Bell Curve

266 Cognitive Chses and Social BehimTHE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING SMART AND BEING CIVILCognitive ability is a raw material for civility, not the thing itself. Supposethat the task facing a citizen is to vote on an initiative proposingsome environmental policy involving (as environmental issues usuallydo) complex and subtle trade-offs between costs and henefits. Aboveaverageintelligence means that a person is likely to be better read andbetter able to think through (in a purely technical sense) those tradeoffs.On the average, smarter people are more able to understand pointsof view other than their own. Rut beyond these contributions of intelligenceto citizenship, high intelligence also seems to be associated withan interest in issues of civil concern. It is associated, perhaps surprisinglyto some, with the behaviors that we identify with middle-classvalues.We should emphasize that vast quantities of this raw material calledintelligence are not needed for many of the most fundamental formsof civility and moral behavior. All of us might well pause at th~s pointto think of the abundant examples of smart people who have beenconspicuously uncivil. Yet these qualifications notwithstanding, the statisticaltendencies remain. A smarter population is more likely to he,and more capable of being made into, a civil citizenry. For a nation predicatedon a high level of individual autonomy, this is a fact worthknowing.PART I11The National ContextPart I1 was circumscribed, taking on social behaviors one at a time, focusingon causal roles, with the analysis restricted to whites whereverthe data permitted. We now turn to the national scene. This means consideringall races and ethnic groups, which leads to the most controversialissues we will discuss: ethnic differences in cognitive ability andsocial behavior, the effects of fertility patterns on the distribution of intelligence,and the overall relationship of low cognitive ability to whathas become known as the underclass. As we begin, perhaps a pact is appropriate.The facts about these topics are not only controversial butexceedingly complex. For our part, we will undertake to confront all thetough questions squarely. We ask that you read carefully.