Richard Haier

He recalls that when he began graduate school at Johns Hopkins in 1971, Julian Stanley was starting the Study of Mathematically and Scientifically Precocious Youth; helping at its first talent search sparked his interest in individual differences in mental abilities.⁠[1]

In 1975 he received a PhD in psychology from Johns Hopkins University, and he later held appointments in the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), at the Brown UniversityBrown UniversityBrown University is a private nonprofit research university in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Ivy League. Chartered by Rhode Island's colonial legislature in 1764, it is known for its undergraduate Open Curriculum, which has no common required core. Christina H. Paxson, president since July 2012, announced on August 3, 2026, that the 2026–27 academic year would be her last in office. As of October 1, 2026, the search for Brown's 20th president remained underway.Open the full entry medical school and at the University of California, Irvine.⁠[2]

He has said that he then started his own intelligence lab at Brown University; when PET imaging became available in the 1980s, he joined former NIMH colleagues who had moved to UC Irvine and used their PET scanner to study intelligence and brain function.⁠[1]

In 1988 he and co-authors including B. V. Siegel Jr. and M. S. Buchsbaum published a paper in volume 12 of the journal Intelligence using PET to study cortical glucose metabolic rate during tests of abstract reasoning and attention.⁠[3]

He explains that the study found inverse correlations between cerebral glucose metabolic rate and performance on a highly g-loaded intelligence test, which became the basis of the brain efficiency hypothesis of intelligence, and that the correlated areas were distributed around the brain rather than confined to the frontal lobe.⁠[4]

In 1992 he and colleagues published a PET study in Brain Research on regional glucose metabolic changes after learning a complex visuospatial/motor task, and a paper in Intelligence on intelligence and metabolic changes following learning; both used the video game Tetris as the learning task.⁠[5]

In 1994 he was one of 52 signatories of the editorial “Mainstream Science on Intelligence” published in The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is a U.S. news publication founded in 1889, with a focus on business, finance and economics. It is published by Dow Jones, part of News Corp.Open the full entry.⁠[6]

From July 1999 to June 2005 he was principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health grant on cerebral glucose metabolism in Down syndrome; he had earlier led a 1992–1994 NIH grant on regional cerebral glucose metabolic rates.⁠[7]

In December 2003 his UC Irvine team published in Neurology the first longitudinal brain-imaging study of adults with Down syndrome, which found increased metabolism in the temporal cortex; the researchers suggested PET might help detect Alzheimer’s disease before dementia symptoms appear.⁠[8]

In 2004 he published “Structural Brain Variation and General Intelligence” with Rex Jung, Ronald Yeo, Kevin Head and Michael Alkire in NeuroImage, volume 23.⁠[9]

In January 2005 he and University of New Mexico collaborators published a study in NeuroImage finding that men and women show essentially no difference in general intelligence but differ in the brain tissue related to it, with men having more intelligence-related gray matter and women more intelligence-related white matter.⁠[10]

On July 26, 2007, he and Rex E. Jung published online in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (volume 30, issue 2) a review of 37 neuroimaging studies proposing the Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (P-FIT), which holds that variation in a distributed brain network predicts individual differences on intelligence and reasoning tasks.⁠[11]

The paper appeared with peer commentary from 19 researchers; he said the P-FIT model provides a framework for testing new hypotheses in future experiments.⁠[12]

His website says the paper was identified by Thomson ReutersThomson ReutersThomson Reuters (Toronto Stock Exchange and Nasdaq symbol TRI) is a content and technology company headquartered in Toronto, Canada, that provides information, software, and AI products to professional fields including legal, tax, accounting, compliance, government, and media, and owns the news agency Reuters. The company was formed after The Thomson Corporation acquired Reuters Group PLC in 2008, and Woodbridge, the Thomson family’s private investment company, is its controlling shareholder.Open the full entry Essential Science Indicators as a Fast Breaking Paper in neuroscience and behavior.⁠[4]

In September 2009 a study he co-investigated was published in BMC Research Notes: after three months of Tetris practice, adolescent girls with limited gaming experience (26 in the study) showed greater brain efficiency and thicker cortex in some areas, but not in the same regions; he said how the two are related “remains a mystery.”⁠[13]

