IQ does not make sense: Why the mind can not be measured
Idea to measure human intelligence With the help of a relatively simple test, it appeared more than a hundred years ago and since then has fallen into different hands. There is no single and universal IQ test, but such an approach is still used by both some employers at interviews and supporters of ultra-right views, who are trying to prove the theory of racial superiority from a scientific standpoint.
However, some time ago, scientists noticed that the average IQ in developed countries from Great Britain and Denmark to Australia began to fall, although the past 80 years have been growing steadily. We understand whether the IQ indicator is important at all and what it really says about a person.
What affects our mental development
New Zealand political scientist James Flynn was the first to notice the connection between the standard of living and IQ. The development of science and education, new inventions, improvement of housing conditions, health care, nutrition, reduced crime rates - these are some of the factors that affect intellectual development.
The so-called Flynn effect is confirmed by almost all local studies. For example, in Denmark, all people who are preparing to become military must pass the IQ test - already for more than 60 years, and the test adapted in the middle of the last century was updated only a few years ago. At the same time, the average result grew every year: with those points that were considered the norm in the 1950s, today you may not be accepted into the service. Growth continued until the late 1990s; in the 2000s, the figures froze, slightly fluctuating now one way and then the other, and now they have gone down. And not only in Denmark: many universities and research centers around the world report similar results.
At first glance, there is no logical explanation for this: according to the Flynn effect, growth should only gain momentum. Moreover, scientists from the University of Otago - the one in which Flynn conducted his research - add to the growth factors also an information flow. The number of newspapers and magazines in the middle of the 20th century increased many times, then television appeared, and people, constantly passing large amounts of data through their heads, learned how to absorb any new information more easily. The fall in indicators coincided with the massive spread of the Internet, which is even more confusing.
Flynn himself has two explanations for this phenomenon. The first version - according to statistics in developed countries, wealthy and achieved relative success of couples are increasingly having one child, while many large families live at the poverty line. Parents there did not receive a proper education and cannot afford to pay for a college or university for children, and poor living conditions, according to the same Flynn effect, lead to a drop in intelligence. This hypothesis, firstly, requires additional research, and secondly, it is consistent only if the genes do affect IQ.
Genes and the truth affect the level of IQ, and significantly, according to the results of the study of the American psychologist Robert Plomin. But this assumption has many opponents: allegedly Plomin and his colleagues did not provide convincing evidence in favor of the fact that clever children come out of good families because of genetic ties, and not because of the surrounding comfortable environment.
The second version of Flynn: a high standard of living has long been the norm for most developed countries, this level today is growing slightly or not growing at all, which is why the average IQ no longer rises.
What IQ tests actually measure and why they are not universal
A test very close to what we understand today as an IQ test was developed in 1912 by the German psychologist William Lewis Stern. He took as a basis various tasks and puzzles of the 19th century and tied them up under his system of studying child psychology - the result partially resembled a psychological test developed in parallel by Alfred Binet. In fact, Stern wanted to create a methodology for assessing the developmental potential of children, but all subsequent IQ tests (including tests of the ambiguous British psychologist Hans Jürgen Eysenck, who popularized the very idea of measuring IQ) suggested variations for adults.
The test, during which it is necessary to answer 40 questions in 30 minutes, is too out-of-date and inaccurate. But it penetrated so deeply into universities, research institutes, and now into the Internet, that it cannot be eroded until now. If you took an IQ test at school, this was probably one of the many variations of the Eysenk test. At the same time, a standardized test for more than 100 years has not appeared: there are several dozens of basic options (Cattel, Wexler and other psychologists), as well as several hundred of their modifications - and this is only if we take into account the tests used by major scientists and do not take in the calculation of the adapted versions for different ages.
The test for IQ, most likely, passed each of us, if only out of interest, but many find it difficult to answer what exactly it measures. The most popular answer is some conditional "mind." In fact, the average IQ test determines your ability to analyze new information (both using and not using old) regarding your age. At the same time, tests are specially designed in such a way that the average value is 100 points. It is believed that the result below 70 points speaks about problems in mental development, but the so-called threshold of genius varies greatly from version to version: somewhere it starts with 140 points, somewhere - with 160.
