Chapter 9- Developmental Psychology

Developmental psychology- how our behaviors and thoughts change over our
entire lives from birth to death.
Research Methods
Cross sectional research- use of multiple participants of different ages to
compare how certain variables may change over the life span
o Produces quick results
o Have to be careful of historical evens and cultural trends.
Longitudinal studies- examines one group of participants over a long period of
time.
o Person is tested at various intervals of their life.
o Has the advantage of measuring the effects of development on a specific
group
Prenatal Influences on Development

Genetics
Many times it is looked into how genes influence our development
Twin studies were used a lot to look at developmental psychology and genes
Teratogens
Teratogens- certain chemicals or agents that can cause harm if ingested or
contracted by the mother.
Teratogens can pass through the placenta that filters harmful substances.
Alcohol- Can affect the fetal brain development
Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)- small malformed skulls, mental retardation
Fetal alcohol effect- these children do not show the symptoms of FAS but have
developmental problems later in life like learning disabilities or behavioral
problems
Cocaine and Heroin- causes child to share the same drug addiction as parents.
o Withdrawal can kill and infant
Polluting chemicals in the environment can be inhaled and infect the child.
Some bacteria and viruses can go through the placenta and be contracted by
the fetus
Motor/ Sensory Development
Reflexes
All babies exhibit a set of specific reflexes
Reflexes- an inborn automatic response to certain specific stimuli
o Rooting reflex- when touched on a cheek, a baby will turn his or her head
to the side where they felt the touch, to see to put the object in their
mouth.

o Sucking reflex- when an object is placed into the babys mouth, the infant
will suck on it. This reflex helps babies eat.
o Grasping reflex- if an object is placed into the palm or foot pad of a baby,
he or she will try to grasp it with their fingers or toes
o Moro reflex- a baby will fling his or her limbs out quickly and retard them
back to make themselves small, when they are startled.
o Babinski reflex-When a babys foot is stroked, he or she will spread the
toes
The Newborns Senses
Along with reflexes, a baby is born with sensory apparatus.
Babies can hear even before birth
o Minutes after a birth a baby will try to turn his or her head towards the
mothers voice
Babies love the taste of sugar and respond to high concentrations of sugar
Babies are born with the basic preferences in taste and smell, but these senses
become more developed over time.
Babies have very poor vision, making hearing their dominant sense
Babies are born almost legally blind
o Can only see 8-12 inches in front of them
o Everything else is a blur.
o They get normal vision by 12months
o They are born with visual preferences and like to look at faces and face
like objects.
o Makes babies see their mother when theyre born.
Motor Development
All humans develop the same basic motor skills in the same sequence, even
though the age we develop may differ from person to person
This is if a person doesnt have a developmental disorder
As the neurons in our brain connect and become myelinated, babies gain motor
control
o Babies roll over at 5 months old
o Babies stand at 8-9 months
o Babies can walk alone at 15 months
Parental encouragement may have an effect on motor skills
Parenting
Attachment theory
Konrad Lorenz- infant animals become attached to individuals or object they
see during a critical period after birth
Attachment- the reciprocal relationship between caregiver and child
Harry Harlow

Raised baby monkeys with two artificial wire frame figures that resembled
mother monkeys.
One had a feeding bottle and the other was wrapped in soft material.
When frightened, stressed or surprised the monkeys preferred the soft mother
money for protection and comfort.
Monkeys raised in this experiment became more stressed and frightened than
other monkeys raised with real mothers.
This shows that being deprived of an attachment with a real mother has long
term effects on a monkeys behavior

Mary Ainsworth
Placed infants into strange situations, and their parents left for a short period of
time then returned
o Secure attachments
About 66 percent of the participants
Explore the environment confidently when parents are present
Distressed when they leave
Come back to them when they return
o Avoidant attachments
About 21 percent of the participants
Resist being held by their parents
Explore the novel environment
Do not go to the parents for comfort when they return
o Anxious/ Ambivalent attachments
About 12 percent of the participants
Have mixed reactions to parents
Extreme stress when the parents leave
Resist being comforted when they return
Parenting styles
Diana Baumarind- researched parent child interactions and came up with three
styles of parenting
Authoritarian parents (bad)
o Strict standards for their childrens behavior and apply punishments for
violations of these rules.
o Children are preferred to be obedient and not question parents reasoning
o Punishment for undesired behavior is more often used than
reinforcements for desired behavior.
o More likely to distrust other people and withdraw themselves from peers
Permissive Parents
o Do not set clear guidelines for their children
o Rules set in the family are constantly changed or are not enforced
consistently

o Family members think they can get away with anything at home.
o Children most likely have emotional control problems and are more
dependent
Authoritative parents (good)
o Have set consistent standards for their childrens behaviors and the
standards are reasonable and explained.
o The family rules explanation is discussed with children old enough to
understand.
o Encourage independence but not to the point of violating rules.
o Praise and punish are equal
o Produces the most desirable and beneficial home environment
o Children are often more socially capable and perform better academically

