The Flynn effect, so named for James R. Flynn, who discovered it, is simply the observation that average IQs have been steadily increasing throughout the world over the past
century. This effect is important mostly for what it implies about intelligence and intelligence testing.
Psychometric experiments seem to show that
IQ is largely independent of the environment, which is directly contradicted by the Flynn Effect.
There are a number of
theories to account for the Flynn Effect, most of them being environmental reasons why our intelligence may have risen. The problem with these theories is that rising IQs do not seem to be the same as rising
intelligence; the rise is so great that we should, according to the numbers, have many times more
geniuses and many times fewer
idiots than even 50 years ago. Such a dramatic change in
demographics is not evidenced anywhere but IQ tests, though, which brings us to Flynn's explanation for the effect.
Flynn, claiming that if the IQ scores were
valid we would be undergoing a "
renaissance," explains his effect by the elegantly simple
hypothesis that IQ tests do not accurately measure intelligence. People are, rather, learning a different, much less general skill which applies almost exclusively to IQ tests. In Flynn's words, an "
abstract problem solving ability."