+OK 3866 octets Received: from smtp03.nwnexus.com (smtp03.nwnexus.com [206.63.63.41]) by mail3.halcyon.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA16559 for ; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 12:31:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ml.egroups.com (ml.egroups.com [207.138.41.146]) by smtp03.nwnexus.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id MAA29947 for ; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 12:31:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [10.1.2.1] by ml.egroups.com with NNFMP; 01 Oct 1999 20:31:16 -0000 Mailing-List: contact h-bd-owner@egroups.com X-Mailing-List: h-bd@egroups.com X-URL: http://www.egroups.com/list/h-bd/ Received: (listserv 1.262); by m5; 01 Oct 1999 19:31:16 -0000 Delivered-To: listsaver-egroups-h-bd@egroups.com Received: (qmail 9439 invoked from network); 1 Oct 1999 19:31:10 -0000 Received: from juliet.its.uwo.ca (129.100.2.61) by qh.egroups.com with SMTP; 1 Oct 1999 19:31:10 -0000 Received: from julian.uwo.ca by juliet.its.uwo.ca with ESMTP id PAA15158; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 15:30:22 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: juliet.its.uwo.ca: Host 6434aa.sscl.uwo.ca [129.100.38.127] claimed to be julian.uwo.ca Message-ID: <37F51007.4A15886E@julian.uwo.ca> Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 15:48:24 -0400 From: "J. P. Rushton" X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "h-bd@egroups.com" Subject: [h-bd] Cognitive Arousal and Race Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Status: Phil Rushton here trying too to make sense of the paradoxical "Big Man" phenomenon from a low IQ population. The problem is even starker in Black Africa where the average population IQ is about 70 (as far below African Americans with an IQ of 85 as African Americans are below Whites with an IQ of 100). Yet, many African politicians, and not just Nelson Mandela, have been social lions on the world stage. African basketball players, athletes, jazz musicians, and talk show hosts are as flamboyantly successful as their American counterparts. When I visited Johannesburg a year ago to collect my African IQ data from a university there (African first year students averaged an IQ of 85, only one standard deviation above their population mean of 70) the apparent "social intelligence" of the students seemed completely out of wack with their objectively measured scores (until you talked about very abstract concepts). My point is that maybe Personality and Temperament is the missing dimension. Many studies show that Africans and their descendants are a lot more Extraverted than Europeans and their descendants who are a lot more extraverted than East Asians and their descendants. The reverse is true for Anxiety and or Neuroticism as it is sometimes called. Common to both Extraversion and Neuroticism is COGNITIVE AROUSAL. Thus Africans are less aroused and East Asians more aroused and Caucasians are in between. Under pressure, arousal increases further. Thus the decision making appartus gets overwhelmed. If you can keep a cool head under stress you have more processing space to work with. As Steve has said before, Africans have perfected the "cool." They have "cooler" brains, less aroused. Social stimulation is very arousing and so "cool" heads can process that information as well. In short "social intelligence" is largely a matter of personality. This may not be the whole story but it may be part of it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ How to contribute to H-Bd: 1. To reply privately to just the sender of this message, click the "Reply" button on your email package. 2. To reply publicly to the entire H-Bd list, click the "Reply All" (or equivalent) button on your email package. 3. To start a thread, email your message to h-bd@egroups.com .