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Asked by Cameron Jones to Joni, Chris J, Anna R, Alice on 30 Apr 2015.
Question: Measures like IQ and 'g' claim to show some level of objective cognitive ability or intelligence in people. But to what extent will these measures always be based upon a societally constructed concept of what 'smart' should look like?
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anon answered on 30 Apr 2015:
Good question. I find ‘Theories of Intelligence’ quite an interesting phenomenon. Going back to mindset, what people consider ‘intelligent’ could influence actual academic performance. The Implicit Theories of Intelligence scale created by Dweck and colleagues measures how much one person believes intelligence is fixed or malleable, arguing that malleable intelligence is more beneficial to academic performance. That being said, a lot of literature supports the idea that intelligence or ‘g’ is inheritable and largely fixed. Being ‘smart’ is more of a societally constructed concept where IQ and ‘g’ refer to processes in the brain that are quite specific. The literature revolving around psychometric testing and measurement of IQ and ‘g’ is quite dense, but to put it briefly, I don’t think you can measure ‘smart’, as this is a societally constructed concept, as you put it, that can change dramatically depending on the context. Literature has defined IQ and there is a lot of research today that supports a definition of IQ as measured by IQ tests which measures Intelligence per that definition, but does not measure how ‘smart’ you are.
For instance, conscientiousness is in many cases a stronger predictor of academic performance than IQ. There is also the Intelligence Competence Theory that suggests there is a significant negative correlation between intelligence and conscientiousness. This theory suggests you become more conscientious to reach goals, for your intelligence alone doesn’t suffice. Thus, if what shapes your idea of what is ‘smart’ is how well someone does in school, than conscientiousness is actually a better measurement of ‘smartness’ than IQ test scores.
Upon re-reading this, I can see how this can be quite confusing, but I hope you see what I am getting at.
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Alice Jones answered on 1 May 2015:
Cameron, it’s an interesting question about heritability. IQ, or ‘g’ is usually around 50-70% heritable, which means that there’s still considerable scope for non-genetic factors to make a contribution to the variance of cognitive ability – itt could be that the ‘mindset’ that someone uses is part of that.
However, some work has suggested that there is a heritable component to your self-perception of ability, and that those genes are shared with those that contribute towards school achievement. Therefore, I am willing to bet that an individual’s mindset is also, at least partly, heritable – which might muddy the waters a bit more…
Comments
Kathryn commented on :
This is a question on which people tend to hold very strong views. Fortunately, the evidence base here is highly robust and it would not be OTT to say that the existence of g and its ability to predict outcomes including academic achievement, occupational success and health and longevity is the most robust finding in all of psychology.
However, g is just one predictor of these outcomes. In terms of academic achievement, for instance, we know that a pupil’s self-efficacy beliefs (how good they think they are at a subject or skill), their personality (particularly conscientiousness), their home and school environments, any health or behaviour problems etc are also predictive of success (although to a lesser extent than g). Achievement is affected by much more than cognitive ability. For a good paper on this related to GCSE achievement see Krapohl, E., Rimfeld, K., Shakeshaft, N. G., Trzaskowski, M., McMillan, A., Pingault, J. B., … & Plomin, R. (2014). The high heritability of educational achievement reflects many genetically influenced traits, not just intelligence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(42), 15273-15278 (available on-line for free). Ian Deary at Edinburgh has also written well on this subject, including a short book called Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction.
The other thing to mention is that we find g to be heritable (differences between people in terms of g are influenced by differences in their DNA) – genes are less influential when children are small and become increasingly influential as they go through school and enter adult life. Genes influence ability but they don’t determine it at any age – as the paper I mentioned shows, factors like home and school environments also matter.
It is very hard to review the research in this area and not reach the conclusion that although g is just one statistic, one piece of information among many about an individual, it’s a particularly useful piece of information. To my mind, the debate needs to centre not on whether g is a real thing but on how we should use it e.g. is it relevant to decisions about setting? What specific support can be offered to improve achievement and life outcomes in pupils low in g? Should it be assessed routinely, and when? Is it easier to boost g or to boost other influential factors such as self-efficacy? Here the evidence is much less robust and there are important questions still to be asked.
I’ve wandered a little from your main question. I would say that I don’t think g is socially constructed but our idea of ‘smart’, the hoops we put in place for people to jump through, and the limited range of abilities our society values most definitely are.
P.S. Linda Gottfredson is another really good person to read on this topic if you’re very interested.
Steven Rose commented on :
As a neuroscientist I don’t agree with all of Kathryn, comments above. ‘Intelligence’ is no single capacity, and what is considered intelligent behaviour is hugely culturally dependent. IQ tests do correlate with school exam performance, but this is not surprising because this is exactly what they are constructed to do. As an example,in the 1930s the then used IQ tests showed girls scoring on average higher than boys. This was regarded as unacceptable, so the test items were adjusted so that boys’ scores were boosted. In addition there is well documented evidence that over the past decades there has been a steady increase in average IQ scores – the well known Flynn effect. Once again there is a huge literature on this. If you are interested i will send you some relevant references. Decades of attempts to identify ‘intelligence genes’ have so far proved negative. But this isn’t surprising because intelligent behaviour – and school performance – depend on multiple factors – attention, motivation, perception, arousal. memory, etc. all of which engage multiple brain processes and can be affected by many factors, genetic, environmental and psychological. So to answer your original question, smart is as smart does, and smart in one context isn’t necessarily smart in another. MENSA is a society for high IQ people, but MENSA membership doesn’t correlate with high professional or academic achievement!
cameron-jones commented on :
Thank you very much to both of you, fascinating responses!
The most interesting thing for me here is that ‘g’ does seem to correlate so highly with so many measures of cognitive ability.
That it’s heritable raises interesting questions as well I think, particularly in light of Dweck’s ‘growth-mindset’ stuff. It almost seems like the evidence is pointing to ‘intelligence’ being fixed in the real world, but for it being more helpful to imagine that it isn’t! One to leave to the philosophers maybe?