I’m currently going over some research documents for a peer-arbitration.
This researcher is trying to show a correlation between intelligence (as measured with standard IQ tests and other related tests) and forms of social integration difficulties. Personally, I’ve witnessed it, but I don’t recall anyone actually quantifying data rather than simply using anectodal information. He is trying to prove that social integration difficulties are directly linked to intelligence - a form of biological/neurological predisposition to having trouble interracting with peers.
Considering the base of the SDMB population, it would be interesting to know, on an anectodal standpoint, if people have witnessed this phenomenon. “Intelligence” test results, if known, should be those of tests conducted by pros, not the do-it-yourself online kits.
I’m inclined to believe that environment plays the important role in the social development - gifted children are often isolated by well meaning adults and treated differently by their peers as a result.
Personally, I had a rough time with social integration as a child - I could relate to those younger than me, or those way older. My impression is that my being put in a class with kids 5 years my seniors is responsible for that rift, and not my IQ.
All I’ve (ever) got is anecdotal evidence… but I’d tend to agree that smarter people have more trouble than others in social arenas, though I’d argue it isn’t limited to solely geniuses…
I’ve thought it might be from over-analyzing motives in others which prevents friendships from occuring. I don’t know if this would be a factor in grade school though.
Also, I’ve noticed that, generally, introverts are smarter than extroverts. This disposition may play a role as well. Significantly enough to scientifically document? I doubt it.
Sigh… this researcher’s claim sounds like the kind of silliness that only an academic, teenager or over-indulgent parent of a misbehaving child would indulge themselves in.
I am in the front line business of real estate sales (commercial specifically) where I have to interact with the public on a daily basis and my salary is predicated, to a large extent, on how well I manage those interactions. In interacting with the public effectively more intelligent people have an edge in that they are generally more aware of what’s going on and can adapt and temper responses as needed.
The exception to the above statement is that (based simply on empirical observation) intelligence and maturity do not necessarily correlate in any predictable fashion. As a general rule more intelligent people can be more effective salespeople, however, there are some otherwise intelligent people who are not effective salespeople because they are either lazy or choose not to exercise an emotionally mature attitude and do not handle clients effectively.
To say that intelligence makes you a social cripple is a dodge used by people who do not want to make the effort to conduct themselves appropriately or have ego issues they are wrestling with that should have been sorted out in puberty. This “no one understands me” crap that some otherwise intelligent people (including my children on occasion) indulge themselves in, is just that, an indulgence. It’s amusing and expected when you are an adolescent but it’s annoying and destructive in adults.
I don’t believe for an instant that intelligence is negatively correlated to “social integration” (whatever the heck that is.) It is my direct experience that dull children have more difficulty with everything, including social interaction, than bright children.
There’s nothing sillier than people saying “The reason I/my children have (insert social problem X here) is because I’m a/they are a genius!” Aside from the fact that it’s a rather transparent ego trip, the equivalent of saying “I’m smarter than you AND I’m a martyr too,” it betrays a rather astonishing ignorance of the human condition. Don’t people know that everyone has problems interacting socially? That everyone feels alone sometimes, and rejected sometimes? What sort of fool thinks their feelings in that regard are unique, or even the slightest bit unusual?
We had a thread a while back similar to this in which people recounted their experiences being picked on. The basic message in the first 10-12 messages in the thread was “We sensitive geniuses are so downtrodden. The inferior ones made fun of us.” That’s not an exagerration at all; one poster said that the evil bullies “don’t understand, because their brains aren’t wired the same as ours.”
How can someone be so arrogant as to say such ridiculous things? You were picked on, maybe horribly so? That sucks ass, and it’s hard to get over. But don’t you understand that everyone else was, too? You had trouble interacting socially? Me too. And everyone else will say “Me, too!” And I’ll bet you picked on and shunned other kids, too, and don’t tell me you didn’t because 99 out of 100 people who claim they never picked on other kids are either lying or amazingly deluded.
I was picked on as a kid, too; I was a very smart kid. But the dumb kids were picked on, too, many of them much more than I was. Some were humiliated in front of the class because they weren’t as smart as the others. I wouldn’t trade places with them in a thousand million years. When I wsa a child, I thought I was picked on more than anyone else. But then I opened my eyes and saw everyone else got the same shit, too. Developing the consciousness and the empathy to understand your experiences are common to everyone else is a sign of intelligence.
(Note: Elenfair, I’m not directing this at you personally. I still want to be your hero. But this attitude crops up a lot, crops up a LOT on the SDMB, and I just hate it. Sorry.)
I went to a few “genius” things as a kid(stuff for anyone with over 1500 iq). What I found so unsual about it was that the kids were so average. You could have put all the kids in a class and no one would have thought them above average students.
Elenfair just on a guess RM was being sarcastic.
Personally I link how smart someone is with how open of a mind they have.
How is the researcher definining “social integration”? I think that’s rapidly getting lost in some axes to grind here.
I doubt that intelligence and wherever a person lies on an intro-/extroversion scale are related. I also doubt that “maturity” is related to that scale either.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Elenfair *
**I’m currently going over some research documents for a peer-arbitration.
This researcher is trying to show a correlation between intelligence (as measured with standard IQ tests and other related tests) and forms of social integration difficulties. Personally, I’ve witnessed it, but I don’t recall anyone actually quantifying data rather than simply using anectodal information. He is trying to prove that social integration difficulties are directly linked to intelligence - a form of biological/neurological predisposition to having trouble interracting with peers. **
[QUOTE}
I’ve heard of biological/neurological difficulties caused by extreme intelligence which lead to trouble interracting with peers. There does seem to be a preponderance of diagnosis of Aspergers syndrome and/or ADHD in profoundly gifted kids. I can also remember reading somewhere that 60% of PG boys have a co-morbid learning disability. Anecdotally it certainly seems that PG kids (defined as IQ 180 and over) do have social problems. I haven’t got a copy of Leta Hollingsworth’s Children of IQ 180 and above or Miraca Gross’s Exceptionally Gifted Children but IIRC they are both worth looking at. FWIW I also remember reading a piece of research which said 1 in 10 PG boys will suicide by the age of 18.
