UY05\_F9sOu1g&index=1&feature=plcp](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teyvcs2S4mI&list=UUPFnHiJx1P9UY05_F9sOu1g&index=1&feature=plcp) I find that video incomprehensible. The author, for example, maintains that racial classifications are “completely arbitrary.” As I and others have shown this is not the case. Could you spell out Blake’s question? ---
**Author:** ![Belowjob2.0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Belowjob2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belowjob2.0)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/108 "2012-06-30T22:34:16Z")
> [@Chuck11](#): > > I find that video incomprehensible. The author, for example, maintains that racial classifications are “completely arbitrary.” As I and others have shown this is not the case. > > Could you spell out Blake’s question? Blake’s spelled it out quite well on his own. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/109 "2012-06-30T22:34:49Z")
> [@Belowjob2.0](#): > > Losing an argument with people who are much better informed and generally smarter than you are isn’t akin to rape. I don’t know if you have a thought disorder or what, but it doesn’t speak well of your mental abilities. > . . . > Thought what? Are the voices in your head answering you back? Knock it off. This is not The BBQ Pit. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/110 "2012-06-30T22:36:01Z")
> [@Chuck11](#): > > Every time I read these discussions I feel intellectually raped. Ha! You know you wanted it! You were asking for it! [hands **Chuck11** a hankie] Here, quitcher moanin’ and wipe off your brain! [zzziiippp] ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/111 "2012-06-30T22:41:06Z")
> [@Belowjob2.0](#): > > Losing an argument with people who are much better informed and generally smarter than you are isn’t akin to rape. I don’t know if you have a thought disorder or what, but it doesn’t speak well of your mental abilities. Feel free to point out an argument that I lost here or elsewhere. I have to admit, the logical rigour here sets my mind afire (e.g., “Since races do not even exist in any biologically meaningful way, it is impossible for there to be any biologically determined differences.”) > [@Belowjob2.0](#): > > Have South Asians, Arabs, and Pacific Islanders been mistaken for black Americans at times? Of course they have. Are you really staking your defense of discredited race theory on people being able to eyeball “races” correctly? This is such an obvious fail. So you’re unable to specify a percent? You can check the nationally representative Add health data. There is a variable that lists self identified race and interviewer identified race. Check the correlation. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/112 "2012-06-30T22:42:16Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I.e., is there any known differential in racial or ethnic groups, however defined, in [Myers-Briggs Personality Type](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator) or [emotional intelligence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_quotient) or anything else (believed by some psychologists to be) measurable? [self-hijack] Actually, come to think of it, I don’t believe any psychologists **do** take those purported psychometric instruments/measurements seriously any more, if ever they did. ([Here’s](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs) [what](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence) RationalWiki says, anyway.) **Are** there any such instruments they do take seriously now, to measure anything about a mind/personality other than IQ? Does anybody know? [/s-j] ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/113 "2012-06-30T23:00:26Z")
[quote=“BrainGlutton, post:112, topic:623371”] [self-hijack] Actually, come to think of it, I don’t believe any psychologists **do** take those purported psychometric instruments/measurements seriously any more, if ever they did. **Are** there any such instruments they do take seriously now, to measure anything about a mind/personality other than IQ? Does anybody know? In IO, the big five and others are commonly used (as they tend to show trivial between ethnic/racial differences). See, for example,: Foldes et al. (2008) “Group differences in personality: meta-analyses comparing five U.S. racial groups.” They also have fair degree of predictive validity. ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2012, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/114 "2012-07-01T00:18:47Z")
