Before you actually look into the subject, questions like ‘what
does IQ mean?’ and ‘what is intelligence?’ seem like they should have easy answers. You can look up the definition in the dictionary and you’ll probably get a satisfactory answer.
But if you want a fuller definition, if you want a greater understanding, you must be prepared to realise that it isn’t as straightforward as it first seems. Although IQ is a science, it’s a bit of a fuzzy one. If you want straight, definite answers, your only option is mathematics. If you want to know more, you must be prepared to come out of this with more questions than you came in with.
You probably already have an idea of how intelligent you are. Most people consider themselves to be of either below, average, or above average intelligence. Others consider themselves completely dumb, or incredible geniuses. Whatever your perception of your intelligence is, at different times you’ve probably been called such things as dumb, bright, smart, stupid, clever… a whole assortment of labels. It is these thoughts and comments that colour our perception of how intelligent we think we are.
A big reason why people become interested in their IQ is because they want to know how intelligent they actually are. Similarly, employers want to know how bright you really are, rather than relying on what you say.
In many ways your school grades depict this; but school is often a measure of how well you liked the subjects, how good you are at exams, et cetera. For a more intrinsic depiction of your intelligence most people turn to their IQ, or their Intelligence Quotient.
They take a test; they receive a number.
110, 92, 100, 148… each person comes away with a two or three digit figure. Somehow the testers have taken one of the most complex things known to mankind, and ground it down to a number. How can they do this? In fact, can they do this?
By definition if you score 100 you have an average IQ. Obviously, in that case, 50% of the population are more intelligent than you, 50% less so.
In fact you will often be told that an IQ raging from about 90 to 110 is in the average range. If you score over 110 you are above average. Above 120 means you have superior intelligence. At 150 and above, you are reaching genius levels. On the other side below 90 is below average. Below 75 is feeble minded / mildly handicapped. And below 50 is severely handicapped.
A lot can happen in 150 years. A whole branch of science has emanated from just a few generations. And with it: remarkable human progression, an vicious discrimination.
Of course, the concept of intelligence has been around far longer than that. So far back that we can’t put a date on it. But it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that the subject really began to take the form that we know today.
The proposition of measuring intelligence first came from a man called Sir Francis Galton. He was the cousin of Charles Darwin, and upon reading his book on natural selection, The Origin of Species, became convinced that intelligence too was heredity. Furthermore, he proposed that there were biological differences in a person’s intelligence, rather than intellectual achievement being the result of the amount of hard work a person put in. This began the ‘nature versus nurture’ debate, and indeed the phrase was his.
In Hereditary Genius (1869) Galton set out to prove his suspicions. His proof began with anecdotal evidence, but he really wanted something more scientific. He tried to devise tests that would assess a person’s intelligence. With these results, he said, a eugenic breeding program could be implemented that would bring about the advancement of the human race.
Galton’s attempts were basic. Because of his belief in the biological basis for intelligence, he thought that by measuring such things as reaction times he could measure the brightness of a person. But it was these first steps that paved the way for others.
By the turn of the century, a French psychologist, by the name of Alfred Binet, improved on Galton’s tests by devising questions that would tap into such mental properties as general knowledge, imagination, attention and comprehension. He then administered these tests to children. In order to check whether the questions really were measuring intelligence, he compared the results with their teacher’s impression of how bright each child was.
By 1905 he and his assistant physician, Theodore Simon, had produced a test of 30 questions that was said to measure a child’s intelligence. With this measure he hoped to screen which children needed special educational assistance, and which should be spared from it.
They observed that, just as children grow physically, they also grow mentally as they age. And, also, that this happens to different degrees dependent on the child. They could work out, from their test, the average score of a child of each age, and this became known as a person’s ‘mental age’. Therefore, if a person could complete tests to the standard of an eight year-old, their mental age was declared eight.
A child was therefore of above average intelligence if they had a higher mental age than their chronological age; a below average intelligence if vice versa.
It was noted that the gap between the mental age and the chronological age grew as the child aged. In 1912 William Stern, a German psychologist, noticed however, that the ratio between the actual age and the mental age remained essentially constant throughout life. The ratio of mental age divided by chronological age (then multiplied by 100), was named Intelligence Quotient or IQ:
IQ = (Mental Age / Chronological Age) x 100
In 1916, Lewis Terman, of Stanford University in the USA, adopted this formula for use in his revised version of the Binet-Simon test. He added about 40 questions and discarded some of the less sound ones. Furthermore he used his test on approximately 1000 children aged between 4 and 14. Binet had only used about 50 children; and so Terman was able to obtain a much more accurate analysis of the average difficulty of each question for each age group. This gave more accurate benchmarks for the mental age. (This revision became known as the Stanford-Binet test.)
In 1939 David Wechsler first published the Wechsler-Bellevue test, which were to become the most widely used today. It fitted a gap that had been left by the Stanford-Binet test: it was made for adults. (This was revised in 1955 as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and there was also one for 5-16 year olds called the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). Further revisions have, of course, been made since.)
But implementing the tests to adults caused another problem. The original IQ formula did not work for adults because adults don’t progress mentally at the same degree as children. To explain why this is a problem, imagine a 32 year old was shown to have the IQ of the average 16 year old. Putting this into the formula would produce the following result:
IQ = (mental age / chronological age) x 100
IQ = (16 / 32) x 100
IQ = (0.5) x 100
IQ = 50
Using this formula would give a 32 year old with the same mark on an intelligence test as a 16 year old, half the 16 year-old’s IQ. This would be absurd.
