IQ Tests -- Woo or Boo?

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The topic I'm discussing now is the effectiveness of IQ Tests. These tests measure your Intelligence Quotient, and let you see how "smart" you are. However, how effective are they? And is there really a need for these tests?

I recently did one on the internet. Here's the link -- go check it out yrselves -- http://www.highiqsociety.org/iq_tests/

I did the test and got an IQ of 118. As a thirteen year old, I was of course naturally excited for the 115-130 range was classified as "High Intelligence". i did another test on a different website ( can't remember ) and got a depressingly low score of 103....

The question is: Do people really wanna know what their IQ is? Wouldn't you be better off not knowing your score if you were "mentally deficient"? And just how effective are these tests?? I would love to hear from y'all and hear your IQ scores if you have taken any...

 

103 is still just above average.

Most IQ tests online are for ego stroking. You'd need an authentic test to really say what level you're at. Mensa used to have a few IQ tests on their site, but I believe they were taken down.

I got 144 on the above test btw

 

Such tests need to be conducted by trained professionals in order to be truly valid. Any idiot can author a test and call it an "IQ" test on the net -- that doesn't necessarily make it so. Aside from that, even tightly controlled scientific tests can be prone to cultural skew or bias. I think that some tests can help locate and diagnose specific problems, but the true nature of intelligence is something that cannot be measured by one or even 20 tests.

One term that was very fashionable for a while was the concept of multiple intelligences. I'll give you an example:

I have a brother in law. He's 45 years old and still moves his lips when he reads English. He mispronounces most words over 4 syllables. God help you if you try to read his chicken scratch writing. He also has a real talent -- he can walk into a room full of strangers and piss every single one off in less than five minutes. Honest to God, the man is one of the most irritating bastards I have ever met.

HOWEVER

The guy can fix any engine he sees. Since he moved into the millwright field, I reckon he can fix any machine he sees. He made a buttload of money as an auto mechanic because he got paid by how many hours a job was listed as taking, not by how many hours it actually took him. So, a valve job is listed at 5 hours, right? He'd get the thing done in 2.5 hours and still get paid for 5. He racked up the $$, let me tell you. He also can do math quite quickly in his head.

So you could say that he has high Mechanical intelligence and Mathematical intelligence, but low Linguistic and Social intelligences.

I'm almost the opposite. I excelled at everything academic, especially language. I also am the family's unofficial mediator when there's a conflict. However, I still recite "righty tighty, lefty loosy" whenever I am forced (at gunpoint!) to do anything mechanical. I also need about 5 minutes to determine which direction is North, and even then I'm wrong half the time.

So I've got the Linguistic, Social and Mathematical intelligences covered, but lack in the Mechanical and Geo-Spatial ones.

So which is more important? I say none of them (though I wish my BIL would at least attempt to develop some Social intelligence) because it all depends on what your job is.

 

IQ quests are mostly boo although they can be rather amusing. I wonder if anyone ever scores below average on these online ones though.

 

I don't like the "culturally neutral" geometrical ones. I believe they are limited to geometrical vision and in some cases, I doubt the solidity of the patterns. I always get poor scores in those, while I score very highly in those that involve words or numbers. So maybe I'm just educated rather than genuinely smart, but anyway, I don't like the geometrical ones.

 

I always get bored on internet IQ tests, such as the one above. The third question through, I start wondering what the hell the point is. Sure, I can detect a pattern in squares, but how is that going to help me in life or prove that I'm smart?

The very concept of IQ = intelligence is, I think, misleading. Everybody think differently, and thus excel at different fields. For example, I think purely in pictures and "scenes", and thus I'm good at History and some of Biology, but suck at Maths, because I have problem visualizing it.

Anyways, I'm sure an international high IQ society (har har) would be clever enough to know to not use ALLCAPS in their site name.

 

IMO, there is no bulletproof, efficient way of measuring someone's intelligence. There isn't even a single intelligence as a trait, but many of them.

I understand that some of the official tests (conducted in a controlled environment, by experts and with a suitable psychological evaluation of the subjects) can be useful in some special cases (say medicine for cognitive disorders or in determining extent of damage to higher brain functions or something).

However, precise measurement of someone's intellect is not possible today, imho. I certainly wouldn't take results of an online test seriously.

How you score at an IQ test is just that - a score on a test. It proves nothing more then how you handled a series of tasks at one given point in your life. It doesn't make you smart, or stupid.

Also, "intelligence" is a term that really needs replacement. It doesn't exist, IMO. Replacing it with a wide spectrum of mental traits would be doing everyone a favour. (Something like that is already done with Spatial, Verbal and other Intelligences...)

chev: I don't like geometrical ones, too. I rarely know what I'm expected to do there.

As for IQ tests - I dislike and avoid them, tbh. There's no real valid point to them, for me. Sure, I took a few for fun when I was younger, with various results, but I've never done a serious, multisectioned, controlled lab environment one. Frankly, I'm not sure it would even matter.

I already know what tasks I'm good at (verbal, maths, 3D rotation) and where I fail epically (geometrical patterns, understanding people, singing... and many more, tbh )

 

My lowest score was 129, my highest score was 147...

I had one done by a professional 25 years ago, and came out around the Genius cut-off.

