Right. IQ scores are normed by definition. By contrast, reading or literacy levels are not - there is nothing illogical with having a society where the average grade level in reading goes up each year, e.g. from 10th grade in 2020 to 11th grade in 2025, etc. If reading levels were normed like IQ scores, then a dramatic increase in youth literacy could result in “normal” adults of today being suddenly reclassified as underachieving readers or even illiterate.
People keep saying “there are different kinds of intelligence” and “IQ doesn’t really measure anything but IQ test”, but I don’t think that’s really true. If you score 150 on a standardized IQ test you’re pretty intelligent and if you score less than 80, you’re not.
And by “smart” I mean the traditional notion of mental horsepower as applied to tasks such as memory, recall, logic and complex problem solving.
The reason that a high IQ doesn’t necessarily always translate to success is because even if you’re smart, you still need to do something smart with it. For example build a successful app or become a quant on Wall Street.
For the normals and little brains, there is less of a premium for being super intelligent. Being able to lead and influence others is a more useful skill.
It can mean learning to play dumb or being accused of being a know it all or looking down on people. Some can pull this off better than others and it is something other than IQ that determines that ability.
psik
There is a downside to having a high IQ that hasn’t been directly addressed yet; folks who are very bright and live a life of the mind often have difficulty in everyday average folks because of their non-congruent interests and thinking pattern differences.
Learning to be a bit of a chameleon helps a great deal. Forgetting your own interests and concentrating on learning about the interests of your “normal” companions may seem unfair initially, but in fact is quite liberating. You learn a lot this way, and can still lead your life of the mind during your solitary moments or times shared with similarly gifted friends.
However, your day to day buddies may think that you are a bit nerdy, and have a quaint sense of humor, and seem to be interested in strange subjects rather than March Madness…(but it is OK to be what you are…a person who has a bit of a leg up in the mental talents, but may not be so great at more ordinary talents such as watching TV, or going to lots of sports outings, and so forth.)
Basically, the challenge of bright folks may be to just get over themselves and realize that they may be exceptional in a particular area, and that most folks are pretty good at something if one looks closely. At least that is what I have found to be true.
Yeah, people want to promote the idea that genetic traits like IQ have no real world applications due to egalitarian beliefs. But if you take a random sample of people with an IQ of 145 vs a group with an IQ of 85, there are going to be far far far more professors, scientists, physicians, dentists, judges, politicians, etc in the first group than the second. IQ doesn’t guarantee you will be successful, but it greatly increases your odds.
Studies (I’ll dig them up if I can find them) that even compare groups within high IQ groups still show a difference. People in the upper echelons of gifted groups (so the brackets are pulled from groups already in the top 1%) have more accomplishments than people in the lower echelons of gifted groups.
I can’t speak for others, but in my case what happens is that I hate the idea that high IQ is THE necessary and sufficient condition for success
as much as
I hate the idea that if you have a high IQ you will automatically be unable to connect with “normals” or have any kind of meaningful relationship with someone who isn’t stratospheric-IQ’d.
Both of which get trotted out waaaaay too much and neither of which is true.
You’re pointing to a correlation and presuming it implies causation.
Children who are marked as “gifted” are treated differently than their duller brethern. They are given little halos that follow them throughout their academic career. How do we know that the halo effect doesn’t explain why a kid labeled “bright” becomes a doctor while his dumber counterpart becomes a cashier?
There’s also the socioeconomics. A kid who is raised in comfort and advantage is much more likely to do well on tests than a kid who grows up in turmoil. Coincidentally (or not), doing well on tests increases the likelihood of gaining even more comfort and advantage (entry into better schools, better classrooms, better instruction). Test-taking ability isn’t the primary driver in the acquisition of all this “success”, though. It’s the initial condition–an optimal prenatal and early childhood. Perhaps in a world where standardized tests aren’t used to gate-keep, having a dysfunctional childhood isn’t that much of a handicap.