Stage Theories
Continuity vs. discontinuity- do we develop continually (at a steady rate from
birth to death) or discontinuous (happening in fits and starts with some period
of rapid development and some with little change)
Biologically we know development is discontinuous
Lev Vygotsky
o Zone of proximal development- the range of tasks the child can perform
independently and those tasks that the child needs assistance with.
o Teachers and parents can provide scaffolding on the upper end of the
zone to encourage further development.
Some people say for some certain traits we develop in stages.
Stage theories- Discontinuous theories of development

Sigmund Freud
First to say we pass through stages in our childhood.
Called psychosexual stages
We can become fixated in a stage
The five stages
o Oral stage
Seek pleasure through their mouth
People fixated may over eat, smoke and have a child like
dependence on things and people.
o Anal stage
Develops during toilet training
If conflict happens with toilet training, a person might fixate in this
stage.
Fixation involves being anal retentive (controlling) or anal expulsive
(out of control)

o Phallic stage
Babies realize their gender and cause conflict in the family
Oedipus complex
Electra complex
Conflict can cause fixation, causing problems in later relationships
o Latency stage
Short period of calm with no psychosexual anxiety
Between the ages of 6 and puberty
Most psychologists dont regard this stage as a separate stage
o Genital stage
Remain in this stage for the rest of their lives
Focus of sexual pleasure is in the genitals
Fixation here is normal

Erik Erikson
A neo- Freudian
Believed our personality was influenced by our experiences with others
Psychosocial stage theory
o Trust vs. Mistrust
Babies learn whether or not they can trust that the world provides
their needs
Babies need to learn to trust their caregivers and that their
requests of crying are effective
Sense of trust or mistrust will carry throughout their life
o Autonomy vs. shame and doubt
Toddlers begin to exert their will over their own bodies
Autonomy- control over our own body
Potty training is an early effort of this stage.
Children learn to control temper tantrums
Most popular word is no trying to control themselves and others.
Gaining control develops healthy
o Initiative vs. guilt
Favorite word becomes why
If we have developed trust for people and have control of our
bodies, we will be curious about our surroundings
Want to understand the world
Take the initiative in problem solving
Ask a lot of questions that can either be encouraged or scolded.
If encouraged we will express curiosity for the rest of our lives.

 If scolded we will feel guilty about asking questions in the future

o Industry vs. Inferiority
This is the beginning of a formal education
Grade one is the first time we are asked to produce work that is
evaluated
We are encouraged to perform as well as our peers and it can make
us feel competent if we can keep up.
If you cannot do as well as others, we can develop and inferiority
complex making those tasks make us feel anxious for the rest of
the stages
o Identity vs. Role
In adolescence
Our main task was to find a social identity we are comfortable with.
People naturally try out different roles until they find one that best
hit their internal sense of self.
Not finding a sense of self before moving on to a next stage can
cause identity crisis later in life.
o Intimacy vs. isolation
This is when we must find a way to balance the efforts between
work and relationships with other people.
Patterns established in this stage will influence effort spent on self
and others in the future,
o Generativity vs. Stagnation
We start to look critically at our life path
We look to make sure we are creating the life we want for
ourselves.
We can try to seize things at this point to make things the way we
plan
We try to change our identity or control those around us to change
our lives.
o Integrity vs. despair
We look back at our accomplishments and decide if we are satisfied
or not.
If we are seeing our lives are meaningful we can step outside of the
pressures and stress of society and offer wisdom and insight.
If we are not happy and regret the way we live, we can fall into
despair.
Cognitive Development
Parents focus intently on the intellectual development of children.
How children think about and evaluate the world.
Jean Piaget

