Affluence boosted intelligence? How the interaction between cognition and environment may have produced an eighteenth-century Flynn effect during the Industrial Revolution

Abstract

Cognition played a pivotal role in the acceleration of technological innovation during the Industrial Revolution. Growing affluence may have provided favourable environmental conditions for a boost in cognition, enabling individuals to tackle more complex (industrial) problems. Dynamical systems thinking may provide useful tools to describe sudden transitions like the Industrial Revolution, by modelling the recursive feedback between psychology and environment.