We can point to a lot of things that the successful have and conclude (erroneously) that those things must drive success. Like being raised by a full-time nanny or owning a luxury automobile. When really those things just reflect success. I wouldn’t expect the well-to-do to have lower IQ scores than everyone else any more than I would expect them to have worse teeth or more stomach ulcers.
Here’s some data to support your first paragraph. I think looking at the distributions within each occupation pretty well supports the idea that yes, native intelligence matters (the average IQ of doctors is just over 120; the average IQ of janitors is about 92), but doesn’t explain everything (there is substantial overlap in the IQs of each of those groups). 25% of doctors have an IQ of about 105 to 112; 25% of janitors have an IQ of about 102 to 112)
Could you dig up a cite for the second paragraph? I thought the consensus is that after about 120, it was hard to show a benefit beyond that, but if there’s evidence to the contrary, I’d be curious to see it.
True. But while they are exposed to better quality classes, that doesn’t mean they can handle the classes unless they are truly gifted. ETS does not give a kid bonus points on SAT scores for having a high IQ, and they also don’t give kids bonus points on AP tests.
Do you think that if you put a kid with an IQ of say 80 in an AP calculus class he or she would thrive?
None of this has much to do with the point. Sure kids raised in richer families are going to do better on average than kids with equivalent intelligence (however measured) raised in poorer families. And depending on the correlation of intelligence with wealth, it is possible that the children of the wealthy might have inherited higher intelligence, on the average. (Which does not mean you can say anything about individuals.) But succeeding in life does not retroactively increase your intelligence.
I took the SATs before ETS released the tests, and so there were very few test taking classes. Having them today and having them be more available to the rich might well increase income inequality - but taking SAT classes does not raise your IQ either.
I’m not aware of classes for little kids to help them score high on IQ tests - but that would raise teaching to the exam to new heights of absurdity.
The kids I knew from gifted might not have “hustled” as much as those in regular classes, but they’re all “successful” if by that we mean “supporting themselves and their families, and happy”. MAny of them are doing what they love, and doing it well. From my graduating class, several people became doctors and lawyers, yes. And one gifted kid became a marvelous baker, another is a park ranger/biologist. Are those last two “failures” because they don’t make a ton of money? I don’t think so.
IQ points. We were tested and those over a certain IQ were put into “gifted” classes.
In my school district, “gifted” classes were offered through junior high school. Grade school and middle school had all kids of varying levels in one classroom, which was difficult for gifted kids. You’d have finished the textbook for the year, and were bored by September. A bored smart child is trouble on the hoof.
At the high school level, there were enough course “tracks” offered that the gifted kids ended up in advanced and AP courses, and the regular kids ended up in either regular or advanced. Advanced was considered “college-bound”, of course. AP was for those who could handle the higher-level work.
I work with and am friends with a lot of crazy-smart systems architects and programmers and such who are on the autism spectrum. The insistence on extreme precision in some things can be maddening until you realize this.
In our district there was a gifted class for elementary schools with enough GATE kids to make one up. In schools without this, they would be in regular classes, but the teacher was supposed to differentiate them (and all students) to give appropriate lessons. An example they gave was that kids who got all the spelling words right the first time should not have to do the words in sentences crap, but should be given something more interesting to do instead.
There was some small amount of money for special trips. In one they went to an amusement park and used geometry to estimate the height of rides.
Above this there were Honors classes which GATE students went into, but non-GATE students/parents could request admission on a space available basis, In our district AP classes were open to all, again partially to ensure that all high schools got them. The number of GATE students per high school varied a lot.
The reason they want precision has nothing to do with where they stand on the autism spectrum. When you write code, you have to be precise, and you don’t want to guess. I work with plenty of bright engineers, but since they don’t program their idea of what makes a good spec is very fuzzy. And they don’t think about exceptional cases at all. So you should give them a break in this instance.
For whatever it’s worth, my life became substantially happier (and ironically, I became a better student) after I started attempting to suppress my intellect.