He was working for Alfred Binet, and started to see behaviors in the children he
interviewed.
Children of the same age often gave the same answer despite being wrong or
right.
He says this is because they were thinking the same way.
Developed Piagets theory of cognitive development
o Children view the world through schemata, which are cognitive rules that
we use to interpret the world
o Assimilation- incorporating our experiences into existing schemata.
o We can accommodate and change our schemata when our information
doesnt fit
o Daniel and the cowboy boots.
The stages
o Sensorimotor stage
Birth to ampproximately two years old
Babies experience and follow the world through senses.
Our life is ruled by our reflexes
Then we begin to develop our first cognitive schemata.
Difficult to develop object permanence- objects continue to exist
even when they are out of sensory range.
o Preoperational stage
Two to approximately seven years old
Object permanence allows children to use symbols to represent
real world objects
Beginning of language
Start speaking our first words and learn to represent the world
using language
Children are egocentric in thinking because they cannot see the
world in anyones perspective but theirs.
o Concrete operations
Eight to approximately 12 yeas old
Children learn to think more logically about relationships between
different characteristics of objects.
This is when children develop knowledge of the concept of
conservation
Properties of objects stay the same even when their shape
changes.
o Formal operations
12 years through adulthood
This stage involves adult reasoning
Formal operational reasoning- abstract reasoning.
Manipulate and contrast ideas in our head without physically
seeing or having real world correlates.
Metacognition- think about he way we think

Criticisms of Piaget: Information Processing Model

They think he underestimated children, because they enter stages earlier than
he had predicted.
Some feared his tests relied too heavily on language use
Information processing model- more about memory and interpretation as we
age
Our attention span increases as we get older
Believed that no one has the right model fro cognitive development
Moral Development
Lawrence Kohlberg
Lawrence Kolberg developed a stage theory about how our ability to reason
about ethical situations changed over our lives
Heinz Dilemma- should Heinz steal the drug that he cannot afford to save his
wifes life.
Categories of responses
o Preconventional
Youngest children
Make a choice that most likely makes them avoid punishment
Limited to how the choice affects themselves
Stealing drugs is bad and will send you to prison
o Conventional
Children can move past personal gain or loss and look at the moral
choice through societys eyes.
Based on how others will view them.
Steal the drugs and save your wife and become a public hero
o Postconventional
Moral reasoning
Examines the rights and values involved in this choice
Self defined ethical principles are involved in this stage
The morality of societys rules are examined and not blindly
accepted
The right to life outweighs the drug sellers right to property so he
should take the drug
Criticisms of Kohlberg
Carol Gilligan- claimed his stages were based on the responses of boys.
When girls were then tested he claimed they were put into lower categories.
They believe gender plays a role in moral reasoning
Boys are said to have moral rules they apply to in every context
Girls would want to know more about the situation and relationship of the
people involved before making a decision
Gender and Development

 Different cultures encourage different gender roles

Biopsychological theory
Focus on the nature element in the nature vs nurture combination.
Children learn the biological differences between men and women.
There are differences between the male and female brain
Women have larger corpus callosums than men and can affect how the left and
right brain communicated
Psychodynamic theory
Have more historical value than current value
Viewed gender development as a competition (Oedipus and Electra)
Gender development happens when a child realizes that he or she cannot beat
their same sex parent at the competition and identifies with that person
instead (I want to be like mommy)
Social Cognitive theory
Look at how society and our own thoughts about gender have a role on
development.
Look at how boys and girls react differently
Gender schema- we internalize messages about gender into cognitive rules
about how each gender should behave.

Chapter 10- Personality

Personality- the unique attitudes, behaviors, and emotions that characterize a

person.
Type A persono Tend to feel a sense of time pressure and are easily angered
o Competitive and ambitious
o Work hard and play hard
o At higher risk for heart disease
Type B persono Relaxed
o Easygoing
Some people are neither type
Psychoanalytic Theory

Freudian Theory
Developed by Sigmund Freud
Believes that ones personality was set in early childhood
Believed that sexual urges were an important determinant in peoples
personality development
Stage theories- theories where development is thought to be discontinuous
o All people go through all stages in the same order
The Stages
o The Oral Stage
Birth to one year
Children enjoy sucking and biting on things because it gives them a
form of sexual pleasure
o The Anal Stage
One to three years
Pleasure from defecating
Primary focus is the control of bladder and bowel movements.
Leads to tantrums in this stage
o The Phallic Stage
Three to five years
Sexual gratification moves to the genitals.
Oedipus Crisis- Boys sexually desire their mothers and have rivals
with their father for their mothers love.
Electra Crisis- Girls sexually desire their father and have rivals with
their mother for their fathers love.
Boys notice their physical changes
Penis envy- Girls desire to have a penis
Castration anxiety- Fear that penis will be cut off for misbehavior.
Identification- people attach themselves to individuals who they
believe threatens the,.
o The latency stage