In 2012 his research was featured on NOVA scienceNOW and he received the Distinguished Contributor Award from the International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR); in 2013 The Teaching Company invited him to create the 18-lecture course “The Intelligent Brain.”⁠[2]

At ISIR’s meeting in San Antonio that year, he was interviewed by David Lubinski.⁠[6]

On March 12, 2014, he published an opinion article in Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience arguing that intelligence test scores are relative estimates on interval scales rather than ratio-scale measurements, a point he said many reports of intelligence gains after short-term cognitive training misunderstand.⁠[14]

He was editor-in-chief of the journal Intelligence from 2016 to 2024 and president of ISIR in 2016–2017.⁠[15]

In 2017 Cambridge University Press published his 270-page book The Neuroscience of Intelligence.⁠[16]

He describes the book as presenting evidence that genetics plays a larger role than environment as intelligence develops from childhood and that test scores correspond strongly to specific brain features seen in neuroimaging.⁠[17]

In April 2017 he wrote that intelligence is by far the strongest predictor of academic achievement, that discussions of education reform should not neglect intelligence research, and that neuroscience research should be funded to help close achievement gaps among poor and minority students.⁠[18]

In January 2018 science journalist Angela Saini criticized the presence on Intelligence’s editorial board of Gerhard Meisenberg and Richard Lynn, editors of Mankind Quarterly, presenting it as an example of racist ideas entering mainstream science.⁠[19]

Haier replied that he preferred to deal with such matters “with sunlight and by inclusion,” that throwing people off an editorial board for expressing an opinion would put the journal in a “dicey area,” and that he would rather let the papers and data speak for themselves.⁠[19]

Psychologist Robert J. Sternberg reviewed The Neuroscience of Intelligence in the Summer 2019 issue of The American Journal of Psychology, calling it “a stunningly good book” while arguing that it is limited by an almost exclusive emphasis on general intelligence (g) and makes no attempt to be balanced across points of view.⁠[16]

In June 2021 Cambridge University Press published online The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence and Cognitive Neuroscience, which he edited with Aron K. Barbey and Sherif Karama.⁠[20]

In 2021 ISIR gave him its highest honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Intelligence.⁠[21]

On July 14, 2022, he appeared on episode 302 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing the measurement of intelligence, IQIQIQ is a blockchain project that grew out of the online encyclopedia Everipedia. It runs IQ.wiki, an encyclopedia of blockchain and crypto assets, and launched the IQ token in Seoul in 2018; in 2025, IQ and Frax launched KRWQ, a stablecoin pegged to the South Korean won.Open the full entry tests, genetics, The Bell Curve and its criticisms, race differences, the Flynn effect and testing artificial intelligence.⁠[22]

In July 2023 Cambridge University Press published the second edition of The Neuroscience of Intelligence; the publisher says it explains new techniques based on DNA and imaging of brain connectivity and rebuts misconceptions such as the belief that IQ tests are biased or meaningless.⁠[23]

The same year he and Roberto Colom published a revision of Earl Hunt’s classic textbook as the second edition of The Science of Human Intelligence, covering IQ testing, mental processes, brain imaging, genetics, population differences, sex and aging.⁠[24]

Thomas Coyle has written that after Elsevier changed the editorial direction of Intelligence and appointed new editors, he and Haier objected to the publisher’s lack of transparency and consultation with the editorial board, which then resigned en masse; the two decided in December 2024 to create Intelligence & Cognitive Abilities, founded it in January 2025 and began accepting manuscripts on February 1, 2025.⁠[25]

The open-access journal has become ISIR’s official journal, with Coyle as editor-in-chief and Haier as a consulting editor.⁠[26]

As of October 2026 he is emeritus faculty in pediatrics at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine.⁠[7]

He is president of the Human Intelligence Research & Education Foundation, whose board also includes Cory Clark, Russell Warne, Emily Willoughby and Grover Gilmore.⁠[27]

Personal website: Public link: https://richardhaier.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[22]

X: Public account: https://x.com/rjhaier (opens in a new window)⁠[22]

University of California, Irvine: Official website: https://uci.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[7]

International Society for Intelligence Research: Official website: https://isironline.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[15]

Human Intelligence Research & Education Foundation: Official website: https://www.hirefoundation.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[27]