I recently read a thread in reddit posted by a guy who claims that he has an IQ of 85. According to him, he was the valedictorian of his high school class and took honors and AP classes. But he claims he had to work a lot harder than his classmates. Perhaps I should be skeptical, but I believe him. I can certainly believe that a person with great adaptive/coping skills can hustle hard enough to compensate for less-than-impressive cognitive processing speed or whatever “impairment” an IQ of 85 might be associated with.
The thing is, this cat says he didn’t know about his low IQ until he got to college. Perhaps if he had known it earlier, he wouldn’t have become valedictorian.
I don’t think it takes a genius to pass an AP calculus class. Now, I wouldn’t expect a kid with an IQ 85 to pass an AP calc class if he was taking four other AP classes, plus holding down an after school job and playing on the basketball team. A lot of bright kids can’t even do this. However, I think it is possible for a kid with a slightly below average AP to pass an AP calc class if the planets are lined just the right way. People have a strange way of rising to the occasion sometimes, especially when no one lets them know what their presumed limitations are.
Perhaps schools have become more enlightened since when I was in school 20 years ago. I know back then, tracking made it all but impossible for kids to prove themselves in advanced classes if their scores weren’t good enough. If you bomb the skills test in the sixth grade, then you don’t get to take pre-algebra in the 7th grade, which means you don’t get algebra until the 9th grade…which means you aren’t getting into calculus–let alone AP calculus–in the 12th grade. You can impress your 9th grade algebra teacher all you want with straight As on every assignment, but they aren’t going to let you skip ahead to algebra II. I entertained thoughts of taking geometry and algebra II at the same time so that I could take calculus my senior year. But it doesn’t work like that.
So the chances that a kid with an IQ of 85 would be even able to take AP calculus is slim, since it’s very likely a test somewhere along the way will prevent him from being able to. But that doesn’t mean we can assume he wouldn’t be capable of doing the work with adequate preparation. It is too bad we can’t set up an experiment.
Well, I didn’t say that succeeding in life increases your intelligence. But having success does increase your likelihood of having more success. Doing well on the basic skills test in the sixth grade increases your likelihood of getting better math instruction in the 7th grade, which then increases your likelihood of getting the score required for entry into the elite mathematics-centered high school. Bomb the sixth grade basic skills test and you get stuck with a mediocre math teacher the following year, which all but guarantees that you will not get admitted into the elite program.
I’m not sure how to respond to this, since I didn’t mention anything about test-taking classes. But people certainly train their pre-schoolers to get become proficient test-takers, so as to increase their chances of being identified gifted and talented. If IQ is supposed to be this innate thing that doesn’t respond to environment, then I’m guessing you think these people are wasting their time. But I don’t think they are. I think it is kind of crazy to think test-testing doesn’t become easier with practice–whether it be IQ test or any other aptitude test. If I had a kid and had a lot more money, I’d probably do the same thing because it just seems like a sensical thing to do. Plus, I know first-hand what happens when you bomb a skills test just because you were having test anxiety. It can jack yo shit up.
I suppose it’s possible. 85 is still in the low range of “normal” I think.
Success is more than just scoring well on a bunch of tests and graduating from the right schools. It is also about having access to facilities and a supportive environment that will enable you to identify and hone your talents. It is also about learning the behaviors and social cues that will enable you to be successful.
Some specific examples:
-Do you wait to be told what to do by your boss or do you proactively present your boss with ideas?
-If you fail to achieve a goal, do you decide that it was out of your reach or do you try again, possibly in a different way?
-How do you handle disagreements?
Malcolm Gladwell talks all about it in his book Outliers.
Excuse my skepticism, but if he has just done well in calculus, I might have thought he had a natural talent for it. However if he was valedictorian, and wasn’t in a high school class of five or something, I rather suspect the source of his IQ was wrong. (I never saw mine in college.) assuming he wasn’t making the story up to prove a point, that is.
Our GATE program uses both tests and also an interview with the district psychologist. He might have been sick when he took his IQ test.
Of course not. That’s why I chose as my example someone more than a standard deviation below the norm. And I didn’t say pass, I said thrive.
A kid could also be terrible in many things and have a natural aptitude for calculus. There are always outliers.
