My answer would depend upon the person asking the question. If I felt the person were fragile and insecure, I might answer, “You could be right, we’re all intelligent in different ways.” There’s no point in hurting someone who is lashing out because they feel inferior. In most cases, I would just smile, because time …
This is an interesting question, and one that I’ve been exploring for the past three years. We do know from the research of Bouchard and others* on the studies of identical twins separated at birth that a significant part of our intelligence is determined by our genetics. We also know that intellectual stimulation and early …
Is intelligence determined by genetics or early exposure to learning? Read More »
This answer depends upon what we mean by “intelligence”. We humans have used our ingenuity to harness the electronic properties of inorganic elements like silicon, to simulate human intelligence. Computer chips, operating on the simple rules of logic that humans implement in the deductive process, are able to execute mathematical algorithms much faster than we …
Your brain grew rapidly throughout early childhood, when the neuron connections or “synapses” were generated at a prodigious rate and then pruned to adapt to the environment–deleting the synapses that were stimulated the least and increasing those that supported cognitive demands. The next dramatic phase in your brain growth occurred just before puberty when a …
There is no absolute standard for measuring a person’s worth because there is no universal agreement on what constitutes “worth.” Furthermore, a person’s worth is assessed differently by different people and different generations. Worth as an absolute measure If we grow up in a family that values education, we tend to adopt those values and …
How is a person’s worth measured? Can anyone truly have a quantifiable value? Read More »
Sports psychologists are recognizing that excellence in sports is more mental than physical. In his book Empowerment: The Competitive Edge in Sports, Business & Life, psychologist Gene Landrum profiled 13 of the world’s greatest athletes, from Jim Thorpe to Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. In his in-depth study of the personality and cerebral qualities that led …
We have some fairly precise information about the percentage of people who have abnormal intelligence as measured by IQ, but much less information about the percentages of people of various personality types. The normal curve, that displays the distribution of IQ, across the human population, shows the IQ percentiles from 0 to an upper bound …
What is the percentage of people who have abnormal intelligence or personality type? Read More »
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 »
