You’re Smarter Than You Think
Several decades ago, an individual twice my age mentioned how those who first encounter a new person primarily form their impression through perception via near-instant evaluation of many factors, and not so much by someone’s title, who they say they are, or how smart they purport to be. In other words, a person’s intelligence quotient (IQ) or claim to fame make little difference at the start of a fresh relationship as to how the intellectual connection may fare. Prior to that moment, I believed the opposite to be true, fawning considerable value on a person’s IQ number as a definitive marker of their sharps. As the years came and went, I realized there is much more to one’s range of intelligence.
I’ve come to understand IQ is a loose definition of who a person “is” under the magnifying glass of cognitive psychology. The final IQ number, or score, is based on language and image-centric evaluators. A classic IQ score is derived from standardized tests, with origins dating back to 1912 when German psychologist William Stern coined the term “Intelligenzquotient.” While the series of tests intend to cover a broad range of the things a person knows, the reality is a significant quantity of intelligence markers slip through the cracks of the psychological evaluation process. For background, here’s how IQ is determined:
A sequential group of intelligence tests establish the test taker’s mental age, which is divided by their chronological age of years and months. That fraction is multiplied by 100, resulting in the IQ. That’s it. Somehow I had imagined there was something more grueling and complicated to it all, but alas, IQ by today’s standards boils down to a bunch of carefully phrased questions within categories displaying images, patterns, letters, words, and charts, asking the test taker to interpret and resolve what they read and see. An example:
Which of the following can be arranged into a 5-letter English word? (Answer at at the end of this blog)
a. H R G S T
b. R I L S A
c. T O O M T
d. W Q R G S
The average IQ score ranges between 85 and 115, however, fluctuation exists between variations of IQ tests depending which each author(s) test represents. There is the Wechsler version and the Stanford–Binet version. Oh, and the Woodcock–Johnson version and the Kaufman variation. Let’s not leave out the Reynolds variation, the Cognitive Assessment System, and others, each with proprietary modifications as to how they gather data and rate intelligence based on primarily cognitive ability in the moment. Only cognitive? At this juncture, the definition “full-scope intelligence” becomes a bit antiquated with obvious limitations.
Enter the ambiguity of real, post-Victorian people navigating real life in a fast-paced, ever-changing, technically sophisticated, multicultural world. Rather than a staid two or three digit intelligence quotient, it seems apropos to identify one’s intelligence potential. I’m thinking a floating scale comprised of several lenses examining one’s morphing circumstances and challenges, rather than what the person recalls from memory during a single test session.
Human-deployed technology is accelerating at a pace faster than the average IQ person can often keep up with. Might it be plausible intelligence could be a flexible figure shifting within a realm of evolving factors, some of which have only existed for the past couple of years? And might there be an intelligence evaluation system already in use which is more advanced than current IQ tests? I believe there is, and therein emerges a conundrum. If humans are creating their own problem, how quickly might communal intelligence solve it if the nodes, (us humans), better shared our unique intelligences?
Base illustration by Nick Slater
A concept known as Successful Intelligence, spearheaded by Cornell University psychologist and psychometrician Robert Sternberg, indicates in his book, Successful Intelligence: How Practical and Creative Intelligence Determine Success in Life, we indeed are smarter than we think. He bases his position on what people already do across time: shift gears, alter speeds, and refocus according environmental challenge, financial need, creative vision, pragmatic targets, etc.
To comprehend where one stands on a more functional intelligence scale at any given moment, Sternberg suggests four areas, not one, be observed:
Analytical Skills (gather, review, analyze, judge, compare/contrast, deduce / aka: critical thinking)
Creative Intelligence (invention of novel and useful ideas, improve upon the status quo)
Practical Intelligence (common sense implementation of ideas, validate idea values to others)
Wisdom (achieving common good for the community, exercising discernment, or discretion while considering others)
The classic IQ area of cognitive ability is captured in the Practical Intelligence category above, which leaves three-quarters of additional potential out of the spotlight. Viewed from another angle, psychologist and human potential researcher Scott Barry Kaufman suggests cognitive ability has two partners in the areas of Intellectual Engagement and Intellectual Creativity. The product of these three siblings can be realization of truths, while abandoning precast ideologies, biases, and personal beliefs. So now there may be as many as seven areas modern psychology experts believe validate intelligence. Suddenly the single standard IQ test numbers seem narrow compared to the wider landscape of smarts we carry around.