 

Blah, I usually couldn't be bothered with IQ tests. It's a poor measure of a person's skill. Redundant.

Takes the test subjects motivation and tolerance for stress in a test situation poorly into account and I don't think that there'd be any way to take those into account.

For instance there's enough of brilliant people who have rather low stress thresholds. The ability to keep one's cool affects the test situation and puts the results off. Too bad for them, I guess, but it tells little of their intelligence.

 

As and ex-teacher who was responsible for giving IQ tests I can tell you that this one is Boo. In fact most generalized IQ tests are Boo. Are any IQ tests helpful, yes if used by and expert to isolate special needs which includes people with very high IQ's. They have special needs.

IMO the better test would be the EQ test (emotional quotient).

edit: Intelligence is the potential ability to learn
Wisdom is the ability to use what we learn.

 

I think that I've taken just about every IQ test on the internet(it's an addiction) so far I've only come across 2 or 3 that were decent and actually challenged me. All of the rest I would score in the top 99%. So I would say BOO

 

In the USA there is an IQ test called the WISK test. It can only be administered by a person who is trained to give it. It is a one-on-one test. The person taking the test doesn't even have to know how to read and write. It is broken into parts, testing knowledge, spatial, shapes and quite a few different things. Each part has its own score.

I have given it to kindergarten students and autistic children. Because it is in parts it tests a person's strong and weak abilities. It is an excellent test and is quite useful as a diagnostic tool.

The general IQ test that a teacher plops down in front of students can give only a very rough idea of the students abilities. Also, results will vary according to how the student feels, is he ill? Did he eat a decent breakfast but not over eat? Did he just come from the gym and is thinking more about how well he did or didn't do in basketball practice?

Now I will not mention any names but did you ever meet a person who could tell you sports scores for the last 50 years, rules and regulations, names of the 50 best players in the last 25 years or even longer but couldn't tell you anything about classic books, music or art?

I was an A student in my business law course but had to be tutored to pass one of my accounting courses. Why? I loved that law course and found it very interesting and disliked the accounting course and found it boring.

An IQ test can only at best test the potential of a person to learn and succeed in life and that in only a very limited way. IMO, very strong opinion, IQ tests are much over rated. There are more important things in life.

 

I remember taking a huge one, when I was in the army. It had about 600 questions, I belive. Aparantly it was a very accurate test, though. They were using it to test males between 16 and 30, across the country. I got 136 on it, but really its 126. I got a +10 for taking the test in english. Probably got the +10 for showing that one can speak more than one language, or something. Not sure. But it was a fun test, I remember. Online ones though, tend to be pretty crappy. I remember getting 50 on one. Had alot of questions involving colours and such. so that bit was hard, considering I am colour-blind . Have gotten aroun 150 on some too, wich is redicilous.

 

And here we have the main reason the internet is overrun with IQ tests. It gives people bragging rights and makes them feel good. No offence to you Arahar but this was a thinly veiled internet IQ test bragging post. They show up everywhere, the phenomenom can also be seen when someone posts asking people to post their D&D stats, dont think I have seen anyone post an intelligence score below 14 or when people are asked how good drivers they are. 2/3 or something of all drivers view themselves as better than average drivers. I fall into this all the time myself, we like to think of ourselves as smart and better than average and these internet tests prey on that. Then again, I guess we here at SP are quite a bit smarter then average.

 

Good point, swede. I doubt people at this site are alot smarter than others though, but I am sure we like to belive we are.

 

I took the test, and the result was 106. It seems to be rather boo, because when I was 10 years old (which was the minimum age for the IQ test), my IQ was tested in the Hospital by people who knew how that stuff is done, and the results were somewhere around 180 (I do not remember exact number). Now I am 21, and I somehow doubt that my IQ dropped to 106 since then.

However, I would like to emphasize what Nakia said:

One can have the highest IQ in the world, and still be rather stupid. IQ just tells you how fast you are at understanding new information. And I can vouch for that myself. Like I said, my IQ was 180 at the age of 10, so that would mean I would be rather fast on the uptake. And indeed, I was so fast on the uptake, that often times I got bored in class. Oftentimes I already understood the information the teacher was trying to teach long before my classmates. As a result, I got bored, which sadly often got interpreted as "Not paying attention". I did well on exams, when I got to use the information, but my class behaviour was always graded as "not paying attention", at least while in German school. Later I switched to a private school, and they had experience with kids with high IQs, and knew that they could allow me to work ahead to keep me busy.


As for the internet IQ tests, I agree they are simply Ego stroking.

 

I get bored too quickly. Them squiggly thingies and all the big numberses make my headsie hurt

 

Well most of my views have already been said. IQ tests "boo", no real thing such as intelligence, spread across many areas etc. What I really don't like though are societies that require a minimum IQ to join, I just can't see why anyone would actually want to join them...
Oh and I don't like it when the tests require you to know specific facts from history/geography/english lit for questions, as whether or not you know the answer has nothing to do with intelligence. You could argue it shows you can memorise information, or are inquisitive enough to find it out, but you can't be expected to know everything and there's no guarantee you're interests will correspond with the person setting the test. Even if you do know it, it still doesn't show intelligence, being able to critically analyse an authors work shows intelligence, knowing an authors name does not.