Six years to puberty

All sexual feelings are pushed out of the conscious awareness
o Adult Genital Stage
People stay in this stage forever.
People seek sexual pleasure through sexual relationships.
Fixation- getting struck in a stage due to undergratification or overgratification
Anal expulsive personality- messy and disorganized
Anal retentive- people who are meticulously neat, hyper organized and
compulsive.
Phallic Stage Fixation- become sexually aggressive, or become consumed with
their perceived inadequacies.
Fixation is caused by the libido getting stuck in one psychosexual stage.
The three different minds
o The conscious mind- contains anything we are thinking about at a given
time.
o The preconscious mind-Everything we can collect in conscious awareness
very easily.
o The unconscious mind- the hidden and locked away information not for
use.
Instinctso Eros- life instincts that is seen as desire for sex
o Thanatos- death instincts that is seen as aggression
The three parts of personality
o The id the unconscious that contains instinct and psychic energy
Propelled by the pleasure instinct
Wants immediate gratification
o Ego Follows the reality principle
Negotiates between he desires of the id and the limitations of the
environment
Acts like a mediator between the id and super ego
o Super Ego Both conscious and unconscious
This is our conscience telling us right from wrong
Defense mechanisms used by the ego to protect the conscious mind.
o Repression- Blocking thoughts from our conscious awareness
o Denial- not accepting the ego threatening truth
o Displacement- Redirecting anger towards another person or object, often
less threatening than the source of the emotion.
o Projection- Believing that the feelings one has toward someone else are
actually held by the other person and directed at oneself.
o Reaction Formation- Expressing the opposite of how one truly feels.

o Regression- Returning to an earlier comforting form of behavior

o Rationalization- Coming up with a beneficial result of an undesirable
occurrence.
o Intellectualization- Undertaking an academic, unemotional study of topic
o Sublimation- Channeling ones frustration towards a different goal, and is
considered healthy.
Criticisms
o Little empirical evidence
o Little predictive power
o Overestimates the importance of early childhood and sex
o Feminists object to this theory because of penis envy being apparently
based on Freuds idea of women being less superior to men.
Impact
o Play a big part in art work (Salvador Dali, Woody Allen)
o Became part of daily life.
Psychodynamic Theories

Also called neo-freudian

An offshoot of the psychoanalytic theory.
Major creators are Carl Jung and Alfred Adler.
Jung believed in two parts of the unconscious
o Personal unconscious Contains the painful or threatening memories and thoughts the
person cannot confront (complexes)
o Collective unconscious
Contains archetypes (universal concepts that all humans share)
that are passed down through species
Ex. Shadow is the evil side of personality and person is the creation
of a persons public image.
Adler downplayed the importance of the unconscious mind and more on the
ego
o Inferiority- Believed people are motivated by the fear of failure
o Superiority- the desire to achieve.
Trait Theories
Believ that we can descrive peoples personalities by talking about their main
characteristics or traits.
Establishes motivation to stay in a trait.
Nomothetic approach- believe the same basic set of traits can be used to
describe all peoples personality.
o Hans Eyesenck
Introversion- extroversion scale

 Unstable- stable scale

o Raymond Cattell- developed the 16 PF (personality factor) test
Helped find 16 basic traits present in all people.
o The big five personality traits
Extraversion- how outgoing someone is
Agreeableness- how easy it is to get along with someone
Conscientiousness- Hard working responsible and organized
Openness to experience- ones creativity, curiosity and willingness
to try new things.
Emotional stability- how consistent ones mood is
o Factor analysis- allows researchers to use correlations between traits in
order to see which traits cluster together as factors to group the 16
Idiographic theorists- using the same set of terms to classify all people is
impossible and each person should be described with the few traits that best
character her or his unique self.
o Gordon Allport- believed that understanding someones personality was
impossible without looking at his or her personal traits.
Cardinal dispositions- a person who is influenced by one trait that
plays a pivotal role in everything they do.
Central dispositions- have a larger influence on personality
being more apparent and describing more significant aspects
of personality
Secondary dispositions
Criticisms
o Underestimate the importance of the situation.
Biological Theories
Use genes, chemicals, and body types as the central determinant of who a
person is.
Little evidence exits about the heritability of personality traits.
Heritability- the measure of the amount of variation in a trait in a given
population that is due to genetics
Genes play a 50-70% percentage range for intelligence.
Temperament0 peoples emotional style and characteristic way of dealing with
the world.
o Related to genes
o Babies are born immediately with personality differences.
Hippocrates
o Believed that personality was determined by the relative levels of the
four humors in the body. (excess of blood)
William Sheldon- somatotype theory
o Explained peoples personalities are associated with body types.
Endomorphs (fat)- friendly and outgoing

