What effect does the IQ have on our psyche?

Nika - Welcome to A2K!
Boy, you picked a subject about which you could write a book. Without getting too complicated, think about it, and some of the answers will be very obvious.

A person with a high IQ absorbs knowledge more easily than others. How would that affect his schooling, and subsequent employment? What kinds of careers might he choose?

On the flip side, how would a low IQ affect a person school and career wise?

There are certain medical conditions that could affect a person's intelligence. Down's syndrome is the most obvious one.

If you are looking for references, a good place to start is "Google scholar". Go to "Google", and type in "Google Scholar". There you will find all sorts of scholarly articles. In some cases, you may only be able to acess an abstract of a study, but for your purposes, that should suffice. Good luck!

Thank you very much! I'll look it up!

The IQ measures one thing (and one thing only)...

It measures the ability of a person to do well on an IQ test.

There are questions about whether the ability to do well on a test correlates to other skills-- many of us with high IQ's think this is hogwash.

There is no reason to believe that your ability to answer questions well in an IQ test will make you any more successful in other areas of your life.

Unless your job involves filling in little ovals with a #2 lead pencil, it probably has very little to do with your career. It also has almost nothing to do with your ability to raise a decent family, write a best-selling novel or even your ability to learn advanced mathematics.

If your IQ score is very important to your self-esteem, you can raise it simply by studying before you take the practice test.

As they say... practice makes intelligent.

It doesn't to me. I can see it in the physiognomy.

Who's this "us" ebe?

"Us" refers to people with high IQ's. I happen to be quite good at filling in little ovals with a #2 lead pencil (although I may be dating myself -- do they even use pencils anymore?). And just look at what this skill has done for me (nothing).

I think the IQ thing is a tiny bit more than useless.

What IQ thing- the test- knowing your score- or a person's actual level of intelligence? I think this girl's subject matter is fascinating- but as Phoenix said, incredibly intricate and full of nuances that would take years to explore fully, let alone write about.

Intelligence (and /or even just the ability to remember or memorize) is an important advantage in life, and I hesitate to say there is absolutely no correlation at all between what's between your ears and the ability to synthesize that meaningfully when asked to (performance on tests- in general even).
Whether or not a test is fair or representative of the strengths of an entire population is another issue entirely.

ebe wrote-



Nah-- that's way out of date. The wives of the the more prominent men were into that.

Getting it in "the back of the net" is what counts these days. And that is irreducibly complex. It is unpurchaseable.

These Darwinist materialist atheists are so,so out of date and yesterday's mashed potatoes that one feels a degree of sympathy for them.

Certainties are what they sell on car parks at race meetings.

Nika Welcome!

Learning efficiency seems only part of the manifestation of intelligence. After all, some individuals who are otherwise mentally deficient can memorize entire text and repeat the memorized material in its entirety in a short amount of time along with other specific mental parlor tricks. This in no way demonstrates the agreed view of an "intelligent" person.

The other side of intelligence is manifest when individuals view the world differently. This ability then allows them to solve problems easier or more elegantly. Indeed, sometimes their world view allows a paradigm change. The classic examples are those views of gravity by Newton and Einstein. In Newton's time he asked people to think of falling apples not as the earth's attraction towards such objects but, rather, of both the earth and the apple having an attraction for each other. This concept worked well up to a point. A few hundred years later Alfred E. asked us to think of gravity not as a relationship between objects but that between those objects and the space they "warped" by their mere presence in that space. Al's concept was not only consistent with Newtonian gravitational theory but also explained observed planetary behavior past that previously mentioned "point" where Newton's had failed.

An aside: When Newton could not totally explain planetary behavior, via his theory, he claimed, essentially, that God was not yet ready to give up all secrets of the universe. Einstein was apparently lucky enough to be around when that time came. Alternatively, Einstein, via his theory, could not explain certain empirical data. He also reverted to mysticism to explain the unexplainable which was, in turn, scientifically explained a few years later by another individual. Both events demonstrate the limited ability of individual "genius" and the importance of collective (and scientifically tested) knowledge.

JM

Nika asked:


I just remembered a study I read somewhere by a neuropsychologist who compared the correlation between emotional happiness and IQ or level of intellectual impairment in people who were dealing with that particular disability.

I don't remember all the details, but I do remember that what this person found was that the more severe the intellectual impairment, the less likely that person was to exhibit signs of depression- which at first seems counterintuitive, but when you think about it for more than a second or two, makes sense.

I'll see if I can find the study - I read it in school a long time ago- like before the internet- so the theory may have been discounted and replaced by others.

Thank you all for the help!
My presentation is now finished, and I hope my teacher likes it! ^^

Thanks again!