…Well would you, you nerd?
I’ve been offered the opportunity to sit an I.Q. test. I don’t know if this is a good idea. It might be depressingly low, or freak-makingly high.
If you know what your I.Q. is, did it suprise you when you found out your I.Q.?
I do not know my IQ, and I don’t really care to know. From what I understand of the IQ test, I’d probably score depressingly low - I have a really hard time with logic problems, which is what all the internet IQ tests seem to be based on, anyway. Remember the ASVAB test in high school? The army test where they had diagrams of contraptions where if you pulled one lever, what piece would move? I did so badly on that test that the poor recruiter called me he seemed almost relieved when I told him I was going to college.
I don’t know my IQ and have made no efforts to find out. My parents felt the methodology was suspect, and refused to have me take it as a child. I question the validity myself, and as such, know if I got a bad score I’d blame it on the test, and if I got a good score I’d feel like a hypocrite ever mentioning it 
My parents had all of us kids tested, for some reason, but wouldn’t tell us our scores. They did tell us that the older kids generally had lower IQs than the younger kids. Since we older kids knew how dumb the younger kids were, we figured out that IQ scores mean nothing.
So, now, I’m still not interested in knowing the number. I know my strengths and weaknesses, so the actual number would just give me bragging rights over some people but not over others. Not really interested in that.
I don’t know what my IQ is. But I do know that when I was in Grade 2, the school board sent me for evaluation and then created an advanced program for me. I took grades 3, 4 and 5 in two years at the school across town. It was a spectacular failure on their part, with no actual advancement ever taking place, no followup, nothing. I was the only kid they ever put in that program, and afterward, nothing like it was ever attempted again.
It’s just a number, made up by somebody to try to quantify the unquantifiable. I don’t particularly care one way or the other. It’s not like I’m in a competition for smarts.
I’ve taken a number of IQ tests for various reasons. The scores, while all above average, have varied wildly, depending on how I was feeling that day, what kind of test it was, and how cooperative I cared to be. (At the job before this one we had to take a performance test; they said I was the first person to have ever finished the test before timeout.)
I also scored very high on the standard college entrance exams, but did mediocre (well, good but not outstandingly) in university. There were a number of other factors there, but the point being that the scores aren’t a great predictor of academic success (despite what they say in Iowa) and certainly have little bearing on your performance in the post-education environment. As a result, I don’t place a lot of value on the test results except as a comparitive metric between different test subjects regarding the specific skills covered on the test.
Should you take it? It’s kind of fun if you’re the sort of blob who likes solving puzzles (yeah, that’s me). I actually enjoyed taking the Mensa test, and thought the ACT and SAT were kind of a lark. I actually scored lower than I anticipated on the GRE (though still quite high), probably due to being morally lobotomized by work. That’s my claim, anyway. Given the wide range of numbers and lack of correlation with, well, success with finances, career, and women, I can’t say that the numbers mean very much to me.
Oh, and obligatory link to Uncle Cecil’s column on William James Sidis, Harvard’s youngest graduate and terminal slacker. Nobody hands out meal tickets for IQ points.
Stranger
I don’t know, and really don’t care to know. I can’t see anything good coming out of knowing. If I get a high score, then I can brag to my friends and if I get a low score, I can just feel stupid.
No thanks.
I know mine, but this is a relic of a time when my self-esteem consisted entirely and only of my faith in my own intelligence (pretty sad, really, because I’m not all that amazingly smart).
If I didn’t know now, I’d only take the test if I were really, really bored. It just doesn’t matter much. I know what I do well and what I suck at, intellectually and otherwise, and where I stand in relation to other people. The number itself doesn’t mean anything, and doesn’t capture everything even within the realm of “intelligence”.
Heh - my parents had me tested when I was quite young, but refused to tell me what it was. That alone made me want to know. In retrospect, I think it’s a double-edged sword. If you know you have a high IQ, it can make you confident, but it can also make you depressed when it doesn’t help in life. Similarly, if you know you have a low IQ, it can blow your confidence, but also make you feel better that you’re succeeding despite it.
Depends on what you already know about yourself, too, I guess. My perspective is that of a child about to enter the world. If you’re an adult, there’s probably not much to gain.
~ Isaac
I know mine. I tell no one. I don’t want it colouring how people perceive me.