 Mesomorphs (muscular)- confident and assertive

Ectomorphs (thin)- shy and secretive
o Has not been replicated
o Only a correlation
Behaviorist Theories
Argue that behavior is personality
Personality is meaningless.
Determined by the environment.
Reinforcements that one is exposed to, shapes their personality.
Social- Cognitive Theories
Albert Bandurao Said personality is created by an interaction between the person, the
environment, and the persons behavior
o Triadic reciprocality/reciprocal determinism- each of the three factors
influences both of the other two.
o Personality is affected by a persons sense of self efficacy
High= optimistic
Low= powerlessness
George Kelly
o Personal- construct theory- peoples attempts to understand the world
develop their own individual system of personal constructs
o Consists of opposite pairs
Fair- unfair
Smart- dumb
Exciting- dull
o Fundamental postulate- peoples behavior is influenced by their
cognitions, and being able to predict how someone will behave based on
how theyve acted in the past.
Julian Roters
o Locus of control
Internal locus of control- feel as though they are responsible for
what happens to them
External locus of control- believe that luck and other forces outside
of their own control determines their destiny.
Humanistic Theories
Determinism- the belief that what happens is dictated by what has happened in
the past.
Called the third force because it deters the determinism in behavioral and
psychoanalytic.
Free will- a persons ability to choose his or her own destiny.

 Views people as innately good to make their own choices.

Self-concept- the sense of feeling separate or distinct to others
Self esteem- a persons over all evaluation of their own worth
Abraham Maslow & Carl Rogers
o Believe people are motivated to reach their self-actualization.
Carl Rogers
o Self theory- people are innately good but require certain things from their
interaction with others to self-actualize.
o Unconditional positive regard- unconditional blanket of acceptance.
o Believes in acceptance by society in order to self-actualize.
Assessment Techniques
Reliability- consistency of results even if they are not accurate
Validity- accuracy
Projective tests
o Used by psychoanalysts
o Rorschach inkblot test- showing people inkblots and asking them what
they see.
o Thematic apperception test (TAT)- cards with pictures of people in
situations, and the person is asked to describe what is happening.
o Peoples answers reflect their unconscious thought.
o Said to rely too much on the therapists interpretations.
Self report inventories- questionnaires that ask people to provide information
about themselves
o Used by humanistic, trait theorists, cognitive behavioral psychologists,
and use self report inventories.
o Also called objective personality tests.
o Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory (MMPI-2)
People can affect validity by not answering honestly.
Some tests have built in lie scales
Radical behaviorists would object to all testing methods and insist on
observation.
Barnum effect- people accepting the way people describe them, even though it
is general and can apply to everyone.
o Astrologers, psychics, and fortunetellers use this.

Chapter 11- Testing

Standardization and Norms
Standardized- all questions is the same given to similar population of people
who are meant to take the test and achieve the norms.
Standardization sample- a group of people who are tested on questions that
are not evaluated but help the ETS (educational testing service) in future
exams
Psychometricians- people who make the test
Tests are revised and changed appropriately.
Reliability and Validity
Reliability- the repeatability and consistency of the test
o Split half reliability- randomly dividing a group into two and then
correlating peoples performances in the two halves. The closer the
correlation, the better.
o Equivalent form reliability- the correlation between performance of the
different forms of the test

o Test- retest reliability- correlation between a persons score on one

administration of the test with the same persons score on a similar
administration of the same test.
Validity- accuracy of measurement.
o A test can not be valid if it is not reliable
o Face validity- the superficial measurement of accuracy
o Content validity- how well a measure reflects the entire range of material
o Criterion related validity Concurrent validity- how much of a characteristic a person has now
Predictive validity- a measure of future performance.
o Construct validity- a test or tool measure that is made to measure a
certain variable.
Types of Tests
Aptitude tests- measure ability and potential
Achievement tests- measure what one has learned or accomplished
Speed tests- a large amount of questions answered in a short amount of time,
to see how quickly a person can solve problems.
Power test- involves items of increasing difficulty levels with sufficient time to
see their level os work
Group tests- administered to a large number of people at a time, making them
less expensive. People are given a certain amount of time with instructions
provided to the whole group.
Individual tests- Full interaction between examiner and examinee.