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Considering the base of the SDMB population, it would be interesting to know, on an anectodal standpoint, if people have witnessed this phenomenon. “Intelligence” test results, if known, should be those of tests conducted by pros, not the do-it-yourself online kits. **[QUOTE]
Yep I have witnessed this phenomenon but not in kids of moderately to highly gifted IQ. The higher you go up the bell curve the weirder the kids seem to get although I do know of some who do seem to be socialised normally.
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I’m inclined to believe that environment plays the important role in the social development - gifted children are often isolated by well meaning adults and treated differently by their peers as a result. **
It’s not what the research shows. There’s a good body of research showing that acceleration does lead to better outcomes for PG kids. It’s less clearcut with kids of lower IQ though. It’s a hell of a tricky dance to figure out what is the best thing for kids like this.
Oh, I’d have to heartily agree that the development of social skills is more dependent on environment (upbringing). And in the case of the gifted child there is very often the tendency on the part of everyone to wrongly assume that extraordinary intellectual capacity empowers you to gain wisdom at the same rate as knowledge. So instead of working with the child/teen so s/he learns to to deal with being picked on or feeling different, they tell her/him “hey, you’re supposed to be above that!” or “don’t even bother, you’re better than them.” Gaaad that messed me up so for the first half of my life…
And your case seems to me really extreme: Displacing you by a factor of 5 years from your natural peer group, precisely when you should have been developing those social-interaction skills? During childhood and early adolescence 5 years is a couple of lifetimes! By growing up in an environment appropriate to his/her age, among his peer group, the intellectually gifted child may have the chance to work things out as to how they fit in with others in their world…
…so nobody later on needs to upbraid them to the effect of “Get over it, you whiney, lazy, immature ego-tripper with a superiority and martyrdom complex” Why, that sure will effectively motivate them to straighten up their problems, yessiree… :rolleyes:
Or if they are in the EG/PG category (160 -180) then there’s often no way they can figure out how they fit in their age peer group because they simply don’t. Their range of interests and the level at which they think is not developmentally the same as their age peers. Putting a PG kid in with kids within a lower IQ range does not help them develop social-interaction skills necessarily. It would be nice if it did and if life were that simple but it ain’t. There’s not a body of research which shows it works either.
I’ve been round the parents of kids in the EG/PG range and what fascinates me is the commonality of experience - even before parents knew where their kids tested on the bell curve. Even where kids had been in childcare and had had ‘normal’ socialisation experiences from very young, the same problems occurred in the majority of kids. Now I have great difficulty believing that a comparatively small group of parents all manage to give their kids the same problems when they didn’t set out to ‘create a genius’.
I’m beginning to detect a theme of parent bashing here and I have to say that with kids in the EG/PG range there are no easy answers and most parents are doing the best they can. Some don’t accelerate, some radically accelerate and some homeschool. Often the EG/PG kids who are homeschooled are also the most socially well adjusted but they may not have a ‘normal’ circle of friends.
A caveat - none of what I say would I apply to kids who test lower on the bell curve. Research shows us that up until about IQ of 160 kids do tend to be socially successful. There’s a socially optimal IQ level. When someone has a kid with IQ of 125 and they are trying to blame social problems on the high IQ, I’d say look elsewhere
What I want to know is: was Cecil picked upon as a kid?
As to what determines which reasons act in conjunction to favor social awkwardness:
Deviating from the norm: Any real differences restricting the development of empathy among individuals (point-of-view conflicts) and catalyzing resentments between them.
Deviating from expected social paradigms: An artificial distinction that, as viewed by society, can be positively or negatively perceived and eventually lead to ideological–and consequently behavioral–polarization.
These deviations can be perceived from several standpoints: intellectual capacity, physical appearance, athletic ability, and so on. Intelligence is just one of the variables acting as determinants of one’s ability to be socially successful. Somehow, people focus on it more than on the others when trying to assign blame to a certain individuals’ problems when interacting with their peers.
To further the divide, any kind of deviation (real or artificially created by society) is a key factor in configuring the environment in which the person is brought up. Thus, smart kids will be reared in an intellectually stimulating medium, jocks will be raised to be Michael Jordans, etc. Evidently, this accentuates the differences and “locks up” in the kids’ mind the self-conceptualizing paradigm that will govern how he perceives himself and how he, in light of that paradigm, expects to be perceived by others. In turn, these perceptions help to mold behavior and lead to the social status that the individual was raised to achieve (social determinism).
To be truthful about it, this idea is simply a collective delusion shared by the whole of society, a mass-marketed paradigm that only furthers the problem: it adds a deterministic twist that leads to conformity, to an acceptance of one’s problems rather than to the pursuit of any remedial action (I was blessed to be born an intellectual giant, the “common” folk resent me; to hell with the myopic society that feels threatened by my “superiority”).
quasar, who is neither smart nor a social misfit ; just another homo sapiens traveling on the bumpy road that is life.
Why, that sure will effectively motivate them to straighten up their problems, yessiree… :rolleyes:
