• Question: Is there a way to create some sort of intelligence quotient test, that you can use to tell the IQ of other people by just a looks?

    Asked by watsonjc06 to Carol, Ellie, John, Philip, Rebecca on 26 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: John Welford

      John Welford answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      Hi watsonjc06, you’ve asked some great questions.

      One of the others may be able to give you more detail from a biological or psychological point of view, but I don’t think that having a high IQ is something that can be easily determined from the way a person looks. How you look is largely set by genetics, whereas IQ is affected quite a lot by your upbringing. So even if there were some features that were similar in very high IQ people I think it would be difficult to make a reliable test for it, as there would always be some people that didn’t conform to the rule.

      There is a lot research into finding out about people just by looking at them, but I think it usually relies more on how they behave than on what they look like. For example the police might be interested in detecting the unusual behaviour of people in crowds for security reasons.

    • Photo: Carol White

      Carol White answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      I don’t think there is any outwardly visible feature of a human that indicates their IQ – for example, their eye size, smile width or ability to wiggle their ears wouldn’t be very useful!

      BUT there is a lot of research being done into one thing that can give an indication of IQ.. though it’s not completely obvious by looking at a person…

      Your brain size!

    • Photo: Rebecca Lacey

      Rebecca Lacey answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      Hey watsonjc06.

      The whole idea of an IQ test is that it requires the brain to process a question and provide a response, and is supposed to indicate how well this happens. So no it would not be possible.

    • Photo: Philip Glasson

      Philip Glasson answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      IQ tests don’t even measure intelligence.

      IQ tests measure how good you are at doing a particular set of tests.

      Different people are good at different things.

      The person who’s considered a genus today (because he solved all of today’s problems) Maybe considered an idiot tomorrow, because his techniques may not work on tomorrows problems.

      Intelligence is a multi- leveled thing

      We have to learn to appreciate everybody’s contributions and the different types of problems they can solve.

Comments

  • Photo: watsonjc06

    watsonjc06 commented on :

    I meant that is it possible to tell IQ from the way a person acts

    • Photo: John

      John commented on :

      Then I guess is depends on what they are doing. If you set them a particular problem to solve and then watched how good they were at solving it then maybe you could get some measure of intelligence. I guess that’s how they measure the intelligence of different animals that wouldn’t be able to sit down and take an exam!