My post on December 13, 2021, was titled, “What can a person of IQ 160 do that a person of average IQ cannot?” There was an overwhelming response to this post (almost all positive) though some people wondered how IQ items that appear artificially contrived, could have any relevance to the intelligence required in the real world. In this post, I will attempt to build the bridge that connects IQ items to the real world, by using the Steven Spielberg movie West Side Story as a model.
The bridge will start with the nature of IQ test items and then stretch to the real world. To create items that would be scored objectively, psychologists developed multiple choice test items with only one correct answer. Furthermore, to make the items purely visual, language-independent, and free of knowledge favoring any particular culture, they developed pattern-recognition items known as Progressive Matrices.
What does a Progressive Matrices IQ Test Item Look Like?
An IQ test typically consists of either 48 or 60 items, presented in order of increasing difficulty and is time-limited to about 40 minutes. Usually, an item consists of an array of 3 × 3 grids, called matrices, arranged in 3 rows and 3 columns. As you scan the 3 matrices from left to right in a particular row, you are expected to determine how each matrix is derived from the one on its left. Sometimes, there will also be a relationship among matrices in the same column, in which case you must ascertain how each matrix is derived from the one above it. Answering an item correctly involves choosing the matrix or matrices that complete the pattern or patterns evident within the progression from left to right and/or top to bottom.
In the sample item below, examine how the matrices change as you scan from left to right along the top row of the display. Then look for a pattern in how the matrices change in the middle row. Did the matrices in both rows change the same way?
Now do the same for the matrices in each of columns 1 and 2 as you move from top to bottom. Did the matrices in both the rows and columns change the same way? If so, apply the same change to the second matrix in the bottom row and the second matrix in the third column to obtain from the offerings “A” to “H” the correct grid that belongs in the circle.
Sample Item: Select the option, A through H, that belongs in the circle below to complete the pattern. (Try this before reading ahead.)
As you moved from left to right across the top row, you probably observed that the line joining the clubs rotated 45˚ counterclockwise. This rotation was also evident in the second and third rows, enabling you to determine that answer C continued the pattern and is therefore, the correct answer.
The IQ of a person who takes an IQ test is calculated from the number of items answered correctly. But how can a high score on such a test of so-called book-learning skills be relevant to the everyday world? In the previous post, I referred to the graph of psychologist Linda Gottfredson showing the connection between IQ and job competency. However, in this post, I will attempt to show how differences in the ability to generalize and its antecedent, pattern recognition, might result in different understandings of a play or movie.
Synopsis of the Plot
In the Upper West Side of New York City during the 1950’s, two rival teenage gangs, the Jets (white Americans) and the Sharks (Puerto Ricans), struggle for control of the neighborhood. To this end, Riff, the leader of the Jets, rallies his group to meet with Bernardo, leader of the Sharks at the neighborhood dance to arrange a showdown gang war to settle once and for all who controls the turf. At the dance, Tony, the protagonist who is Riff’s best friend and former member of the Jets, meets Maria, Bernardo’s sister. Maria and Tony fall in love–a love forbidden by the intergroup antipathy. The rumble escalates as the weaponry becomes more lethal and both Tony and Bernardo are killed.
What “Take-Aways” might People of Different Pattern-recognition Ability (or IQ) derive from West Side Story?
Most people would see this as a tragic love story reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet, but situated in New York City during the gang wars of the 1950’s. They would see the dangers of ethnic bigotry, the hostilities that bubble up into anger among those who populate the slums, and the deadly outcomes that occur when guns are readily available to people without emotional control.
Others, who have been exposed to the study of history and who have a reflective habit of mind, might see a pattern in human behavior. From the religious wars in Ireland, the genocide in Serbia and Croatia, and the Rwandan genocide they might recognize a tribal behavior in our species that was once a survival advantage. Charles Darwin, a master at inferring generalizations from specific observations, stated:
When two tribes of primeval man, living in the same country, came into competition, if (other circumstances being equal) the one tribe included a great number of courageous, sympathetic and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe would succeed better and conquer the other … The advantage which disciplined soldiers have over undisciplined hordes follows chiefly from the confidence which each man feels in his comrades. … Selfish and contentious people will not cohere and without coherence nothing can be effected. A tribe rich in the above qualities would spread and be victorious over other tribes.
Darwin recognized, almost 2 centuries ago, that we humans are innately tribal. And psychologists conducting brain scans are now discovering that when we are in tribal mode, we feel stronger empathy for those in our tribe, while dehumanizing those outside the tribe. This enables us to kill without remorse and sometimes with joy, those who serve under different flags. A person with a heightened ability to see patterns might see in West Side Story, not just a story about New York in the 1950’s, but rather a story about the innate nature of humans and our propensity for tribalism that is now coming into play in the Ukraine and perhaps Taiwan. Such a person might not attribute tribal warfare to the existence of slums or guns, but might see a deeper cause rooted in the human psyche.