If it’s low, it’s embarrassing, and people think they can walk all over you. If it’s high, people nitpick every little move you make, pointing out mistakes and acting huffy. Then there’s average. That’s when you’re everybody’s friend.
My reaction: surprised.
The answer is there before the question arrives in my brain - Yes.
Whether it turns out to be low or high it’s one of those statistics I’d rather possess. I think it would be high.
I know mine and if I didn’t, I’d still like to know it. It’s a measurement. I am very weird about measurements.
I question the validity of such assessment in context to any real-world application. The basic idea behind IQ is to determine a ratio between a person’s intellectual age and their chronological age. Of course, the rate at which a person learns varies throughout their lifetime, and an IQ score determined at a particular age may not continue to be relevant. As an example, I was assessed by a psychologist at the age of 12, using a test known as WISC-R. My IQ as determined by this series of tests was 159 (I only recently read the report - I am 28 now). So, at the age of 12, I was a whiz kid, and in retrospect I suppose I was obviously ahead of others my age; however, fast forward ten or fifteen years, and my age would seem to have caught up to my intellect. I still have bright moments, but I am certainly not a genius, nor do I find myself in an advantageous situation over my peers. In fact, I have severe difficulty with academic pursuits or even managing my day to day life effectively. Were I to be tested today, I suspect my score would be lower than it was.
I think the score may be useful for comparative purposes if a particular group to be examined were composed of members of identical age, all tested simultaneously. Outside of that, I think you need to take such scores with half a ton of salt. I don’t think it means that much.
George Carlin said it best: “Just think about how dumb the average guy is… What’s worse, half the people are even dumber than that.”
In thinking about this, I suppose the stumbling block I have is that I think of myself as reasonably intelligent. But just because I think of myself that way, it doesn’t mean I am. It’d be a bit of a blow to find out that I have the same I.Q. as Britney Spears, or something. :smack: But then I’d be acting out of mere cowardice in choosing not to take the test, and I’ve always thought that cowardice is no excuse not to do something.
problem with any test is that the more often you take them, the better you get. bear that in mind when you react to your score, should you decide to try it.
I had a number of IQ tests done while I was a teen. So I have an idea what my IQ is, but I’m also well aware that such tests do not measure intelligence, rather some aspect of those traits that are general called intelligence. To go with a previous poster’s comment - Kyla mentions tanking a section of the ASVAB - but she’s going on/has gone on to college, with every expectation of success in her chosen studies. IQ is just a number, and really has nothing to do with how successful anyone will be. It may be a way to predict how successful a population of people might be, but no individual will be bound by such predictions.
To use a personal example of my own: I am consistently considered more intelligent than my sister. However, she’s the one with a Ph.D. and I don’t have a college degree. Persistence is worth far, far more in this world than brains. If you think you’re smart, and feel you have reason to believe that, why would you take a test to confirm what you already have evidence to prove? If you tank the test you’re not going to suddenly find your previous accomplishments are invalid, nor are you going to have all your future goals handed to you, just because you ace a test.
If you want to know the number, go for it. But don’t stress over it. It’s not that important.
Do we even have IQs? I mean, is it an objective fact about you, like your height or weight, or is it something that doesn’t really exist until you measure it?
I’ve had this same experience on IQ tests. If I’m impatient and ready to go, it’ll be a lot lower than days when I’m more patient and willing to figure out the problem instead of simply guessing when I can’t figure it out immediately. Plus, if I’m cranky or too tired, I’ll obviously do a lot poorer than when I’m upbeat and alert. I usually score above average; however, I don’t think that means anything.
I know my IQ roughly, but I don’t chase after the exact figure, no.
I’m confused about what the opportunity is. In graduate school we need to get participants who take the all the measures that psychologists give, but we never tell them the results. I could be way off base here, but the way you wrote your OP made me think that it might be this kind of setting.
If you’re sure you’ll get the results I’d make sure it was a legitimate test and not one of the crazy ones that are floating out there. If the author of the test is not Wecshler or Woodcock-Johnson, I wouldn’t put too much stake in the results.
As for what I would do - now that I give the tests they wouldn’t hold any meaning for me because I know all the answers. But, if I had the chance to take them before then I would have just for the fun of it.
PB