From The Journal of Controversial Ideas: "Intelligence of Refugees in Germany"

Average IQ of refugees in Germany is ~90: not bad, but not great either.

The Journal of Controversial Ideas was founded by Peter Singer and two other moral philosophers who frequently get in hot water for their ideas on ethics, some of which are indeed pretty wacky. Interestingly, though, it also publishes traditional social science research on important topics where the dominant ideology on college campuses prefers ignorance to knowledge. Singer et al wrote:

The Journal of Controversial Ideas offers a forum for careful, rigorous, unpolemical discussion of issues that are widely considered controversial, in the sense that certain views about them might be regarded by many people as morally, socially, or ideologically objectionable or offensive. The journal offers authors the option to publish their articles under a pseudonym, in order to protect themselves from threats to their careers or physical safety. We hope that this will also encourage readers to attend to the arguments and evidence in an essay rather than to who wrote it. Pseudonymous authors may choose to claim the authorship of their work at a later time, or to reveal it only to selected people (such as employers or prospective employers), or to keep their identity undisclosed indefinitely. Standard submissions using the authors’ actual names are also encouraged.

… We hope that this journal will show the value of embracing controversy as a means of getting closer to the truth, advancing knowledge, and reforming social and cultural paradigms. We believe, with John Stuart Mill, that even when mainstream views are true or justified, if they are never challenged, they risk becoming dead dogmas rather than living truths.

So, what’s controversial these days?

Here’s a new study in The Journal of Controversial Ideas of IQ levels among refugees in Germany, which, except for the madness of the times, would seem, uncontroversially, to be exactly like the kind of thing social scientists ought to study.

Intelligence of Refugees in Germany: Levels, Differences and Possible Determinants

Heiner Rindermann 1, * , Bruno Klauk 2 , James Thompson 3

1 Department of Psychology, Chemnitz University of Technology, D 09111 Chemnitz, Germany

2 Department of Business, Harz University of Applied Studies, D 38855 Wernigerode, Germany;

3 Department of Psychology, University College London, London WC1H 0AP, UK;

Received: 8 Sep 2021 / Revised: 25 Oct 2024 / Accepted: 15 Mar 2024 / Published: 30 Oct 2024

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Abstract

Intelligence is the best predictor and the most important causal factor in job performance. Measuring intelligence therefore provides information about future job performance and employment. This applies to different professions and social groups, including immigrants and refugees. Two previous German studies with N=29 and N=552 refugees found average intelligence scores of IQ 92 and 86, respectively. A newer study with N=499 refugees and immigrants from N=15 countries conducted in 2017 to 2018 using the BOMAT, a German non-verbal and purely figural matrices test, found an average IQ of 90 (using the norms of the manual, 84 using a recent German comparison sample). Overall (as a result of our “mini-meta-analysis”), refugees’ cognitive abilities are about (5 to) 10 IQ points higher than the average abilities of people in their home countries (measured by student assessments or intelligence tests and compiled by various research groups), but 12 (to 15) IQ points below the German average. Positive selection, people that are more intelligent being more likely to leave their countries of origin, and accessibility to testing all likely play a role. At the individual level, refugees’ IQ was correlated with education: Each additional year of schooling corresponded to about 2 IQ points (r=.41). At the cross-national level, education was again significantly correlated with immigrants’ average IQ, but so were the level of cognitive ability in the home country (five different measures), income (GDP per capita as indicator of standard of living), positively valued policies (e.g., democracy), indicators of evolutionary ancestry, and culture (religion is used as a measure here). Individuals’ cognitive abilities could be better predicted with individual-level data than with country-level data (multiple R=.50 vs. .34). However, if individual predictors are not available, group predictors are not useless. Path analyses at different data levels showed indirect effects of country of origin cognitive ability on refugee intelligence via income and level of education.

So, refugees in Germany tend to have somewhat higher IQs than non-refugees back in their homelands, and somewhat lower IQ than Germans (who average 100).

What could be more controversial than not being ignorant about that?