There is no doubt that the discovery of the g factor was a really significant effort. No matter what the g factor (the product of it is IQ) is, it’s so important that it strongly correlates with formal education achievement, job prestige, job performance, morbidity and mortality.
It is something extremely important but it is in reality something very statistical – from the start to the end. Factor analysis (factor analysis is a statistical method used to describe variability among observed, correlated variables in terms of a potentially lower number of unobserved variables called factors) is something statistical to its core.
There are extremely significant correlations between 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.
You may be very surprised but current IQ tests only measure the original “g factor” to some (even though high) degree even if they could do it fully. Why? The smart minds developing tests could have tailor-fit the tests so they would measure the sheer g factor (as it is in tests for super-intelligent people)!
Because they are used by clinical psychologists to assess their patients (because the pathologies have basically unique IQ profiles):
Alcohol abuse
Mental retardation
Dementia (all of the types)
Alcohol abuse
Mental retardation
Dementia (all of the types)
Memory impairment
Brain damage (stroke, head injury, tumors, epilepsy, temporal lobe, parietal lobe lesions, right and left lesions, lateralized lesions)
Psychiatric disorders (autism, psychopathy, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia)
Learning disabilities
Multiple sclerosis
Parkinson’s disease
Every disease may score differently among different tasks such as:
Vocabulary
Similarities
Information
Comprehension
Picture Completion
Block Design
Matrix Reasoning
Picture Arrangement
Arithmetic
Digit Span
Letter-Number Sequencing
Digit Symbol-Coding
Symbol Search
The importance of Verbal IQ < Performance IQ; Verbal IQ > Performance IQ is a major marker among the differences.
Every battery has its own g-load (how close it is to the original g factor) but the batteries have a huge clinical contribution because not only regular people (perhaps they are in the minority) are being assessed. I should also note that IQ tests are not exhaustive and it means that even with an enormously high IQ, you may not be a successful businessman:
“The individual Wechsler subtests, or the subtests that compose the KAIT or WJ III, do not reflect the essential ingredients of intelligence whose mastery implies some type of ultimate life achievement. They, like tasks developed by Binet and other test constructors, are more or less arbitrary samples of behavior. Teaching people how to solve similarities, assemble blocks to match abstract designs, or repeat digits backward will not make them smarter in any broad or generalizable way. What we are able to infer from the person’s success on the tasks and style of responding to them is important; the specific, unique aspect of intellect that each subtest measures is of minimal consequence. Limitations in the selection of tasks necessarily mean that one should be cautious in generalizing the results to circumstances that are from the one-on-one assessment of a finite number of skills and processing strategies. Intelligence tests should, therefore, be routinely supplemented by other formal and informal measures of cognitive, clinical, and neuropsychological functioning to facilitate the assessment of mental functioning as part of psychodiagnosis. The global IQ on any test, no matter how comprehensive, does not equal a person’s total capacity for intellectual accomplishment.”
The formal and informal measures? Never even seen any psychologist doing that!
Now let’s resolve the politically incorrect things. I mean Pinker vs. Spelke “feud” where the first-mentioned defended the notion there are varying intelligence in men and women. The Gaussian curve in women is more narrow, therefore the extremes are logically shifted (3 of 4 people with IQ 160 are men). The male high school students manifest greater intellectual potential because they were selected as intelligent enough to be accepted to a high school, therefore the pool of male students have higher IQs as their Gaussian curve is less narrow, therefore the shift for those more intelligent is significant. I recall my high school days when teachers said: “The men are really more intelligent.” And it is and it isn’t true – at a high school, of course, yes, but the general population has fewer women less intelligent, but also fewer women more intelligent.
Nowadays IQ tests are designed to men and women obtain the same score. There is no doubt that women are being discriminated against on a cultural level all around the world. Their average is slightly shifted, however (including the Gaussian curve being different).
Let’s make it incorrect once again and let Alan S. Kaufman speak: “When someone calls you an idiot or an imbecile, think of Esquirol. He formed a retardation hierarchy, with moron at the top. If someone calls you a moron, you might inquire, “highgrade or low-grade?” Or you might get back at your nemesis by calling him an imbecile. But the ultimate insult is to shout “idiot,” Esquirol’s bottom rung. When current classification systems use such terms as profound, severe, moderate, or mild mental retardation, they are just using euphemisms for Esquirol’s original terms. I despise such systems—I hate seeing IQs used to label, classify, and weed out—but I must admit that moderate mental retardation (or the new, politically correct term, intellectual disability), has a better ring to it than moron. Not that long ago I came upon a case report describing the medical and psychological evaluation of “Charlie,” aged 35, institutionalized since age 20, who had been making recent progress. My eyes froze when I read the physician’s Dr. Wechsler was intractable about eliminating items from his tests. He felt an attachment to every item on the WISC, and any item that traced back to the original Form II of the WechslerBellevue was an all-hallowed item. Once I had the audacity to say to Dr. Wechsler that there is this one item on Comprehension that I think we ought to get rid of. He asked calmly, “Which one?” I replied timidly, “Why should women and children be saved first in a shipwreck?” He turned red and this one little vein on his scalp turned blue and started throbbing. I knew I was in trouble when that happened—that I had crossed a big line that I didn’t even know existed. I was asking to get rid of an item that in 1972—during the time of outspoken feminists—was practically crying out, “Delete me.” Dr. Wechsler looked at me with that vein quivering and I was thinking, “I’ll be known as the man who killed David Wechsler.” He put both arms on the table and he said sternly, “Chivalry may be dying! Chivalry may be dead!”
History also was full of mismeasures:
Verbal IQ
– Describe the history of the Papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially (but not exclusively) on its social, political, economic, religious, and philosophical impact on civilization. Be brief, concise, and specific.
– Take a position for or against truth. Prove the validity of your position.
– Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt. Trace the possible effects of your plan in the following areas: cubism, the Donatist controversy, the 1969 World Series, and the wave theory of light.
Performance IQ:
– You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of vodka. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. You have 20 minutes.
-Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate and perform it with flute and drum. You will find a piano under your seat.
-The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle are in a box in your desk. In 10 minutes, a hungry Bengal tiger will be admitted to your room. Begin!
“But these test questions, which I’ve borrowed from a highly creative but anonymous source from a generation ago, appear as IQ items only in our nightmares. The open-ended questions in individually administered IQ tests are challenging but not outlandish, as will become clear in the next two chapters, which deal with the history and development of the array of exceptional IQ tests on today’s testing scene.”
In my opinion, nobody should be called a moron, imbecile and IQ tests’ questions should be subtle in their nature. However, obtaining deliberately the same score for women and men? That is kind of strange.
Source: Kaufman, Alan S. (2009). IQ Testing 101. New York: Springer Publishing.
Kaufman, Alan S.; Lichtenberger, Elizabeth (2006). Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence (3rd ed.). Hoboken (NJ): Wiley.
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