Is political talk getting smarter? An analysis of presidential debates and the Flynn effect

Abstract

James R. Flynn has shown that I.Q.s of persons living in industrialized societies have increased steadily over the past century, averaging a three-point gain per decade. The cause of the “Flynn effect” is unclear, but in What Is Intelligence? Flynn suggests that the I.Q. gains are attributable to an increasingly conceptually complex social environment. An important cause of this enriched cognitive world is the increasing permeation of scientific categories into everyday thinking. Using a mix of human coding and computer-aided content analysis, we test whether the use of abstract scientific terms, and employing such terms in causal and logical analysis, has increased over time in presidential debates. We find no evidence that the discourse in these debates has become scientifically richer, and find that scientific discourse with respect to economics has actually declined. Possible reasons for this finding and directions for future study are discussed.

Keywords

Flynn effect political discourse presidential debates and content analysis science in public

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