Friday, February 25, 2011

The Flynn Effect.


In the book Everything Bad Is Good For You by Steven Johnson, a Philosopher named, James Flynn hypothesized that the society IQ test scores and averaged are biased by culture and directly affected by media- television shows, video games, etc. Which has caused the average IQ scored of African and Caucasian to increase throughout the years. This changed majorly cause by the culture and environment change. The Flynn Effect is molded by the sleeper curve and a person’s environment, in other words, the place where he/she was raised. I agree that, “The Sleeper Curve shows that popular culture is growing more complex, yet it is not sufficiently complex to challenge the most gifted minds”(Johnson 152) . In today’s society the media has a great deal to do with how the new generations evolve morally as well as the cognitive development. Many TV shows, such as CSI and Prison Break challenge the viewer’s mind, making them analyze some situations in order to figure out an underlying conflict. A person’s cognition is definitely affected by these kind of shows and video games that challenge one’s mind and at the same time these make us smarter, as shown in our IQ scores.

  Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. New York: Riverhead Books, 2005. Print.

5 comments:

  1. Thats what I thought too! Because of certain shows, our mind is challenged to work harder and our perceptions of certain things are becoming more apparent.

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  2. I agree that watching t.v and playing video games does allow for further development of our cognition. This is why we are able to acquire knowledge through our own experiences.

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  3. I think it's interesting how media affects society's IQ, but it also seems like people affect the media back. If a show was too predictable, it would be boring for most people and it wouldn't make much money. People are becoming used to faster paced shows, so TV shows inevitably have to become even faster paced to stay one step ahead of people's predictions.

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  4. nice blog. I totally agree with you, but I also think that too much tv would lead to become dumb!

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  5. I think you did a great job supporting your arguement. I took the opposite view on this but your blog was very persuasive.

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