The masturbatory "we're smart" threads

The BBQ Pit
121

I took a “PhD certified” IQ test on emode.com a few years ago and scored an IQ of 120. That’s below 150 :). I’m not sure how credible the test actually was, though. A score of 120 may be more intelligent than average, but I still feel pretty dumb in grad school. :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway, what I really wanted to comment on was the labeling of people as “smart.” I remember reading an article in the NYT a few weeks ago (I can’t find it right now) that said telling kids that they are smart tends to be counterproductive. For example, researchers administered tests to two groups of students. The first group was told that they had done well because they were smart. The second group was told they had done well because they had worked so hard. They administered the test again (with different questions) a few weeks later. The “smart” kids did significantly worse than their first time around while the “hard-working” kids did significantly better. The reason for this was that the “smart” kids gave up when the problems got hard because they thought the difficulty of the problem meant it was out of their league. The “hard-working” kids, on the other hand, would see the harder problem as a challenge because they knew they just had to work harder than before.

The article closed with the advice to praise children on effort, not on outcome. For example, if John or Mary completes a math test, don’t tell them “you did a great job, you are so smart!” Tell them, “I’m proud of how hard you worked on that test!”

122

Also, where are people taking these IQ tests?

They were never administered in my school, to the best of my knowlege. Maybe I was too dumb to take one, but that would seem kind of pointless. At what point does one even come into the situation of taking an IQ test?

Maybe they gave me one in school, and I just forgot about it. That’s a possibility.

The closest I ever came to taking one was in HS when a friend and I got into a dick-wagging contest over who was smarter (yes, lame, and the subject of this thread, but I was a 17 yo male and lame by definition) and signed up for a mensa test… We both would have had to drive a long way to take it and blew it off.

123

The only problem I could foresee with this is that smart kids often don’t have to work hard to do well on a test. So telling them that they worked hard could give them a false impression of what hard work is.

I don’t see what’s wrong with just saying “Good job!”

124

As mentioned above, I was given on by the state I live in and was pulled out of class to do it one on one with the examiner. My parents received a letter a couple weeks later with the results and I was put in a gifted program sometime after that.

I don’t know whose idea it was to test me and am only assuming it was because I was the classic underachiever that they did it but I found it somewhat ironic that I was “rewarded” with an extra class when I didn’t even do the work for all my other ones.

For what it’s worth, my GPA in high school was probably a 2.5 at highest, I’ve not attended college, and I currently work in a call center making a laughable amount of money.

125

Okay, maybe you went to a different school than I did, but I went to a public school in a rural area. Most of them are married at 17, never graduate, and go one of three places post high school: the military, the local community college, or to work at the mall. If that’s “average”, then it’s a sorry world out there. I’m not inflating my own ego by stating that anyone with a bent towards reading books is above this population by a mile. I thought I implied that in my OP, which plainly stated that, by having an interest in READING, (READING, not doing complicated equations, not solving the world’s problems, not composing symphonies) I found my interests to largely differ from the interests of my classmates.

Obviously, if you went to a private school in Chevy Chase Maryland, then your experience would be different. Why can’t you say this without putting words in my mouth or getting snarky?

Oh, and sorry for using the term, “vis a vis”. I admit that my only motivation in picking those exact words was to make myself seem smarter than everyone else. Next time, I guess I should purposely dumb down my writing so I don’t appear to have an ego. Because, god, no one uses the phrase “vis a vis” anymore. Give me a fucking break :rolleyes:

126

But saying “When did you realize, vis-a-vis other kids, that you were ‘smart’?” is actually more effort and less clear than saying “When did you realize that you were ‘smarter’ than other kids?,” which means the same thing. Clarifying your language isn’t dumbing yourself down, it’s communicating effectively.

127

My elementary school made us take IQ tests in third grade, I think. Not sure why. I took them again in middle school. Again, not sure why.

Sarahfeena has a point - most kids ARE average. Which was kind of the point I was trying to make in the original thread to overlyverbose, albeit in a different tone: most kids don’t stand out. They’re not brilliant, but they’re not stupid - they are in the middle and make up the majority. My argument in that thread was that it’s silly to say most children are “special in their own way,” at least when it comes to school. But not standing out does not equate to being a “moron.”

Of course, average can be relative. I may be “smarter” (academically) than the average population, but when it comes to the people I work with and study with, I would definitely consider myself average. And the fact that I am above the overall average doesn’t really matter in the long run, since the overall average is not what I’m competing against. Again, that doesn’t mean the general average is “stupid,” just that it’s irrelevant from my point of view.

