The idea that intelligence can only be measured by an IQ test is the biggest fallacy we have grown with.
And we are not bluffing about it. Since the last many years, IQ tests have been considered to the benchmark for identifying intelligence. However, a recent study begs to differ.
After conducting the largest ever study of intelligence, researchers have found that far from indicating how clever you are, IQ tests are bogus.
These tests have been used for decades to assess intelligence and is still being used now, but the study suggests that the entire system is flawed since it doesn’t take into account the complex nature of the human intellect and its different components
In a bid to investigate the value of IQ, scientists asked more than 100,000 participants to complete 12 tests that required planning, reasoning, memory and attention.
They also filled in a survey to check the background of the participants.
They came to a conclusion that intelligence is never restricted to a single factor which is the judging ground for an IQ test, it actually is influenced by three different elements — short-term memory, reasoning, and verbal ability. Being good at one of these factors does not mean you are going to be equally gifted at the other two.
“The results disprove once and for all the idea that a single measure of intelligence, such as IQ, is enough to capture all of the differences in cognitive ability that we see between people,” said Roger Highfield, director of external affairs at the Science Museum in London.
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BUT WHAT IF THE STUDY IS FLAWED?
Many of us could come up with this query as well. We are arriving at a conclusion based on this one study which could be wrong. Right?
Of course, there would always be chances for that. In that case, let’s forget this for a moment. Let’s just accept IQ test as the only correct ground for measuring intelligence. And it still doesn’t make any sense for you to take this test. I will explain it to you why.
IQ is predictive of a wide range of life outcomes: be it an academic achievement, income, productivity,or even finding out if you can commit any sort of crime or not. In short, IQ is a fairly stable and heritable property to possess.
And it’s good in one sense too. It’s important to have knowledge about your ability and thinking process and take a life decision based on it. For example, To be a sprint racer, you need to have good stamina and energy. But once you know, you are incapable in this perspective, you would choose something that suits your body type.
And this is only thing IQ tests are good at, that too vaguely.
The biggest problem that comes with an IQ score is how you deal with it. If you have a fairly high IQ score, you would become complacent and might not work very hard to reach your true potential.
And if you know that your IQ test is low, it might even discourage you from trying and reaching to a potential that you could originally reach to.
We know that effort is an important factor in succeeding at anything, and it’s basic human nature to put more effort in things where the outcome seems to depend on it. If our IQ is largely genetic and predicts the outcomes we’ll have in life, it may feel like the outcomes have been decided in advance. If they have, why bother trying?
And the counter argument would suggest that even if IQ scores are predictive, it doesn’t necessarily predict the outcomes. There are thousand other things that make the basis for an outcome, some of it being hard work, chance, and timing.
Another study shows that IQ’s heritability increases with age. And it can easily be explained considering the environmental variables every child is brought around. Another explanation suggests that IQ works through positive feedback.
People who are a bit smarter when they’re younger (because of genetics) enjoy learning and cognitively demanding tasks more. By doing more of those tasks, they increase their IQ over time, widening the gap between them and those who didn’t like learning and cognitively difficult tasks.
And if we come back to the first argument I presented in favor of IQ that it gives us an idea of what we are good at, School already does that for us. Why not trust a dozen of year that we spend in a school rather than shifting our whole focus to a few hours test? And schools fare better when it comes to judging almost all your skills, be it cognitive, habitual or interest based.
Would you still want to get an IQ score? Tell us more about it. And if you have any more points to add, feel free to do so!
