Defining IQ

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by JoelSammallahti

Re: Personality, I personally think the developers of the five-factor model made bad choices when selecting the orientations of their factors, and past the first 2-3, the orthogonality and validity of the factors is a little bit iffy. You can have an equally valid factor structure from the same data that corresponds better to some interesting outcome variables and related concepts, but it's a matter of taste as much as science.

From the reading I've done, it seems to me that some of the names for the Big 5 suggest a meaning other than what the trait is actually defined as. For example, "Openness to Experience" seems to go with having an interest in the arts, in cultural materials, and in abstract topics generally; it doesn't seem as if it goes with readiness to try bungee jumping, or take part in an orgy, or even eat foods from new cuisines. And "Conscientiousness" seems to mean specifically readiness to perform tasks defined by the expectations of other people or of an organization.

[AlexanderHowl]

I think that the reason why smart people tend to live longer is that they are less likely to engage in stupid activities (like drunk driving or unprotected sex with strangers) and are more likely to take preventative steps (like vaccination or avoiding areas where everyone is dying from infectious diseases). An intelligent person is not necessarily healthier than an average person, they are just more likely to avoid circumstances where having good health is critical. Of course, a healthy intelligent person will live longer than an unhealthy intelligence person or a healthy average person, so the longest lived people will tend to be both healthy and intelligent.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by JoelSammallahti

Caveat: I'm not an expert in psychometrics, but I have studied the field, written my master's thesis in it, administered and scored a couple hundred IQ tests, and participated in designing test protocols. So I'm not a complete outsider either.

Cripes! What's it take to be an expert these days?

Let's take the Feynman example people are fond of. Undoubtedly a genius, but only got 125 on an IQ test in high school.

Presumably the state of the art in IQ tests has improved since about 1935, so what are the error bars on that assessment? And how much does IQ change between high school and graduating university? i.e. How much weight should we give that factoid?

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

An intelligent person is not necessarily healthier than an average person

Better nutrition is as critical for mental well-being and strength as it is for physical well-being and strength. Sickness, disease are as bad for the brain as they are for other organs.

Having a privileged upbringing of good food, good health, and protection from war doesn't just give you a better chance of fulfilling your physical potential, it also gives you a better chance of fulfilling your mental potential.

It's hardly a guarentee just like great physical fitness is any kind of guarentee from the same advantages, and if your "potential" wasn't going to be that fantastic in the first place then fulfilling it is perhaps not going to be sparkling.

But, for example, I would have had a very different experience with education if I didn't have peri-natal brain damage.

[JoelSammallahti]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Cripes! What's it take to be an expert these days?

Oh, a postdoc to start with, and you need to carry a sheaf of articles in hardcopy on your person at all times to bolster your argument. If you have to resort to google scholar to find that big meta-analysis that supports your point, you get pelted with rotten grant applications and the university takes away your parking spot.

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Presumably the state of the art in IQ tests has improved since about 1935, so what are the error bars on that assessment? And how much does IQ change between high school and graduating university? i.e. How much weight should we give that factoid?

How much weight? About a shrug's worth, I'd say. On the other hand, IQ scores have risen about 20 points since then, so was Feynman only average by today's standards? :O No wonder he spent all that time trying to figure out turbulence and couldn't hack it!

[JoelSammallahti]

Healthier behavior from smarter people is part of it, but interestingly enough, it's not the whole story. For some causes of death that are really stronlgy dependent on individual choices, IQ has a huge and obvious effect: for example, stupid people die from accidental poisoning at a way higher rate than smart people. Smoking's a big one, too. Bad health, like poor nutrition, pre- and perinatal problems, parasites, etc. damaging intelligence is another part, but they don't cover the whole effect either. It's weird.

[JoelSammallahti]

Originally Posted by Rupert

An acquaintance of mine some years ago who was a research psychologist said that giving IQ tests to other psychologists was a waste of time, because even if they didn't know all the answers to that specific test, they'd seen and done so many that they could guess the correct answers often enough to make them worthless (or thought they could, which still makes the results worthless). So-called personality tests were even worse.

Personality tests have that problem in a big way. But then again, if you're motivated to fake your personality results, you can, even if you have no experience with them or understanding of the theories behind them. This is because personality tests are just self-report questionnaires. They're basically just asking you "are you more of an extravert or introvert?" and "are you more worrying or easygoing?" in 50 different ways. (Interestingly, personality questionnaires are more reliable and have better predictive value when you get a person's ratings by asking people close to them. Like, your spouse or mom is better at reporting what you're like than you are. And why not?)

Intelligence tests are different, though. There are practice effects on a lot of the common subtests, but they're not that big. For example, if you've done a lot of Raven's matrices-type picture puzzles, you're a little better at them, but you don't go from average to genius-level with practice. And with other tests, knowing how the test works doesn't do anything: you can't pretend to have a better digit recall than you do, or report what a rare word means when you don't know. So, some subtests are ruined for people who have experience administering IQ tests, but not all by any means. Of course, if you've administered the exact same test you're taking, then you know the answers, and obviously that won't work.

[JoelSammallahti]

Originally Posted by whswhs

From the reading I've done, it seems to me that some of the names for the Big 5 suggest a meaning other than what the trait is actually defined as. For example, "Openness to Experience" seems to go with having an interest in the arts, in cultural materials, and in abstract topics generally; it doesn't seem as if it goes with readiness to try bungee jumping, or take part in an orgy, or even eat foods from new cuisines. And "Conscientiousness" seems to mean specifically readiness to perform tasks defined by the expectations of other people or of an organization.

Yeah, somebody joked about Openness representing having the kind of personality psychologists relate to, because there doesn't seem to be any other unifying aspect to it. It's the worst of the five, really. If you take a big battery of personality tests and perform an exploratory factor analysis on it, Openness to Experience is not going to pop out without a lot of massaging that data...

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I think that the reason why smart people tend to live longer is that they are less likely to engage in stupid activities (like drunk driving or unprotected sex with strangers) and are more likely to take preventative steps (like vaccination or avoiding areas where everyone is dying from infectious diseases). An intelligent person is not necessarily healthier than an average person, they are just more likely to avoid circumstances where having good health is critical. Of course, a healthy intelligent person will live longer than an unhealthy intelligence person or a healthy average person, so the longest lived people will tend to be both healthy and intelligent.

Addictions have NOTHING to do with lack of intelligence. Impulsiveness is also unrelated to low intelligence except in that some disorders effect both.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Addictions have NOTHING to do with lack of intelligence. Impulsiveness is also unrelated to low intelligence except in that some disorders effect both.

I disaggree. CLEARLY the record of American colleges demonstrates the VAST capacity of intelligent people for minimal temperance. As does Pushkin regularly having affairs and getting into duels over them. Or Van Gogh cutting off his ear.