To get over this problem Terman gave all adults a chronological age of 16. But Wechsler did something slightly different. He took the person’s test score and divided it by what the average test score for that age group was. So the formula became:
IQ = (actual test score / expected test score) x 100
The main point that is worth remembering here is that the end result of the formula is a reflection of how a person stands compared to others. What this means is someone with an IQ of 150 is not twice as intelligent as someone with an IQ of 75.
The IQ tests were first used on a mass scale by the US army. However the earlier tests had to be conducted individually by an examiner. This was no good for large group tests, so the introduction of multiple-choice questions came into being.
The use of the tests in the army added to their credibility and they began to be used by schools, universities and businesses as entry exams. In Britain, the measurement of intelligence helped found the 11+ examinations. These were an extension of the elitist selective school system, which precluded many children from a secondary education.
It has been shown that IQ tests show a high degree of accuracy in predicting a person’s likely success in school and in certain jobs, so maybe this was a valid use for them. However, many have argued that this is not surprising, since the IQ test was originally based on what questions high achievers in school were able to answer. Therefore IQ tests are necessarily based on things that are taught in school.
Furthermore, research has shown that having a higher IQ doesn’t actually make you better able to do the job once you have been employed. Other research agrees with this, but says that a higher IQ is required for jobs that require a higher intellectual proficiency.
But IQ tests have had a more obvious affect than entry exams. A man named Henry H. Goddard persuaded the authorities to allow him to administer tests on immigrants as they entered the main immigration port in America, Ellis Island in New York City. His ‘exposure’ of the amount of immigrants that were feebleminded, led to immigration controls being made law in 1924.
These would ideally have been made on an individual basis but this was considered impractical by politicians and inconvenient by racists who wanted to keep America’s Nordic heritage. But even if carried out on an individual basis, some have said that the tests were not fair because they relied on an understanding of the English speaking culture and language, which is, of course, weaker in non-English-speaking countries.
Goddard also advocated a more dramatic use of the tests. Like many others, he wanted to use the tests as a means of isolating those that should not be allowed to reproduce, for fear of an onslaught of devolution and increases in the feebleminded.
It was believed that if it weren’t for the improved health care and charity organisations many of the unfit would not have survived. In contrast, it was said, the number of children in the average high IQ family was low. If something weren’t done, they said, then a process of devolution would take affect. Forced sterilisation of the mentally challenged began to take effect in some states in America.
It would be unfair to state that IQ tests were the sole reason for these measures, for this kind of thing had been taking effect prior to the IQ movement. But IQ tests certainly acted as a catalyst and a way of defining who should be subjected to the sterilisation process.
It is hard not to draw connections here with the activities of Nazi Germany. It would be unfair to treat IQ tests with all the atrocities that happened here, but at the same time it would be naive to declare that they did not have some effect. Germany began by implementing sterilisation processes like those in the US and other countries; and just like these countries the idea of eugenics was already being considered before the inception of IQ tests. IQ tests acted more as an excuse. In Nazi Germany, of course, this manifested into its most extreme form.
None of these negative consequences can really be blamed on the IQ test though. An IQ test is merely a tool and can be used in whatever way the handler desires. Like a hammer can be used to build a house or whack someone over the head, the IQ test can also be used for good or bad.
When we embrace IQ tests for what they really are – a measure of a person’s ability to answer the questions – we can begin to use it to achieve amazing things.
IQ tests try to grind a complex ability into a simple figure that can be used to make statistical comparisons. While it may be interesting, for the individual this does not help in any way. It is by looking at individual questions and abilities that we can actually begin to improve what we are doing.
The problem with the IQ test is that some of the systems that are involved in doing well in IQ tests, are not necessarily transferred to other areas of life. Therefore people can become very good at IQ tests, but not seem very intelligent in other areas of life. More commonly though, people can be highly successful in some areas of life but not apply what they know to the context of an intelligence test. It is possible, with instruction, to use what you do well in one area of your life and transfer it to other areas of your life. In this way you can unleash your intelligence and improve your IQ score, and more importantly improve all areas of your life.
What exactly is measured in an IQ test?
* Verbal – a person’s accumulation of a large vocabulary, and – more importantly – the understanding of these words.
* Spatial – the ability to manipulate objects in the head (primarily by visual means). For example: rotating a three-dimensional object to see if it matches another object.
* Visual – often associated strongly with the spatial tasks it is the ability to see things in your head, to compare pictures to their real life counterparts, to complete pictures et cetera.
* Pattern recognition – includes logic. It is the ability to realise abstract patterns and allows us to apply these patterns from one problem to another. Mathematical operations fall into this category because a mathematical formula is basically a way of expressing an abstract pattern. In fact we might say that this is mathematics.
* Memory – Memory is a vital element in IQ. Our ability to remember vocabulary over long periods of time is obviously very important. But more important is working memory. This is the ability to hold data in the head while we work on other parts of the problem. The Wechsler tests cover general knowledge.
Many IQ tests are timed in order to test how quickly you can perform each task. This adds an extra pressure, but once the participant learns to cope with this pressure, it is a very good indicator of how well you can perform the task. If you can do it fast, then you are more skilled in this area.
Particularly the pattern recognition abilities necessary for high IQs are important in other areas such as social skills. Well-developed social skills come from the ability to discover patterns in the way people interact. Yet someone can have a high IQ and bad social skills, or be great socially (or in sport, or other talent) and have a low IQ. In both cases the person has a great ability to figure out patterns, but has applied them to different fields. Therefore a socially intelligent person and a person with a high IQ are both intelligent.