128

Sure, nonspecific praise can be ok. I think the article was geared towards parents who think their child is a genius and can do no wrong. Parents (according to the article) tend to overpraise, but it is counterproductive because of the type of praise. Also, this was general advice and was therefore probably geared towards average students. I still think it’s applicable to smarter than average students, although obviously judgement has to be used so that only real effort gets praised, rather than a good outcome based on little effort.

My point with bringing up the article, though, is that labeling a person as “smart” isn’t terribly useful or indicative of success. I would rather label myself as hard-working than smart (in part because I know that I’m not that smart in comparison to my peers) because I think that gets me further in life.

129

I like what you’re sayin’, starryspice, because I think there is way more value in effort than just passively being smart. The people working hard are the ones most likely to get shit done.

In a related vein, my husband was telling me about a social psych study of clinical psychologists who were asked how well they believed they were doing in relation to their peers. 2/3rds said ‘‘above average’’ and the other 1/3 said, '‘average.’ Apparently this trend holds up for college students as well. This doesn’t link directly to the studies, but it discusses them:

Here’s a link to an NPR ‘‘All Things Considered’’ show entitled ‘‘Americans Flunk Self-Assessment .’’ One study asked engineers to self-rate themselves – 40% believed they were in the top 5% of performers.

It seems like a natural instinct to believe you’re hot shit regardless of statistical probability. I guess it doesn’t make Dopers unusually arrogant after all – just human.

130

When officials need a really accurate IQ score, e.g. for MR classification, they administer the test. The gold standard test, last I knew, was the Wechsler (WISC for children, WAIS for adults). These tests are one-on-one, not group administrations. I don’t know if they use IQ tests for Gifted/Talented populations because achievement tests are probably sufficient to determine placement in schools.

Most if not all of us have experience with achievement tests, not IQ tests. ITBS, ACT, SAT…achievement tests measure things they expect you to learn in school, such as the scientific method or historical events. They’re targeted at grades…if one of the goals of fifth-grade math is to learn to multiply decimals, that would be on the achievement test (probably along with other items at higher and lower grade levels to determine where the student is functioning).

IQ tests are different.

If you want a ball park figure, however, some people translate achievement test scores to IQ test scores. You need to know the median and standard deviation.

For example, if an achievement test has a median of 20 and a standard deviation of 5 and you score a 26, you are 1.2 standard deviations above the mean (26-20, divide by 5).

Stanford-Binet IQ scores have a median of 100 and a standard deviation of 16. 16 x 1.2=19.2, + 100 = 119 IQ.

Again, achievement tests and IQ tests are different animals. That’s just a way to estimate.

131

Assuming that your assessment of what other kids in your school did post-graduation is correct, is this a reflection of their innate intelligence, or the socioeconomic realities of growing up in a poor rural area? And why would you assume that people who choose, say, a military career, or to start out in a community college, are stupid? In that situation, perhaps a military career or community college is the rational choice.

I’ll let you in on a little secret; you’re not as smart as you think, and everyone else isn’t as inferior to your intellect as you believe they are. Coming to that realization is an important one in dealing with the rest of the world.

132

I’m not trying to get snarky, I’m really not. And as far as putting words in your mouth, I’m not trying to do that, either, just trying to let you know what your words sound like to me. It sounds to me as though you were calling perfectly normal people “morons.” And your explanation here doesn’t change that. See, the folks you went to school with probably are pretty average, just like they are everywhere. They may not have a lot of opportunities in the town you came from, but I object to your characterization of people who go into the military and people who work at the mall and people who go to community college (like I did, FYI) to be morons.

I think the fact that you like to read does give you something that is in common with the people who post on the SDMB, and it may differentiate you from the people you went to school with. But I doubt very highly that this puts us “above the rest of this population by a mile.” And even if it did, you know, it’s just not very nice or classy to brag about it or call them morons.

133

If you think anyone here is “smart,” just remember how many Dopers work in call centers , that absolute moron cattle-pen bottom rung on the employment chain.

134

I’ve always been partial to “I guess you aren’t completely worthless” myself.

135

I read somewhere a few years ago - not sure how accurate it was because I think it might’ve been Maxim - that when they did a study asking men their penis size they came up with an average of 7.5". When they did another study that actually measured they got an average of 4.5".

