What is intelligence?

Continuing on with yesterday’s theme, one of the questions from my second interview was “How would you describe yourself in three words?” I’ve always found these types of questions to be interesting… I mean, who is going to say “Tardy, gossiping procrastinator?” Instead, we pick power words that describe our weaknesses as strengths: “Flexible, outgoing, works-well-under-pressure.” I opted for a few words that others have used to describe me (no, not petulant impish femi-nazi. I do realize it is not wise to tell the head of HR at a potential employer that the HR director at your last place of employment described you as “wicked,” and I couldn’t quite find an appropriate way to reproduce a VP’s description, inclusive of charades-like gestures, of my “huge cajones”). Seeing as how this has been a subject of many conversations lately, one of the words I chose was “intelligent.”

But what is intelligence? I’ve heard it used in a wide array of situations ranging from excuses to label someone as arrogant (more on that in a previous post) to incorporating it in a bad pick-up line (“Your intelligence is so sexy!”). I’m not kidding… over the summer I was chatting with my sister-in-law and she was telling me about a relationship that was ending. In an attempt to justify something (although I’m not sure what), this man said to her, “I have an IQ of 160.” Clearly, this fact alone should’ve driven her back to him. What else would a gorgeous, successful, confident, driven, intellectual female executive in her mid thirties want in a man?

First, it should be pointed out that any adult who uses a number greater than 100 to describe their intelligence isn’t telling you anything meaningful unless they also indicate the corresponding scale. Most people are familiar with the IQ number representing the ratio between mental age and physical age. This is correct for children. However, the ratio changes because as we age, our rate of learning decreases to the point where intelligence frequently declines in the elderly. Indeed, if a 70 year old performed as well as a 30 year old on some intelligence tests, the results would indicate that the 70 year old has a higher IQ than the 30 year old. Furthermore, the industry standard intelligence tests have different scoring scales. For example, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) is one of the most common intelligence indicators and a licensed administrator must give the test, frequently a psychologist. The highest score possible on that scale is 155. The Stanford-Binet is another common one, but the scale is slightly different due to a different standard deviation, so a WAIS-R score of 110 might equate to a Stanford-Binet score of 110, but a WAIS-R score of 150 might equate to a Stanford-Binet score of 154. For this reason, intelligence in adults is usually expressed as a percentile rank. This allows for apples to apples comparison regardless of whether an individual’s score was determined through a standardized IQ test or something like the SAT exam.

Secondly, it should be noted that any type of intelligence test takes several hours to complete. For that reason, they typically aren’t as comprehensive as they need to be to accurately identify extremely high IQ individuals. One test might cover 12 topic areas with questions in each section ranging from easy to advanced. Individuals who score high on this type of exam demonstrate advanced proficiency in a broad range of subjects, but the questions don’t get complex enough to separate superior intellect from genius. On the other hand, there are tests that focus on only a few topic areas but include questions so complex that most average individuals would not be able to answer them no matter how long they tried. A high score on this test could indicate genius in one of the tested subject areas, but extremely gifted individuals with strengths in other subject areas could be overlooked.

Now that we’ve covered the academic side of intelligence testing (thanks to my BA in Psychology which qualifies me for basically nothing), let’s move on. The way I see it, there are two types of intelligence: 1) the kind that results from hard work and dedicated learning and 2) the kind that is a gift from birth, where the recipient just naturally “gets” things without a lot of effort. One might assume that the gifted individual is the more fortunate, but if we put brainpower aside for a moment and look at what other lessons life has taught these individuals, we might be surprised.

The first type of intelligence teaches people that with drive and determination, they can be successful. These people typically learn to be organized, self-disciplined, and responsible. What do the naturally gifted learn? That with very little effort, they can compete with their peers and frequently come out ahead. The risk is in what they don’t learn. What they might not learn is how to plan for and structure the requirements to complete an assignment. They frequently don’t learn how to be attentive because they never needed to. They might learn that they can skip class all together. And if they are gifted enough to skip a grade or two in school, they won’t learn the social skills that would’ve normally developed during the year they skipped. In today’s classroom environment, the “no child left behind” program encourages integration of all intelligence levels in the same class with the slower children setting the pace. Developing tomorrow’s leaders is taking a back seat to boosting the self-confidence of tomorrow’s working class. Is it any wonder why there is a positive correlation between intelligence and mental illness?

Fast forward ahead to early adulthood. Gifted individuals who have been praised for their abilities their whole life are now entering college or the workforce. Statistically speaking, the average intelligence of those surrounding them has just increased as the average pre-med student or the average executive has a higher IQ than the average of the general population. For the first time, a gifted individual may actually be “average” yet the idea that they are capable of coasting through life with little effort is so deeply entrenched in their being that they become embarrassed and frustrated when presented with a situation that requires them to struggle and work hard to learn. Furthermore, they may not have fully developed the skills to help them overcome the struggle.

If the individual is gifted enough to continue to perform at a higher level than his or her peers, their next obstacle will take the form of understanding how those around them process information and modifying their own communication style to fit the needs of those people. Before making this realization, the person may feel frustrated over others’ inability to understand what they perceive as clear instructions.

Well, if you’ve stuck with me this long, you have my sincerest apologies for having nothing better to do with yourself at this particular moment in time. However, the next time you feel intimidated by someone who seems smarter than you, just remember that they are probably on the verge of a mental breakdown.

Until next time…