Behind the scenes, the man with the highest IQ in history is considered to be the American William Saydis, born in 1898. A writer, asexual, political activist, he read the Iliad in the original in three years, knew several dozens of languages and came up with one of his own, was incredibly capable of math, published several fantastic books and monographs on various topics. Exact data on its IQ indicator was not preserved, but, according to unconfirmed data, reached a corridor of 250-300 points. Nevertheless, his only pragmatic invention, the "perpetual calendar", today nobody uses.
Intelligent and successful in all respectable parameters, a person with mediocre or even low IQ is far from being an exception.
Passing the same test with short breaks, you can get different results, because your physical and psychological condition significantly affects concentration. But even in potentially sterile conditions, IQ tests are far from high accuracy. For example, in the version of the test Eysenck, long used in the United States in order to check preschoolers aged 3 to 5 years, was the question of what color is an apple. The correct answer is to say that there are a lot of flowers and to name a few of them, but it is highly likely that a three-year-old child could see only red or green apples, and this does not affect his mental abilities. Some versions of Rudolf Amthauer's test generally ask questions about erudition ("what is measured in joules?") - the answer can be found in a second on the Internet or in the reference book, which is why you will not become more capable. Psychologist W. Joel Schneider in an interview with Scientific American also reminds that the average IQ test gives not only a very approximate, but also a very average value, because it consists of several subtests, each of which tests different types of thinking. Thus, a person with outstanding abstract thinking and weak verbal is likely to get an average result.
Research centers use more advanced systems that produce not only the average score, but also very detailed statistics. One of such programs, called Compositator, was developed by Schneider himself, although he admits that it is far from the necessary accuracy, and a person with ordinary or even low IQ who is smart and successful in all visible parameters is far from an exception. In his blog, largely devoted to measuring IQ, Schneider notes that public interest in tests for IQ and their results is falling: they are no longer taken too seriously. This is especially noticeable in American employers: in the 50s, when IQ measurement became popular, large companies wanted to hire only people with a high score and even gave tests right at the interview, but by 2000 they almost completely abandoned this practice.
Finally, another important problem with IQ tests is strict timing. It is known, for example, that Albert Einstein thought extremely slowly and did not fit within the allotted time for exams, but hardly anyone would doubt the level of his intellectual abilities.
Does high iq matter
There are several organizations that bring people with extremely high IQ. Mensa International will accept those whose result is higher than that of 98% of the population (that is, two out of a hundred people). Although you still need to pass will not be a standard IQ test, but a specially revised one. Prometheus Society is much stricter: their tests are designed in such a way that only one person out of 30 thousand could pass. The organization is growing very slowly: in 2013 it had only about 130 members.
Mensa website allows you to participate in an intellectual exercise - to pass a test of 30 questions in an hour. This is not a traditional IQ test and is not an exam for admission to Mensa. You are warned that the test was created solely for entertainment purposes, but on the basis of those questions and intelligence assessment techniques that the real Mensa exam, which is not publicly available, is not. Many tasks resemble the Eysenck test, but in the end you will write out in detail the methods of solving questions and the most common mistakes you made. There are no extraordinary achievements of the members of Mensa and Prometheus. 68-year-old American journalist Marilyn Vos Savant, a member of Prometheus and the Guinness Book Record holder for IQ scores from 1986 to 1989, leads a column in Parade magazine, solves logical paradoxes, has released several books and has written several plays. But you could not hear about her at all, although according to the test results, this is the most outstanding woman in history. The last record holder of the Guinness book, Korean Kim Un Yong, quickly mastered mathematics and foreign languages, solved problems for speed in the programs of local television, but by his 51 year he was not noted with anything really significant either. In 1990, the Guinness Book of Records ceased to include IQ champions in its publications, explaining that there were too many tests, they all gave different results and it was impossible to determine the winner.
Although the average IQ and the truth falls across the developed world, it did not significantly affect, says Thomas Tiedl, a professor at the University of Copenhagen and the same scientist who noticed a decrease in the average IQ of the Danish military. The number of scientific publications is growing, an increasing percentage of people are getting higher education, the pace of technology development is increasing every year, and it is not very clear if the average IQ value can influence anything other than statistics. So one should not give too much importance to some conventional numbers.
Material was first published on Look At Me.
Photo: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 via Beinecke Library / Flickr