Getting back to being smarter than you think you are, I offer the possibility we are also more intellectually flexible than we may believe. In other words, sharper in one area one day or hour, and sharper still in another area later on, all based on the situation. Our minds and imaginations are amazing, snappy navigation devices when allowed to breathe. With that in mind (pun intended), I decided to try something to better understand my own areas of intelligence.
For the past three months I ceased watching and reading 95% of mainstream news, which sounds like a radical act doomed to devolve me into a bumbling idiot. What I discovered since implementing the change is a calmer, more flexible mindset able to hear other ideas and viewpoints in ways I may not have before. I realize abstaining from most news is a tall order for the vast majority of readers, though when one seizes an opportunity to experience a different reality and self-essence, benefits begin to materialize. You might just consider it, while realizing friends and colleagues will keep you up to date with top events. They can’t help it!
Today, I sleep more soundly and have longer, deeper dreams, while engaging with characters rather simply observing from afar. When awake and speaking to friends and colleagues, thoughts and ideas appear more clearly in my mind. I find an inner peace closer to the surface when I need to access it. Probably the biggest benefit is a newfound ability to find pleasure in little things, such as stopping to admire nature awhile truly seeing, hearing, and sensing it. Lately I’ve developed a fascination with slugs of the Pacific Northwest, those slimy, slow scavengers to which few folks give much notice.
Two Pacific banana slugs, with the one on the right feasting on a hiker’s dropped snack. Photos: Geoff Puckett
From my experience, intelligence extends far beyond mere cognition, into a realm of creative contemplation and intuitive wisdom I rarely encountered before. By being closer to who I really am within, and reducing the volume of external static (aka: news, news, news), sprouts of a more meaningful, self-created life appear. Bestselling American author and vipassana meditation teacher, Jack Kornfield, expresses the point this way:
“Every facet, every department of your mind, is to be programmed by you. And unless you assume your rightful responsibility, and begin to program your own mind, the world will program it for you.” –Jack Kornfield
Is it a coincidence television and radio content is categorized as ‘programming?’ And could the programming we are exposed to day in and day out influence the outward intelligence we exhibit at work, at home, to our children, and throughout our communities? Are we being as smart as our innate abilities would empower us to be? It’s my observation conventional IQ tests, with origins more than a hundred years back to Victorian times, aren’t accurately evaluating what we possess, and what our genuine intelligence potential actually is. With inaccurate, outdated analysis and pervasive, thought-numbing static battling it out in our heads, it’s tough to grasp and sense one’s true potential.
If humankind is to progress and thrive together, it may be worth considering less focus on cognitive skill by itself, while embracing a broader range of measures across a three-dimensional realm. A calm individual comfortable with their many facets, while creatively applying those facets each day through inherent wisdom, is capable of so much more, just as a Swiss Army knife provides more solutions than a single blade to an imaginative user. Successful intelligence can both calm us down and lift us up as ideas and implementations thereof expand into the diverse areas of how we live. Administered with newfound intelligence, the world can only improve.
Humans are gifted with so many streets, avenues and boulevards of intellect. We are indeed smart cookies, with keen perceptions of others, even as our individual potential may hide from our own view. The time is now to recognize and apply what we already have within us to reach well beyond Victorian IQ numbers. It’s time we amaze ourselves.
IQ test answer:
If you took note of the direction for English words, then observed the presence of vowels in lines b and c, the solution came fast. Possible words are “rails” (b.), and “motto” (c.). If the language specification was different, so might have been the results. See the ambiguity with a language-based test?
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