• Question: Why are things like IQ important to us?

    Asked by cai192546 to Amy, Drew, Julia, Kimberley, Sara on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Drew Rae

      Drew Rae answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I’m not sure if you mean “why is intelligence important to us”, or “why do we care about measuring IQ”.
      IQ measurement started because they were worried about people who had way below average IQ and so couldn’t function happily in society. They wanted a way to identify those people early and easily so that they could help them, or work out patterns if it was caused by illness or something else.

      Now IQ is a bit of an ego thing! Lots of people care more about measuring high IQ, but the tests weren’t designed for that, and aren’t necessarily that good at it. A big worry is that what they really test is how good you are at IQ tests, and we don’t know if that matches anything in particular in the real world. It certainly doesn’t predict how well you will do in your job.

    • Photo: Kimberley Bryon

      Kimberley Bryon answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      In my opinion IQ isn’t that important because it is measured by a special kind of test and you can learn to get better at them. I am really bad at IQ tests because I don’t think the way you need to for the tests. It doesn’t mean that I am not clever 😉

      IQ is important to most people because they vale intelligence, just like how people value being pretty or sporty. Everyone wants to special and the best that they can be.

    • Photo: Amy MacQueen

      Amy MacQueen answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      People like to think they’re smart! Thats why!! But really an IQ test judges you on your ability to complete an IQ test…and who’s to say that is the true test of how intelligent you are? hmmmm….:)

    • Photo: Julia Griffen

      Julia Griffen answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Depends who ‘us’ are?… and if we’re interested in interlect… how about communication, problem solveing and practical skills…
      Maybe there is more ot life than being clever? happiness?

    • Photo: Sara Imari Walker

      Sara Imari Walker answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hi cai192546. I think its cultural. IQ is supposed to be a measure of intelligence. And, for the most part it does measure intelligence. But is a very narrowly defined measure mostly based on problem-solving and memory. There are lots of other things that make “smart” people smart or successful people successful that IQ doesn’t measure like creativity and work ethic. For example, I know far more scientists who succeed based on hard work and creativity than just purely being smart based on IQ (of course these people are smart, they just don’t necessarily have high IQs). However, I think we live in a society that likes to put numbers on things. We get grades in school, credit scores, you name it we’ve probably put a rank score on it. Look at tv ratings! Everything is ranked and rated. That’s useful because it gives us a lot of information for many things. So I think IQ comes out of our desire to rank things to figure out where to put them. Like Drew said, it does make it easy to identify people on the low IQ range that might need special help. So we use it. But we should be very mindful that IQ is not everything and might not be that relevant to intelligence or success. A person is more than a number.

Comments