136

We are not talking about a class of 30 people.
We are talking about a 5,000 member self-selecting subset of nearly two hundred million. Count the zeros.

I did not make any assumption. Using U.S. census data and projections and your numbers, I calculated that it would require less that 0.2% of a convenient but overly narrow demographic in the United States alone for all the regular posters to have an I.Q. of 130 or above. From that, I proposed that it is quite possible that the posters meet the significantly less stringent criterion of an average I.Q. of 130.

Did I lose a power of ten in my calculations?

Roughly half.

Significantly less stringent.

I am not going to argue that one can compare a methodology to an attitude, but if you mean to suggest that people evaluate potential candidates differently from the way they evaluate their peers, I disagree.

Oh. I see.

137

I’m pretty confused here, but I’m only posting at the urging of Basandre who says I might as well see if someone can clear up my confusion.

I originally ignored that IQ converter Tamerlane posted. I had my IQ tested once, in elementary school for a gifted program, and my mother did not tell me what my score was, only that I was NOT accepted for the program. Many, many years later she told me I’d missed the cut-off by two or three points, and that made the whole experience (to her) that much more frustrating. I don’t really recall much of it, except that I had to go take a bunch of tests on a Saturday.

I did eventually give in and go use that converter. I used my most recent GRE scores (verbal + quantitative is what it asks for). I had to retake my GRE last year, as they expire every five years. Five years ago, I took the GRE with a week of prep time, and didn’t really study. This year I studied haphazardly for a month or so, and I believe my scores were significantly higher as a result. If I can find my old score reports, I’ll check, but that’s unlikely.

If I’m correct that my GRE scores were higher this time than last time, doesn’t that mean my conversion would cause it to skew high in assessing me? I can’t be sure, because I was never told what my elementary school scores were, so determining if this tracks similarly is impossible for me.

So, given that it’s based on a test you really can study for (in my case at least), the converter seems like a bunch of bullshit. I have a very hard time believing, based on the numbers in this thread (that 130 is very high) that my score should be high. Especially if 130 is genius level, and I wasn’t admitted because I wasn’t quite smart enough, it sure seems as if I should have been admitted.

I think 145 may have been the rough cut off for my school system as well, olivesmarch4th. In that case, perhaps these do track decently, since that would mean a 142 or so wouldn’t be admitted. Using that converter, my Stanford-Binet score is 148, my Cattell score is 172 and my Wechsler score is 145. I could see how I might have tested at, say, 142 back in elementary school and roughly 145 now. However, I’m no genius (despite what my mother said last night), and there are days when I don’t even feel particularly bright.

And now I think I shouldn’t post this, because it’s long, rambling, possibly confusing, and doesn’t seem to say anything new. However, I’m going to post it, and put in the basic stuff that I’m confused about.

If 145 is three standard deviations above the average, that means that only 0.15% of the population has an IQ of 145 or higher, and thus a stupidly high cutoff for a gifted program. A cut off of 130 would be two standard deviations above the mean, and these programs would still only be admitting 2.5% of the population, which seems like a much saner amount (in a sufficiently small system, a cut-off of three standard deviations above the mean wouldn’t admit ANY children, and even a much larger one would only admit two or three, total). OR a cut off of 145 is a reasonable cut-off, and is not as super genius as being claimed.

Either way, I don’t think I suffered any lasting damage by not being admitted to the gifted program of that school system, but reading this thread, I’ve become confused. In the end I think I would be better off to forget what that stupid converter said, and continue not really knowing my supposed IQ.

138

The converter is probably converting whatever scores you put in to a percentile and then spitting back out the scores that would correspond to the same percentile for the other values. That’s a reasonable thing to do if you’re looking at nothing but IQ tests, but throwing the SAT or GRE in there is only adding noise.

139

It amuses me greatly that a thread opened to mock people who brag about their IQs has lead to a large number of people continuing to brag about their IQs (whether real, exaggerated, or estimated).

Typical jerk-off IQ post:

"Well I don’t usually feel smart at all, and don’t think smart is all that important. For example, after I scored a 146 on an IQ test in 7th grade … "

Funny how people manage to weasel in their scores in supposedly self-deprecating ways.

140

You can’t really tell a person’s intelligence by what they do as a career or job. My father was the most intelligent person I ever knew and he never went to college and worked as a theater projectionist. Circumstances in people’s lives lead them to careers as much, if not more than choice.

I have noticed, also, that a lot of people who I think are intelligent choose careers where they have minimum contact with other people.