IQ SCORE

Intro: We revere intelligence and award “smart” people with a high IQ score, but are we actually born with our intelligence, and can we learn to be smarter?

THE IQ (Intelligence Quotient) score is an internationally-accepted measure of total brain power, calculated via a series of tests. These tests usually involve numeracy, spotting patterns, and logic – so if your forte lies in practical problem solving, negotiating with others, or creativity, the chances are you won’t excel at an IQ test.

Intelligence has no clear definition. Like beauty or personality, it’s relatively subjective, and this is one reason why IQ scores are problematic.

Another issue is that IQ tests have historically been created by (mostly) men in Europe and North America – and are skewed in favour of people from Western culture. Someone from a community that values storytelling, for example, may have great verbal reasoning and memory, yet their overall IQ score might be low because they flopped on the number puzzles.

So, although scientists have worked hard to make tests reliable and relevant across cultures, IQ tests have a limited use. For mentally taxing jobs such as programming, a test is an effective barometer for picking the best candidate. However, if we were patients given the choice between a 22-year-old novice surgeon with a genius IQ and a 55-year-old expert with countless surgical operations under their belt, we will all know who to choose.

Experience, knowledge, social skills, drive, and conscientiousness – all of which could all be considered intelligence – are not accounted for in the conventional IQ test. Even though young adults tend to get the best overall IQ scores, just like a fine wine, many of our abilities continue to improve with age.

Good IQ score or not, everyone can improve their cognitive powers, regardless of their age, schooling, and past experience. Don’t be sold on quick fixes: brain training games and programs will help you get better at those games and tasks, but rarely translate into any practical thinking powers. To get really good at something – be it memorising place names, coding software, or crafting musical compositions – you’ll need to practise that particular skill for many hours.

IQ’S disturbing history

The first intelligence tests were devised by French psychologist Alfred Binet in the early 1900s as a benevolent way to find the least able children who needed special schooling. A strong believer in the idea that intellectual prowess was not set in stone and could be improved with teaching, practice, and discipline, Binet insisted that intelligence tests should never be used “for ranking [people] according to mental worth”.

Soon after his death in 1911 however, Binet’s test, later named “IQ” tests, were seized by scientists in the eugenics movement who reformulated it for adults, labelling those who scored poorly as “feeble-minded” or “degenerate”. In the early 1900s, 30 US states passed laws that meant low-scoring people could be forcibly sterilised. By the middle of the 20th century, around 60,000 people had been sterilised against their will.

Adolf Hitler also espoused the IQ test and created his own stylised version. Hundreds of thousands of low-scoring people were duly sterilised or executed in Nazi Germany.