Flynn Effect
The substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that was measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century.
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Origin
James Flynn, a political scientist at the University of Otago in New Zealand, published two landmark papers in Psychological Bulletin — in 1984 and 1987 — systematically documenting IQ score rises across 14 nations over decades. The phenomenon had been noticed earlier by others, but Flynn was the first to analyze it at scale. The term "Flynn effect" was coined in 1994 by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in The Bell Curve as a tribute to his systematic work.
Updated February 22, 2026