There is probably no psychological concept more used and abused then IQ. Intelligence Quotient is a rusty, misleading cliche devised over a 100 years ago to help the French government select classes for children with learning disabilities.
Alfred Binet set up a series of test, found out what ages they matched, and devised a scale based on this. Most of us do not spend our lives in situations that can be measured on paper and pencil test. Even the concept of intelligence and how to measure it is under criticism. An IQ test does not measure drive, persistence, creativity, curiosity and a myriad of other skills which are required for achieving success in life.
It's easy to spot a genius 3-year-old when she's reading at a fifth-grade level and speaks fluent Spanish. But what makes one 47-year-old more intelligent than another? Is it education? Life experience? Their ability to put together a piece of furniture from IKEA? Historically, even before IQ tests were invented, there were attempts to classify people into intelligence categories by observing their behavior in daily life.
In general terms intelligence is the mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. Knowledge is a familiarity, awareness or understanding of someone or something, such as facts, information, descriptions, or skills, which is acquired through experience or education by perceiving, discovering, or learning. You can think of intelligence as real-time use of information and knowledge as stored use of information. One cannot recall intelligence, but can search and recall knowledge.
Determining IQ is based on this calculation: Mental Age (MA) divided by Chronological Age (CA) multiplied by 100. Chronological age is your actual age, mental age is determined by the IQ test which measures your mental development. The problem here is, the mental age concept is a failure in that it leads to ambiguities and inconsistencies, it applies biased ideas about what intelligence is and isn't and it was designed for children with learning disabilities.
Additionally the more you take these kinds of test the better you get at them. As soon as you understand the principles behind them, they get easier and easier to do. However, if you don't understand the principles and are not able to figure them out, then by simply gaining the knowledge needed to do them you can become quit proficient.
An IQ test really should be about knowledge retention and life experiences, how well you retained complex information without the test being contaminated by differences in prior knowledge. Learning ability can be estimated indirectly by measuring how much a person has learned in the past. If the purpose of the test is simply to measure raw learning ability, this method is poor because learning ability is confounded by learning opportunities, cultural differences, familial differences, and personality differences in conscientiousness and openness to learning.
Our society at this time in history values the ability to make generalizations from incomplete data and to deduce new information from abstract rules. IQ tests need to measure this ability to engage in abstract reasoning in ways that minimize the advantage of having prior knowledge of the content.
Final thought - If you feel the need to have a Genius level IQ, just continue to practice and gain knowledge about the principles used on the test. Maybe one day you'll be added to Mensa.
It's easy to spot a genius 3-year-old when she's reading at a fifth-grade level and speaks fluent Spanish. But what makes one 47-year-old more intelligent than another? Is it education? Life experience? Their ability to put together a piece of furniture from IKEA? Historically, even before IQ tests were invented, there were attempts to classify people into intelligence categories by observing their behavior in daily life.
In general terms intelligence is the mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. Knowledge is a familiarity, awareness or understanding of someone or something, such as facts, information, descriptions, or skills, which is acquired through experience or education by perceiving, discovering, or learning. You can think of intelligence as real-time use of information and knowledge as stored use of information. One cannot recall intelligence, but can search and recall knowledge.
Determining IQ is based on this calculation: Mental Age (MA) divided by Chronological Age (CA) multiplied by 100. Chronological age is your actual age, mental age is determined by the IQ test which measures your mental development. The problem here is, the mental age concept is a failure in that it leads to ambiguities and inconsistencies, it applies biased ideas about what intelligence is and isn't and it was designed for children with learning disabilities.
Additionally the more you take these kinds of test the better you get at them. As soon as you understand the principles behind them, they get easier and easier to do. However, if you don't understand the principles and are not able to figure them out, then by simply gaining the knowledge needed to do them you can become quit proficient.
An IQ test really should be about knowledge retention and life experiences, how well you retained complex information without the test being contaminated by differences in prior knowledge. Learning ability can be estimated indirectly by measuring how much a person has learned in the past. If the purpose of the test is simply to measure raw learning ability, this method is poor because learning ability is confounded by learning opportunities, cultural differences, familial differences, and personality differences in conscientiousness and openness to learning.
Our society at this time in history values the ability to make generalizations from incomplete data and to deduce new information from abstract rules. IQ tests need to measure this ability to engage in abstract reasoning in ways that minimize the advantage of having prior knowledge of the content.
Final thought - If you feel the need to have a Genius level IQ, just continue to practice and gain knowledge about the principles used on the test. Maybe one day you'll be added to Mensa.