In my article "The Need for Psychology Understanding,” I discussed how fiction writers need at least a basic understanding of psychology in order to write realistic content, dialogues, characters, and relationships. One such psychological concept is intelligence and the ways it can be affected by culture and genetics. Writers need to understand what intelligence is and how it can be affected by culture and genetics in order to make use of these factors in creating and shaping their characters.

Intelligence is a multifaceted capacity that manifests in different ways across a person’s life span; some examples are the ability to acquire and apply knowledge, logical reasoning, effective planning, problem-solving, intuitive thinking, and the ability to handle new situations (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018). Two group differences in intelligence are cultural differences and genetic differences. Culture and genetics can both have an effect on an individual’s intelligence.

Culture acts as a model for thinking, acting, and feeling and, as a result, people that live in different places around the world prioritize different ideas as intelligent (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018). For example, in Western cultures displaying one’s intelligence in writing, speaking, and debate is normal, yet some Eastern cultures do not view such displays as intelligent as their cultures value a demeanor of caution and moderation (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2018). In order to understand a person’s intelligence, it is not enough to just provide them with an intelligence test as not every test takes into account a person’s culture and, as a result, a person might score lower on such a test if the test was not designed with the person’s culture in mind. Unfortunately, there are no intelligence tests that could be considered truly culture-free tests, as even simple questions have a way of involving culture. For example, one test might ask for three different words for the word snow; this question would likely be easy for someone from an Eskimo culture, but hard for someone from Western culture.

Genetic intelligence focuses on the genetic and environmental origins of differences among individuals in a particular population at a particular time (Plomin, 1990). Genetic intelligence is typically considered to be the intelligence that a person inherits from the previous generation. The idea is that if an individual has intelligent biological parents then he or she is more likely to inherit that same intelligence. The research that has been conducted on this form of intelligence has focused primarily on determining an individual's inherited capacity for social positions; this research is not without bias as the research is designed to identify an aspect of the inherited worth of individuals which in turn leads to race and class hierarchies (Roberts, 2015). The current research into genetic intelligence suggests that instead of attempting to identify a person’s genetic intelligence, society as a whole would be better served focusing on methods to improve intelligence, the nurturing of intellectual skills, and the equal distribution of intellectual resources, regardless of genetic predisposition (Roberts, 2015).

References

Cohen, R., & Swerdlik, M. (2018). Psychological testing and assessment, 9th Ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Custom. 

Plomin, R. (1990). Nature and nurture: An introduction to human behavioral genetics. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Roberts, D. (2015). Can Research on the Genetics of Intelligence Be “Socially Neutral”? Hastings Center Report, 45, S50–S53. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1002/hast.499