Matt Ridley Quote

The conclusion that all these studies converge upon is that about half of your IQ was inherited, and less than a fifth was due to the environment you shared with your siblings – the family. The rest came from the womb, the school and outside influences such as peer groups. But even this is misleading. Not only does your IQ change with age, but so does its heritability. As you grow up and accumulate experiences, the influence of your genes increases. What? Surely, it falls off? No: the heritability of childhood IQ is about forty-five per cent, whereas in late adolescence it rises to seventy-five per cent. As you grow up, you gradually express your own innate intelligence and leave behind the influences stamped on you by others. You select the environments that suit your innate tendencies, rather than adjusting your innate tendencies to the environments you find yourself in. This proves two vital things: that genetic influences are not frozen at conception and that environmental influences are not inexorably cumulative. Heritability does not mean immutability.