Are Asians smarter than the rest?
Last year, I spent a student exchange term in Denmark. This was the first time I stepped outside India, and during a conversation with some of the locals I heard one of them say “There is always an Asian better than you at everything”.
I initially rubbished this as bunkum but as I traveled around Europe, I kept coming across this notion before I finally decided to give it a thought.
Most stereotypes, while not universally applicable, have an element of truth in them. Stereotypes or generalizations are our brain’s way of efficiently processing information. Based on a few previous sample inputs and experiences, our brain recognizes common patterns and extrapolates them onto the entire population. While this functionality evolved to help brain become effective in its decision making during the hunter gatherer days — whom to trust and whom not to, what to eat and what not to — it also results in oversimplifications in the current world that may not be entirely accurate.
So this brings us back to the question: are Asians brighter than the rest? And if we are to make such a bold claim, does the answer lie in something immutable, like better genetics?
Is intelligence inherited?
One of the biggest debates in the science of genetics is the nature of intelligence and the extent of its heritability. Matt Ridley, a famous science writer, explores this in his book Genome: An autobiography of a Species in 23 chapters and argues that while the exact genes responsible for superior intelligence are still unclear, nearly 50% of your IQ — not the best metric to determine a person’s intelligence but that is a whole other debate — can be attributed to genetics and the rest to the general upbringing of the person. The education one receives, the books that one grows up reading and the various life skills that a child develops play an important role in shaping up how smart the child grows up to be.
This classic debate of nature versus nurture is explored by Malcolm Gladwell too. In Outliers, he argues that the success enjoyed by billionaires is not just due to their qualities but also due to the unique environment in which they grew up. He takes the classic example of Bill Gates, a highly driven, precocious teenager who had the luxury of accessing a computer back in the 1960s when he was growing up.
But no unbiased study or test has ever concluded that a certain race or ethnicity has been gifted more consistently with these “intelligence genes” than the rest. When white supremacists believed that Blacks were dumber than them by the sheer difference in their representation in all major intellectual fields, it was bigotry mixed with wrong correlation. Blacks were fewer in number not because they are genetically inferior but because a significant chunk of them lacked the access to resources — wealth, education and the like — that Whites enjoyed. We run a similar risk of ignorance if we are to believe that Asians are inherently smarter because of better genetics.
If nature does not explain the perceived intellectual prowess, does nurture help in any way?
Nurture and its impact
Before we understand the effects of nurture, a short dive into how life proceeds in Asia would certainly help understand the context.
Note: I am using life in India as an example as I know it the best; the central social characteristics discussed are almost same across most Asian countries.
One of the best world maps I have come across is this — that more people stay inside this circle than outside.
Asia accounts for 60% of the world’s population and stands first among the seven continents in absolute GDP at $28 trillion but fifth in GDP per capita bracket at $6,690. In other words, Asia is extremely populous but also significant poorer as compared to its Western counterparts. You do not have to look farther than India and China, Asia’s current poster boys, to see this trend.
Both China and India are ancient superpowers that have seen a economic downfall in the last two centuries due to colonial rule. Both of them have a population that is more than four times their nearest competitor, USA. Their per capita income belongs to middle income levels. All of these give rise to a similar economic structure.
A combination of huge population, which translates to intense competition, and poorer living conditions have an important influence at how a person’s thinking shapes up.
One of my most common observations during my travel in Europe was that Europeans were generally less aware of the directions in their city. Often times when we approached a stranger for help with a particular direction, they drew blank faces or were generally unsure. Contrast this with India where every Tom, Dick and Harry is eager to give their “gyaan” in pointing you to the right direction. On the surface of it, this may seem inconsequential but if we dig deeper, we might find some answers.
It is because if you are unaware of directions in a place like India, chances are that you will be taken for a ride by the local rickshaw drivers. And why are these rickshaw drivers generally more eager to extract every penny out of your ignorance? It is because the extra 20 rupees they earn out of your unawareness makes a tangible difference to their earnings because they belong to poorer sections of the society.
If the average financial well-being of people in a country is much better with even the financially challenged having access to resources, the chances of them ripping you off is naturally lesser as the marginal earning out of the deed would make little difference to their earnings and standard of living.
Simply put, if you are in India, you need to be a little extra smart in your everyday life because of a combination of competition and poverty that you grow up in. And we see this play out in almost every situation.
Indians bargain as a natural defence mechanism to being ripped off by the salesmen. They rush to grab an empty seat in the local train (another peculiar thing that I found in Europe — people don’t bother to sit on empty seats) because it is tiring to stand through long commutes, thanks to larger city sizes and inefficient public transport system. Every Indian tries to pursue engineering followed by an MBA because everyone else is doing the same and if you do not pursue higher education, it may place you at a significant disadvantage compared to others in the job market. Indians have evolved a whole form of getting by in life called Jugaad.
Competition is so deeply ingrained in our everyday actions that it has literally become our instinct. During a visit to Positano, me and my friend were waiting to hop onto a local transport bus for a long time. When the bus finally arrived, as a natural instinct, we rushed towards it only to be admonished by the people around us for not following a queue. Slightly abashed, we waited for our turn.
If you aren’t fast enough or smart enough in your actions, you are guaranteed to end up last in India. Kinda similar to Ross Geller.
Stereotype or Truth?
So is survival tougher in Asia? Yes. Does that equip you skills to be quicker and better than the rest? Quite likely.
There is yet another important factor at work here.
Westerners interact mostly with the privileged Asians, the kind who are not only highly educated but also financially well off. By the simple process of natural selection, individuals who manage to survive and thrive in such a competitive environment tend to be above average. With Availability heuristics at work, it is natural for such a stereotype to emerge.
