Why I had disbelief in IQ?

Are you kidding me? You want to tell me there is a number which rules everything. Every single ability is derived from particular IQ. For a kid questioning everything not a good idea. So why did I have disbelief in IQ?

But the number somehow mattered. I have observed pupils who had very good school results and I predicted their IQ was high. But my disbelief in IQ didn’t go away.

What is intelligence?

You wanted me to say I had some particular skills and a person with higher IQ didn’t have them. Some assembling of blocks, attention tasks cannot measure intelligence of some particular individual.

Some dubious questioning material with dubious use, controversial, if usable, in clinical settings.

And still, if IQ mattered, some natural talent was present in individual scoring low meanwhile the people with high IQ weren’t able to grasp it.

Disbelief in IQ: Sample too small

I have gotten to observational bias deriving my data from very small sample of people which didn’t say much about IQ.

Were I a clinical psychologist assessing thousands of people, I would have known the whole dynamics. The importance of “g factor” (IQ). I would have seen why it did matter and how it didn’t matter. But let’s go back.

Acquired skills, talents and specific mental strategies

I did have some acquired skills, but a person with higher IQ would have acquired them faster, better and would have been able to expand the thinking thread to something I wouldn’t have been able.

There go talents. Even people with higher IQ cannot master it just like someone else. But here we go, talents have extremely strong correlation with global IQ,

Then we go further. Even people who have talent for business actually have multiple talents and even along the multiple talents, they have specific mental strategies that lead them to some better performance.

Attentive to an environment

I once read by a Czech psychologist that it is important to have high IQ but you must know how to use it. And he was right, even though the attention to the environment is a correlating element in IQ measuring.

When you were born into royal family, they tell you everything of how it goes in international politics (the shadow background). A silver plate.

But when you know nothing, you must not only be attentive to the environment, but remember every step and then start making deduction out of them.

I have felt the impact of mainstream science and it was really a real science

Getting older, when I was attracted to science, my dubious view of psychometrics was intact. I did know it had some meaning, but I had disbelief in IQ.

Then I bumped into interview with Steven Pinker patiently explained to non-believer that IQ is not only extremely important. But there we go – it is a part of mainstream science.

And I have deep respect for mainstream science because this is the best available knowledge at the time despite it may change.

So I was like: “Ok, I was wrong all the time. Let’s study the whole concept.”

My disbelief in IQ over

There are extremely significant correlations of median average IQ and given professions (Schmidt Hunter 2004). The more prestigious and cognitively demanding the higher the median average arises. And there are also minimum requirements for each profession. Yes, we have elite lawyers with IQ 90, but there are just a few of them. The median is – predictably- very high.

When we have groups of people with respective IQs 80; 100; 120; 150, the socioeconomic achievements are drastically different.

The concept, of course, isn’t exact, but is one of the most significant concepts in humanities. IQ is connected to all of this:

Your morbidity (Deary, I. J.Deary, I. J., Batty, G. D., & Gale, C. R. (2008). Childhood intelligence predicts health in middle age: The Aberdeen Children of the 1950s study. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 62(12), 1065–1069.)

Mortality (Calvin, C. M., et al. (2017). Childhood intelligence in relation to major causes of death in 68-year follow-up: Prospective population study. BMJ, 357, j2708.),

Job performance (Gottfredson, L. S. (1997). Why g matters: The complexity of everyday life. Intelligence, 24(1), 79–132.)

Wealth and income – Zagorsky, J. L. (2007). Do you have to be smart to be rich? The impact of IQ on wealth, income and financial distress. Intelligence, 35(5), 489–501.

Cognitively demanding outcome – Deary, I. J., Strand, S., Smith, P., & Fernandes, C. (2007). Intelligence and educational achievement. Intelligence, 35(1), 13–21.

Conclusion: A firm believer in IQ

I have gone through peer-reviewed articles, textbooks for professionals or amateurs and I have deeply studied the whole concept and even attacks on it which were baseless.

So now with fully developed adult cognitive apparatus, I had the chance to study it on sample not of 30 people, but millions. And there is the difference.

Businessmen, even though not nuclear scientists, have high IQ. And nuclear scientists, even when understand nuclear science, have at least average writing skills. This is IQ.

While someone may be inept in some particular area, the global IQ has its meaning even though it is not an exact science.