In our district AP classes are open to all. In our district teachers can nominate kids for GATE evaluation - and parents can request it also. A kid at the absolute top of a math class could get moved, but it might take a bit of parental push depending on the teacher.
On the other hand a kid struggling with algebra could request and get an AP class, but it is unlikely to come out well.
You’d have to do it with lots of kids. But I bet the human subject experiment board would have a fit. Kids don’t take only one math test in their lives. I can believe that a kid with a consistent record of high grades in math could do AP calculus, no problem.
Today at least there are so many tests that I don’t buy that a single one is going to kill one’s chances. Sure, if a school had only one competent teacher who only taught honors students, and all other teachers were right out of Dickens, maybe. Especially in math a kid has the textbook - a truly smart kid can teach him or herself.
In any case good teachers can sense intelligence. I’m not saying I was a good teacher, but when I TAed I could tell in my classes.
Thank you for reminding me that people are more stupid than I can conceive.
These people are doing a lot worse than wasting their time - they are setting their kid up for a horrible existence so that they can brag about how smart she is.
If intelligence is an innate characteristic, which is pretty clear, what IQ tests are is an imperfect way of measuring this characteristic. But places using tests for admission are probably assuming that test takers don’t cheat. An IQ score is not intelligence. When I’ve been using IQ scores, it is assuming that the measurement represented by the score was uninfluenced by cheating.
If our 85 IQ guy got that from taking a test where the proctors beat on a drum, kept the room at 40 degrees and flashed the lights on and off, his intelligence is probably higher than a score. If another kid takes the test with the answer key next to him, his intelligence is lower than his score.
One doesn’t have to be stupid to make this mistake. When I was in grad school our group and that of another professor were located in the basement, and we had some minicomputers down there. They turned off the air conditioning for a week to do maintenance, and they gave us a fan to cool the electronics and a thermometer to measure the temperature in the room with instructions to shut the machine down if it got too hot. One day we went past the computer the other group used, and found that they had pointed the fan at the thermometer.
That’s exactly what these people are doing.
He claims he took it multiple times and got the same score.
The valedictorian thing doesn’t strike me as unbelievable given the amount of variation in public school quality and the way some schools choose valedictorians (I’ve heard of schools having five or six valedictorians).
Since I am have never knowingly engaged someone with an IQ of 80, I don’t have the confidence to predict whether any given individual with an IQ of 80 can “thrive” or not in an advanced math class. We don’t walk around with our IQs emblazoned on our foreheads. It’s really only the gifted who like to broadcast their scores.
I would not be surprised if a certain person with an IQ of 80 couldn’t do well in an AP calc class. But I expect that most people with an IQ of 125 would struggle in that type of course. Lest I be misunderstood, let me say that I can easily accept that kids who do really well in the AP calc classes tend to have an IQs of 125 or greater. But I think a lot of external factors have to be lined up really well for a student to excel in an AP class to start with. Students who score high on IQ tests tend to have those external factors in spades.
I’d like to see some data before deciding that someone’s story is an outlier, though.
I don’t get how this happens, though. How does the kid who does great in algebra get bumped up to geometry, for instance? I can see how a kid in honors English can get recommended for AP English. But math courses to have that tricky prerequisite thing.
I’m not talking about this kind of transfer, because that wouldn’t really make sense. I’m talking about an A-student in algebra being recommended for AP calc without passing through the prerequisite geometry, algebra II trig. Maybe they can be fast-tracked by taking summer classes? But most kids aren’t willing to do that just to make up for some bureaucratic mistake.
This assumes the smart kid cares about math. Or has the attention span and drive to be a good autodidact. Or that the smart kid doesn’t have chronic test anxiety or suffer from stereotype threat. Or that the smart kid’s IQ manifests itself in non-verbal ways. Or that the smart kid isn’t stuck in a crappy school where few are primed see him or her as smart because of their own biases.
I certainly can buy the idea that a single test can screw up a kid. High-stakes testing has made it so that at some schools, a kid who fails a standardized test is forced to attend summer school, even if his grades are otherwise fine. I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, summer school was for “flunkies”. Being sent to summer school would have devastated me–and probably would have made me internalize an negative outlook about education–which would have likely stayed with me for a very long time.
