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Yes, research has revealed that some people do, indeed, have higher intelligence than others. This was established unequivocally by Bouchard and others during the 1990’s in their study of identical twins who were raised in different environments. Since the twins in Bouchard’s Minnesota study were raised apart, no part of the correlation in the IQ …
During a dinner debate with Amy Chua (known as “Tiger Mom”) Larry Summers, President of Harvard from 2001–2006, quipped, “At Harvard, the A students tend to become professors and the C students become wealthy donors.” Summers’ facetious comment actually carries more than a grain of truth, and it challenges the assumption that high intelligence necessarily …
Why are great intellectuals and professors not the wealthiest? Read More »
Highly intelligent people are usually able to learn foreign languages more easily than most people. Among the cognitive abilities that characterize high intelligence are strong short-term and long-term memory, an quick grasp of new concepts, a capacity for abstraction and an ability to discover patterns in structures. Since these are the kinds of abilities that …
This question is at the root of a “nature vs. nurture debate that has raged for the past three centuries and has now been illuminated by recent research. The intelligence that we develop through adulthood derives from the DNA we inherited from our parents (nature) and the experiences we accumulate in our voyage through life …
The answer to this question depends, to some extent, to your definition of success. If success in life is about the accumulation of wealth and an affluent lifestyle, then this kind of success is more accessible to people of average, or slightly above average intellect, than most people would imagine. In his study of successful …
What’s the best way for a person of average IQ to be successful in life? Read More »
On October 4, 2023, the New York Times published an article by journalist Jessica Grose titled, Teachers Can’t Hold Students Accountable. It’s Making the Job Miserable. In her article, Jessica describes the current crisis in American Education. Her article presents evidence of declining student performance in mathematics and language, grade inflation, increasing student absenteeism and …
What is the Hidden Peril in the Unrelenting Decline in American Education? Read More »
Brilliant people are often characterized as socially inept because they often display behaviours that transcend normalcy. The brilliant physicist, John von Neumann, was known for his quirky behaviors, such as standing at the bottom of a staircase and looking up the dresses of woman as they walked upstairs. Yet, in certain social circles, he entertained …
Waxing eloquent on group membership, comedian Julius “Groucho” Marx famously said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.” In spite of his assertion, Groucho belonged to a variety of in-groups. As one of 5 brothers born in Manhattan to Jewish parents of German and French extraction, his …
How important is a person’s biological heritage to their sense of self and Identity? Read More »
Autopsies on prominent humans enabled the investigation of intelligence relative to brain size. Though some highly intelligent people were found to have possessed significantly larger than average brains, there were many who did not. Gauss, regarded by historians of mathematics as one of the three greatest mathematicians of all time, weighed in at what has …
What is the relationship between brain size and intelligence? Read More »
The greatest downside to knowing your IQ on a standardized IQ test is that it may cause you to put a ceiling on your personal expectations We must remember that an IQ test is a brief snapshot of some of your cognitive skills– a snapshot that has a reasonably large margin of error. Scoring 110 …
What is the downside of knowing your IQ Score on a standardized IQ test like WAIS IV? Read More »
