Why do East Asian countries rank the “highest average IQ in the world by countries”?
I hadn’t known about this but in my research of the topic I discovered many questions exist on Quora about this. Following are some ideas I picked up from here and there in my research just now.
Fundamentally Different Values
East Asians and Westerners (Europeans and European descendents) view intelligence in fundamentally different ways based on fundamentally different values.[1][2] From APA’s Monitor on Psychology, Intelligence across cultures, 2003:
People in Western cultures…tend to view intelligence as a means for individuals to devise categories and to engage in rational debate, while people in Eastern cultures see it as a way for members of a community to recognize contradiction and complexity and to play their social roles successfully.
Writes C. Spear in this thread:
Imagine a society where success was judged by the ability to acquire land through very very efficient farming, and buying additional land to work or rent.
……..
Lawyers in most of Western Europe are more prized culturally than engineers…in East Asia it is generally the opposite
East Asians don’t score so high on verbal skills; they score high on visual-spatial tasks which are directly related to engineering—a profession that is valued more highly than “lawyering.”
Structured Society, Religion, & Critical Thinking
Another similar question asks: If Ashkenazi Jews really do have an estimated IQ of 115, why isn’t Israel the country with the highest IQ worldwide?
For the purposes of the present question, this groups Ashkenazi Jews with East Asians and associates The West with Christianity. Yoni Ariel, who lives in Israel, writes in part:
The key is religious attitudes towards critical thinking and education. Judaism is an action based religion, not a faith or thought based one. For us, thinking about whether God really exists is not a sin, as we understand our minds have a mind of their own, and we do not and can not control our thoughts. With us, you only commit a sin if you actually do something, not just think about it.
Agnosticism or even atheism is not a sin according to Judaism. Only if you actually converted to a faith that believes in more than one God have you sinned. As a result, our religion and culture have never prevented us from asking questions, challenging accepted dogma and concepts, thinking critically and originally, and encouraging intellectual curiosity. This is what has given us the intellectual and innovation advantage that is often misinterpreted as having a higher IQ.
Christianity is a faith-based religion. This means what you believe, or think is more important than what you do. To an observant Christian (until 150 years ago the vast majority of people were religiously observant, secularism is a 19th century phenomenon), merely thinking about whether God exists or questioning to yourself whether Jesus was his son was a sin. As a result, Christian culture inhibited out of the box thinking, because it was often likely to be followed by a bad attack of guilt. Guilt is really bad for the mind and psyche. This created a mindset inimical to critical or original thinking, and strongly discouraged intellectual curiosity, since all too often such thinking resulted in being accused of heresy, witchcraft or devil worshipping, which often meant a prolonged and painful death.
Our attitudes to education were also very different. Queen Salome Alexandra (Shlomzion), who reigned during the Second Temple period (around 100 BC) instituted compulsory education throughout Judea. Ever since, our literacy rate has been very high, over 80%. The Christian world only reached similar literacy rates during the 18th or 19th centuries. This has also given us a cultural edge regarding intellectual pursuits and innovative thinking.
Thinking is to the mind what exercise is to muscles. Our brains are not intrinsically superior to anyone else’s. but for over a thousand years we have been exercising them and mentally working out much better.
Likewise, East Asians have a much longer history (roughly one thousand years) of structured peoplehood or society than do West Europeans and descendents. During this lengthy history, East Asians had forms of education and writing. See C. Spear’s answer.
Genetics
Then there’s genetics. I’m going to briefly quote another answer on this thread because it’s not posted inside this Space. A scientist Brian White, writes:
East Asians are more intelligent than other national groups because their genes contain more of the single nucleotide polymorphisms that are associated with high intelligence than are found in other national groups.
Read Brian’s answer for more detail; he posted recently and may be available to answer questions, though I don’t speak for him. Some of the other Quora answers quoted above were written a few years ago. See C. Spear’s lengthy answer for much more on East Asian socio-cultural history, ancient and more recent.
Studies vary on how much genes contribute to a person’s IQ, how much is nurture or the environment such as personal effort and education, how much is nature or heredity.
From a paper THIRTY YEARS OF RESEARCH ON RACE DIFFERENCES IN COGNITIVE ABILITY by J. Philippe Rushton of The University of Western Ontario and Arthur R. Jensen of University of California, Berkeley, 2005, pp. 248–249:
One study of 543 pairs of identical and 134 pairs of nonidentical 12-year-old Japanese twins in Japan reported a substantial heritability of 0.58 for IQ (Lynn & Hattori, 1990). The hereditarian model views race differences simply as aggregated individual differences of this sort.
Thus, in 2005 they considered 58% “substantial.”
More recently, however, other figures have been published, ranging from 57% to 80%.[3] But in 2020, an article in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology argued that zero percent was most accurate; from Wikipedia’s Footnote 14:
[T]he claims that genetics defines racial groups and makes them different, that IQ and cultural differences among racial groups are caused by genes, and that racial inequalities within and between nations are the inevitable outcome of long evolutionary processes are neither new nor supported by science (either old or new).
CONCLUSION
If we are not allowed to attribute intelligence to heredity or genes, yet East Asians do on average score higher on intelligence tests than Westerners, it must be concluded that all other things being equal it is the environment of the East Asian educational system that does it, the very great effort East Asian children and youth put into study. From Yu Han’s answer to Why do East Asian countries have higher IQ and PISA test scores? (2015):
But as my personal and Chinese opinion, it is mostly because of the culture and system. China has a long history and tradition of highlighting education. From the ancient time until now, the most prestigious success is through exam- Civil Examination in ancient time and College Entrance Examination now. Most of the Chinese parents could leave everything behind and support their children financially and spiritually as much as they can, if these can improve their children’ scores and go to a good university.
The Chinese children have to attend different kinds of classes and after-school classes since their primary school stage. Many children don’t have weekends, because they have to attend courses for instruments, painting, dancing, Mathematics, English, etc. Especially for the kids live in cities. There is a saying in Chinese, Don’t let your children lose from the scratch line.
In PISA 2012, the report shows that the students in Shanghai spend more than 14 hours per week on homework and more than 2 hours for after-school classes. In a national survey took in 2009, the students in Shanghai has the second longest study hour per day which is 13.2 hours. Beijing is the no.1 which is 14.4 hours.
PISA=PISA is the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment. PISA measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges.[4] One person said with all that study, PISA is just part of it. A person who has taught in East Asia and also in the West mentioned that East Asian youth respect their teachers.
In a culture so dedicated to learning, it is easy to believe that IQ may be raised somewhat. It is in line with Yoni Ariel’s theory above re Ashkenazi Jews having developed critical thinking skills since ancient times.
Footnotes
[1] Social & Eco-Cultural Influences on Intelligence | Study.com
[2] https://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/intelligence
[3] Heritability of IQ – Wikipedia
[4] PISA – PISA
Life Lenses 