I think it is kind of naive to think that intelligence will always shine through, no matter the adversity. If that were the case, middle class families wouldn’t worry so much about the quality of education their kids receive, because after all, their kids can just teach themselves! We both know that’s not true. A smart kid who isn’t nurtured properly and isn’t challenged enough grows up to be just as mediocre as the not-smart kid he’s forced to be stuck with.
During my short time as a professor, I definitely had my opinions about who was smart and who wasn’t. But I can’t say with confidence that my guesses were accurate. Sometimes people aren’t good in certain subjects but they are fantastic in others. I expected my students to have really good verbal communication skills, because I value strong writing. The students who seemed bright to me were the ones who spoke and wrote well. But does that mean the other students weren’t smart? I’m not sure.
I don’t think test practicing is “cheating”, though. Or at least it is no more cheating than any of the other things that parents do to prepare their kids for the rat race, like teaching their two-year-olds how to read.
Even if it is cheating, I really can’t blame the parents for doing this to their kids. I find it eye-rolly, but I still can’t blame parents for being afraid about what will happen if they kids don’t get labeled “gifted”. Parents generally want the best for their kids, and the gifted do tend to get first dibs at the good stuff.
I once got a score on the GRE that was as impressive as an IQ of 85 because I made the mistake of skipping breakfast and getting lost on the way to the test center (which meant I was very anxious and upset). The score was bad, but at the time I thought it accurately reflected my abilities because I hadn’t done well on the SAT either. So I guess I thought I was a dumb person masquerading as a smart person and the jig was finally up. But I took it again a month later, without the tears streaking down my face, and I did a whole lot better.
So I guess that’s why I don’t put a whole lot of stock in test scores. I put some stock in them. But I don’t think they represent a fixed quantity.
Here is one
http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/super_intelligent-humans-are-coming
There was another one I read a blurb about, that I"m having trouble finding. It was basically a research (in the 60s I believe) into the most productive scientists and researchers, and it found that the most productive had higher levels of cognitive ability than the more average researchers, despite the average researchers already being far above average.
I think the concept that IQ doesn’t matter above a certain threshold was started by Malcolm Gladwell. At least he is the one who popularized it. But he also claimed that 10,000 hours of practice will make you proficient. However there is natural talent in there too, and practice cannot always make up for a lack of natural talent.
A 12 point difference in IQ is something, but that isn’t going to make a huge difference. Not every smart kid ends up getting praised for it, or ending up in advanced classes or having a lot of support at home. The assumption that this is why they generally do better is not really valid w/o evidence.
IQ is just one of many factors that play into success. The SES of the environment you were born into is also important. So is the level of self discipline you have.
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/16/12/939.abstract
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2005/12/14/high-iq-not-as-good-for-you-as/
However discounting IQ doesn’t serve anyone. IQ has a role to play in how people end up, just like SES and just like character traits like constientiousness or self discipline. They all increase the odds of success in life. None guarantee success, but they all play a role.
However that is IQ within a reasonable range, like 2-3 SD I believe. I do not know what happens on average to people whose IQ is far higher.
Not really. If it were, this would be impossible.
Have you ever tried to, y’know, study it? Practice it?
You are being way too literal. If you can think in terms of chess patterns, you don’t have to see the board except in your mind. I’m sure you’ve heard of the experiment that showed that chess masters could memorize real board positions far better than a control group, but were no better when the pieces were scattered randomly.
You can describe skill at music as auditory imagination - though Beethoven could write the 9th while deaf.
My father-in-law is a composer and has perfect pitch. When we saw Cats for the first time in London, with no prep, he left the theater able to hum every song.
When I was a kid I read lots of chess books and studied the column in the Times. It did not help. I’m sure if I studied hours a day I could beat level 3 of a freeware chess program as opposed to level 2. Hardly worth it. On the other hand I got onto Jeopardy first time I tried with no preparation. Sometimes skills are quite imbalanced.