About: Intelligence and How to Get It

Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count is a 2009 book about human intelligence by Richard Nisbett, a professor of social psychology at the University of Michigan. The book challenges the hereditarians' argument that IQ is entirely or almost entirely heritable, and argues that nonhereditary factors play a more significant role than hereditarians assert. It also recommends how to tutor children so as to maximize their intelligence. The book also argues that IQ scores are a valid, though imperfect, indicator of general intelligence, while criticizing some of the assertions made about such scores in the 1994 book The Bell Curve. The book's appendix argues that racial differences in IQ are entirely due to environmental factors.