Richard E. Nisbett is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has written numerous books on intelligence and cultural psychology and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
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My approach to fantasy has always been to think that you can have as many fantastical elements as you want, but the one thing that has to be realisitic are the characters' emotions and feelings. If you can't relate to those in one way or another then you've lost any relationship with reality.
You're only as smart as your genes have programmed you to be. Asians are smarter than westerners. Some nationalities do better in engineering or music than others. Those beliefs have been around for decades, even among many experts. Now social psychologist Richard Nisbett takes those common beliefs apart, and shows how environment plays a much bigger role in intelligence than previously thought. His book is called "Intelligence and How to Get It."
My approach to fantasy has always been to think that you can have as many fantastical elements as you want, but the one thing that has to be realisitic are the characters' emotions and feelings. If you can't relate to those in one way or another then you've lost any relationship with reality.
