Comments on correlations of IQ with skin color and geographic–demographic variables

Abstract

A large number of national and geographic population samples were used to test the hypothesis that the variation in mean values of skin color in the diverse populations are consistently correlated with the mean measured or estimated IQs of the various groups, as are some other physical variables, known as an ecological correlation. Straightforward statistical analyses clearly bear out the hypothesis, showing a significant positive ecological correlation between lightness of mean skin color and mean IQ across different populations. The main limitation of such a study design is that correlations obtained from this type of analysis are completely non-informative regarding any causal or functional connection between individual differences in skin pigmentation and and individual differences in IQ, nor are they informative regarding the causal basis of the correlation, e.g., simple genetic association due to cross-assortative mating for skin color and IQ versus a pleiotropic correlation in which both of the phenotypically distinct but correlated traits are manifested by one and the same gene.