There are some professions that require a very high level of intelligence and others that merely require a higher-than-average level of intelligence. Furthermore, there is a great deal of variation in intelligence within the professions. (Statisticians would say that the variance in intelligence within a profession is greater than the variance in intelligence between professions.) …
The Meaning of the term “Emotional Intelligence.” Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, that appeared in 1936 during the Great Depression, sold more than 15 million copies and became the seminal work in the art of salesmanship. In his book, Carnegie stressed the importance of empathizing with your client, seeing things from his …
Historical evidence seems to suggest that all math geniuses are intelligent, but not all intelligent people are math geniuses. Many people who are intellectually brilliant have a capacity for abstraction and pattern discovery that would enable them to solve deep problems in mathematics. However, they often have different interests and their mathematical capabilities are never …
How do “Math Geniuses” differ from most intelligent people? Read More »
Our intellectual potential, like all our physical characteristics is contained in our DNA. However, environmental factors play a very significant role in determining the extent to which we reach that potential. The connection between genes and intelligence was established unequivocally by Bouchard and others during the 1990’s in their study of identical twins who were …
As people of IQ less than 200, it’s difficult for us to imagine how a society might look if our species were magnitudes more intelligent than we are today. Our evolution has hard-wired us for survival and with that has come what psychologists call “ingroup-outgroup” cognitive bias. In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin describes …
In the early part of the 20th century, there was a reluctance to talk about either the subconscious or the unconscious. Their existence was somewhat suspect, simply because, by definition, the unconscious is not observable. However, by the late 20th century, experiments in cognitive science had revealed that the unconscious is, indeed, an important element …
A common misunderstanding of IQ is that it’s an absolute measure like time or distance. Actually, IQ is a comparative measure that expresses your performance on an IQ test relative to all the others who have taken the same test. People like to attribute high IQ’s to brilliant people. For example, the Terence Tao a …
We can think of IQ, wisdom and intuition as components of intelligence because they are all manifest in the widely accepted definition of intelligence articulated by psychologist Linda Gottfredson: Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, …
Can Wisdom and Intuition be considered forms of Intelligence? Read More »
Each of us has an internal perception of success that is based upon the environment in which we live and the “tribes” to which we belong. If you are a student involved in what has been called “the paper chase,” (the quest for degrees and diplomas) then academic performance may be your measure of success. …
Although Einstein never sat for an IQ test, he probably would have scored very high, but not as high as some, because his kind of intelligence is not captured in a series of 45-minute IQ tests. While IQ tests provide a good measure of certain cognitive skills, they do not measure the long-term problem solving …