Theories of Intelligence
Intelligence- our ability to gather and use information in productive ways
Fluid intelligence- our ability to solve abstract problems and pick up new
information and skills
Crystalized intelligence- our knowledge accumulated over time.
Charles Spearman
o Believed intelligence would be expressed by a single factor.
o Factor analysis- a technique that measures the correlation between
different items.
o Special abilities (s) were seen as type of intelligence by people, but he
saw it as a single factor named general (g)
L.L. Thurstone and J.P. Guilford
o Thurstones primary mental abilities theory- intelligence is compromised
of seven main abilities including reasoning, verbal comprehension, and
memory
o Guilford beloved there were over 100 mental abilities
Howard Gardner

o Multiple intelligences
o He has named a range of human behavior
Linguistic
Logical mathematical
And Spatial
Musical- the ability to play an instrument or compose a symphony
Bodily kinesthetic- good coordination and movement
Intrapersonal- ones ability to understand ones self
Interpersonal- ones ability to get along with and be sensitive to
others
Naturalist- ones ability to handle and recognize things they
encounter in the natural environment.
Daniel Goleman
o Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
o Both EQ and IQ are needed to succeed.
o Involves interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence
Robert Sternberg
o Sternbergs triarchic theory three types of intelligence exists
Componential or analytic- the skills traditionally thought of as
reflecting
Experiential or creative- the ability to use their own knowledge and
experiences in new and innovative ways.
Contextual or practical- being able to apply what they know in the
real world with street smart.
o Practical intelligence- how you react to your environment and your ability
to adapt it or change it to suit your needs. The ability to thrive in the real
world.
Intelligence Tests

Standord-Binet
o Alfred Binet
Mental age- intelligence increases, as one gets older.
Created a test that would measure and identify children who
lagged behind, was at average, or far exceeded their peers.
Standardized
o Louis Terman
Used Binet system to create the Standord- Binet IQ tests
IQ- intelligence quotient
Calculated by:
MENTAL AGE
----------------------------- * 100 = IQ
CHRONOLOGICAL AGE

All adults have an arbitrary age of 20

Weschler
o Created by David Weschler
o The Weschler adult intelligence scale (WAIS)- given to adults
Has 11 subscales
6 for verbal IQ
5 for performance IQ
o The Weschler intelligence scale for children (WISC)- children between 6
and 16
o The Weschler pre school and primary scale of intelligence (WPPSI)Children as young as 4
o Standardized
Standard deviation: 15
Mean: 100
Form a normal distribution
o Verbal IQ questions
Define words
Solve word problems
Explaining similarity between two different things
o Performance IQ
Usually involve tasks
Duplicating a pattern with blocks
Ordering pictures to tell a story
Finding missing things in a picture.
o These two sections can be used to show learning disabilities
Bias in Testing

There is a large concern about bias against gender or race

People claim white, middle, and upper class has advantages.
Sometimes tests can have things on a test that can pertain to one groups
culture more than another

Nature Vs. Nurture: Intelligence

Nature- the influence of genetics
Nurture- the importance of environment
Heritability- how much of a traits variation is explained by genetic factors
Cannot be solved because no experiment passes ethical guidelines
Flynn effect- performance on IQ test have been steady in the last century,
because the gene pool has remained stable, saying that environmental factors
play a huge role in intelligence.
Identical twins score more similarly on IQ tests than fraternal twins. Argument
is whether identical twins are often treated the same or not.

 Identical twins separated at birth have had a strong correlation of IQ scores,

even though some argue that they are often placed in similar environments
Racial differences in IQ scores suggest that intelligence is genetically
determined. Some people argue that rather than race, it is all about
socioeconomic factors of the environment. They can also blame it on tests
racial bias
Interacting in government programs that help impoverished people have
showed a higher IQ score.
Within any group, there can be more diversity than between groups
Information between groups have to be used carefully and should often not be
used, as the mean does not represent every single person of that group.

A Cautionary Note
We need to be careful not to put too much importance on a test score, because
there are many factors that affect peoples performance on a test.
Know the limit with usefulness