> [@Belowjob2.0](#): > > Blake’s spelled it out quite well on his own. > [@Belowjob2.0](#): > > Blake’s spelled it out quite well on his own. Blake said: > [@](#): > > First, name your races. Then tell us what genetic commonality \>95% of members of that race share. Show me an official race definition that has Blake’s 95% criteria as a criteria and maybe I will comply. As it is, it would be very easy to trim the geographic races to meet Blake’s arbitrary criteria. As noted before, my races can be seen in Figure 1 [here](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917718/). I already gave the names. The commonality is the multivariate genetic similarity that leads the populations to cluster and leads individuals within each population to be more similar to each other than not. To meet the above arbitrary criteria, we would only have to classify all, or nearly all, individual and populations that do not cluster as “mixed races.” Since populations that do cluster are necessarily more similar to each other than not. Whatever the case, Blake’s whole point is irrelevant to the discussion. It goes without saying that you can have genetically determined differences between non genetically (or biologically or zoologically) delineated groups. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2012, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/115 "2012-07-01T00:32:58Z")
> [@Chuck11](#): > > In IO, the big five and others are commonly used (as they tend to show trivial between ethnic/racial differences). See, for example,: Foldes et al. (2008) “Group differences in personality: meta-analyses comparing five U.S. racial groups.” They also have fair degree of predictive validity. What is “IO” and what are “the big five”? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2012, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/116 "2012-07-01T00:35:39Z")
> [@Chuck11](#): > > To meet the above arbitrary criteria, we would only have to classify all, or nearly all, individual and populations that do not cluster as “mixed races.” Since populations that do cluster are necessarily more similar to each other than not. So, it is easy to identify races when we simply rule everyone who does not match our arbitrary definitions as being outside the racial categories. Of course, that is like setting up a medical trial and then just excluding everyone who fails to get well on the medicine as being outside the scope of the trial. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2012, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/117 "2012-07-01T01:08:15Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > What is “IO” and what are “the big five”? Industrial Organization. [The big five](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits). The big five seem to form a super factor called the “[general factor of personality](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1841245).” The GFP is Rushton’s baby. Unlike the general factor of intelligence it seems to have less predictive validity than the specific factors, so it seems to be more of theoretical than practical interest. ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2012, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/118 "2012-07-01T01:36:14Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > So, it is easy to identify races when we simply rule everyone who does not match our arbitrary definitions as being outside the racial categories. Reread what I said. (It’s easy to identify races. Period. And it’s easy to match individuals to a race or a set of them. Period. What I said concerned Blake’s arbitrary 95% genetic criteria.) ---
**Author:** ![Belowjob2.0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Belowjob2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belowjob2.0)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2012, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/119 "2012-07-01T01:55:34Z")
> [@Chuck11](#): > > Reread what I said. (It’s easy to identify races. Period. And it’s easy to match individuals to a race or a set of them. Period. What I said concerned Blake’s arbitrary 95% genetic criteria.) [What race are these basketball players?](http://www.rt.com/files/sport/basketball/unics-barcelona-euroleague-playoffs-game1-094/sports-boniface-nathan-center.n.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2012, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371/120 "2012-07-01T02:11:40Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > Professor Richard Lynn, who created the chart, argues that high IQs produce wealth, and low IQs produce poverty. Africa is rich in natural resources, but the people of Iceland, with fewer natural resources, have higher average IQs. > > Although China has an average of 100, Hong Kong tops the list with 107. Taiwan weighs in at 104. Singapore tips the scale at 103. The average of 100 for mainland China can be attributed to a lower per capita gross domestic product, but as the standard of living in China improves, and as the educational system also improves we can expect the average IQs in China to improve. > > Biology is only one factor that influences IQ, but it is the most important. NDD, You can refer to Garret Jones’ discussion [here](http://216.109.65.20/Documents/Periodicals/ADR/adr-vol28-1.pdf#page=55). He’s less suspect than Lynn. Anyways, Lynn has updated IQ score [here](https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/national-iqs-calculated-and-validated.pdf). It’s worth keeping in mind that these are IQ _scores_. No one has tested to see if they are measure invariant, like the US Black-White difference. As such, it’s undetermined whether they represent actual cognitive ability differences. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/other-than-iq-are-there-any-genetically-determined-psychological-differences-between-races/623371.md?page=7)