One of my favourite things on the Internet is a phrase I found at the bottom of an old lolcat (Internet slang for a picture of a cat subtitled with humorous text). The phrase goes: 鈥淚 cannot brain today, I have the dumb.鈥�
It鈥檚 comforting, because it frames stupidity as something temporary. It interrupts the way we think about intelligence (or the lack thereof) as a personal character trait, intrinsic and immutable. 鈥淚 cannot brain today鈥� says no, maybe things just suck. Go back to bed and try again tomorrow.
I was reminded of that lolcat when I read in the Times 91原创 about a recently completed study at the University of B.C. Psychology professor Jiaying Zhao has found significant evidence that living in poverty diminishes your ability to reason and remember, to such a degree that we can say it affects your intelligence.
Zhao鈥檚 five-year study tracked differences in cognitive ability between people who were impoverished and those who were not, as well as changes between times of stability versus times of economic hardship.
The key, Zhao says, is 鈥渃ognitive resources.鈥� People struggling to cover the basics (rent, food, etc.) not only don鈥檛 have the time or energy to devote to other concerns, such as education or professional advancement, but are also consuming more cognitive resources as they struggle and worry about meeting their basic needs.
The conditions of poverty put such pressure on an individual鈥檚 brainpower, the article reports, that they can result in a shift of 13 IQ points, enough 鈥渢o move a person with average intelligence up to superior smarts or down to borderline retardation.鈥� That鈥檚 a significant difference.
We often think of people as being 鈥渉ard-wired鈥� by their biology. Some people are smart, and some smarter; biology is destiny, and that is that. If people who are dumber end up being poorer, well, that sucks for them, but it鈥檚 the inevitable result of a system that rewards the stronger and smarter for their abilities.
Zhao鈥檚 study, Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function, flips this idea on its head. Poverty can diminish intelligence, not only by removing the opportunities for growth in professional, economic and social contexts, but at the level of brain function.
Zhao鈥檚 study coincides nicely with the publication of a great article by sociologist Lisa Wade, who addresses the claim that individuals of black racial heritage might be in general less intelligent than white people. (Ugh.)
The entire piece is fascinating, but the pertinent section for our purpose is when she talks DNA. Wade disposes of the simplistic 鈥渉igh-school science鈥� idea that genes are an inviolable blueprint for our identities and abilities.
鈥淎dvances reveal that the workings of our genes are an extraordinarily complex and dynamic interaction between society and biology,鈥� she writes. 鈥淥nly about two per cent to five per cent of our genes encode for proteins that instruct our bodies on what to do ... The remaining 95 per cent to 98 per cent are there to give those genes instructions. They do so in response to our physical and cultural environment.鈥�
This means that social and environmental factors are just as important to our cognitive abilities as our so-called 鈥渘atural鈥� intelligence, since they condition the growth and development of that intelligence.
Wade cites studies that show that black children in the U.S. who do not grow up in poverty have IQ scores equivalent to white children from similar socio-economic backgrounds; since 鈥渞acial minorities and immigrants are disproportionately poor, average scores on intelligence tests likely reflect their overall socio-economic background, not their genes.鈥� Intelligence-stimulating factors are accessible to middle-class children, not impoverished ones.
Wade鈥檚 take-down of the idea that there鈥檚 a biological dimension to people鈥檚 intelligence in relation to racial heritage lends fuel to Zhao鈥檚 argument.
Zhao reframes the way we look not only at intelligence, but at poverty, too. Instead of arguing that people in poverty must 鈥渓ift鈥� themselves out of their economic condition, he argues instead that governments and society can help people in poverty improve their financial status in a myriad of ways, such as eliminating some of the red tape that taxes cognitive resources.
And Zhao puts that onus on us, not them.
As Wade鈥檚 article makes clear, we cannot rely on the comfortable fiction that any of us were biologically destined for our places in life 鈥� and that鈥檚 a valuable reminder.
