Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid A Flynn Effect in Kuwait, 1985–1998 Edward Dutton a, ⁎ , Salaheldin Farah Attallah Bakhiet b , Abdulkarim Hussein Alhossein b , Yossry Ahmed Sayed Essa b a Ulster Institute for Social Research, London, UK b King Saud University, Department of Special Education, College of Education, Saudi Arabia ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Kuwait Flynn Effect Intelligence Gulf War ABSTRACT An analysis of Kuwaiti children's IQs, published by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Education, is translated, corrected, and presented in English for the first time. It is shown that among large representative samples of Kuwaiti children aged between 6 and 14, there was a Flynn Effect on a similarities-type test between 1985 and 1998 of 5.3 points per decade. It is argued that as this occurred in a context of increasingly conservative Islamic influence over the Kuwaiti education system, it is likely explicable in the same way that Western Flynn Effects are. The remarkably small Flynn Effect among the cohort aged 7 is cautiously explained in terms of the effect of the First Gulf War. 1. Introduction The Flynn Effect (e.g. Flynn, 2012) refers to the secular increase in IQ scores reported in Western countries during the twentieth century, from around the 1930s onwards. On average, this has involved an IQ score increase of approximately 3 points per decade. The Flynn Effect has been found to have been the most pronounced on the less g-loaded subtests (e.g. Te Nijenhuis & Van der Flier, 2013) and it is generally agreed that it does not betoken a rise in general intelligence, but, ra- ther, an increase in narrow specialized abilities, possibly pushed to- wards their genotypic limit by Western societies developing an in- creasingly analytical or scientific way of thinking (Dutton, Van der Linden, & Lynn, 2016; Flynn, 2012). There is also some evidence that an aspect of the Flynn Effect may be due to construct irrelevant var- iance; the introduction of extraneous uncontrolled variables (Beaujean & Osterlind, 2008). Flynn Effects have been reported in developing countries since the 1990s. Flynn's (2012) literature review documents Flynn Effects in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Dominica, Turkey, Sudan and China; this being a partial list of developing countries where Flynn Effects have been found. Concomitantly, since the late 1990s, a Negative Flynn Effect has been being reported in Western countries, amounting to an average IQ loss of 2.44 points per decade (see Dutton et al., 2016). Woodley of Menie, Peñaherrera-Aguirre, Fernandes, and Figueredo (2017) have systematically analyzed the negative Flynn Effect and have found that it is greatest when the aggregate g-loading of the indicator class is lowest. Three recent studies have summarized evidence for Negative Flynn Effects (Dutton et al., 2016; Flynn & Shayer, 2018 and Woodley of Menie et al., 2017). To develop this salient line of research, as many instances of these two effects must be reported and understood as possible. Equally, if they have only been reported in local journals and not in English, then they must be reported in English for the benefit of a future Flynn Effect meta-analysts (e.g. Pietschnig & Voracek, 2015). Accordingly, in this study we present, for the first time, evidence of a Flynn Effect in Kuwait by correcting and presenting in English a study by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Education previously only available in Arabic (Mursi, 1998), and further analyzing this study. Dutton, Bakhiet, Essa, Blahmar, and Hakami (2017) have previously found a negative Flynn Effect in Kuwait between 2006 and 2015 among children aged 8 to 15 on the Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM). They demonstrated that there had been an average loss of 5.09 points per decade over the period, which was high in comparison to losses on the WAIS but commensurate with other negative Flynn Effects found when em- ploying this particular instrument. Breaking down the sample by age group, they concluded that what they had likely uncovered was fluc- tuations which neatly paralleled conservative Islam-influenced altera- tions to the school curriculum across the period of analysis, as the party composition of Kuwaiti governments changed. In other words, con- servative Islamic influence on the government, and thus on the edu- cation system, in children's formative years, seemed to reduce IQ while liberal influence appeared to increase it, possibly because increased levels of religious instruction subtract from time spent on subjects https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.10.029 Received 4 September 2018; Received in revised form 18 October 2018; Accepted 22 October 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: e.c.dutton@dunelm.org.uk (E. Dutton), bakhiet@ksu.edu.sa (S.F.A. Bakhiet), ah28@KSU.EDU.SA (A.H. Alhossein), ysayed@ksu.edu.sa (Y.A.S. Essa). Personality and Individual Differences 138 (2019) 355–357 Available online 26 October 2018 0191-8869/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T