A conversation with Richard Lynn

作者：Nyborg Helmuth^*

来源：Personality and Individual Differences, 2012, 53(2): 79-84.

DOI：10.1016/j.paid.2011.02.033

• Evolution
• Personality
• Intelligence
• Race
• Eugenics
• Dysgenics
• Cross-national differences
• Sex differences

This special issue - Evolution of race and sex differences in intelligence and personality: Tribute to Richard Lynn at eighty - testifies to his many research interests over time, where Richard often pioneered. To mention a few examples, he clarified the confusion about the existence of an average sex difference in IQ, by demonstrating that children below 15 do not show the later adult sex difference. More importantly, Richard was the first to establish average IQs for all countries with more than 40.000 people, and then, with Tatu Vanhanen, illustrated the impressive predictive power of these IQs for understanding essential aspects of a nation's economical and social infrastructure. Richard was also the first to realise that classical eugenic measures do not suffices to avert serious consequences of dysgenics and to suggest that modern reproductive technologies may entail better eugenic potentials.
The present conversation provides sufficient details to get a glimpse of the person behind these pioneering efforts this and of his courage. As a prominent member of the London School of Differential Psychology he paints broad consequential strokes on our deeper understanding of human nature and what makes civilizations rise and fall. The behavioural sciences need extraordinary people like him.

• 出版日期2012-7