Who is smarter?

Today, the vast majority of people (well, the overwhelming of the golden billion) know the term IQ - Intelligence Quotient, IQ. But how credibly can one assess in such a way the intellectual abilities of a person?

This method of assessing intelligence was proposed in 1912 by the German psychologist William Stern . To determine IQ, the subject answers a series of special test questions, after which the results are evaluated using a variety of parameters: general awareness, arithmetic, establishing similarities, vocabulary, general understanding, drawing figures, repeatability of digital series and many others. The obtained estimates for these parameters are compared with the physical age of the subject and some resultant number is derived, which is the IQ level.


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This parameter in many spheres of human activity is raised almost to the absolute when choosing or evaluating the intellectual development of a person, whether it is recruitment, decision making about promotion, admission to study, choice of life partner, and so on. In other words, this is perhaps the only (most important - precisely) scientific criterion for evaluating intelligence in the modern world. The integration of IQ scores into the education system and business undoubtedly influenced the lives of millions of people, the prestige of schools, universities, jobs, earnings, and self-esteem, after all. Entire nations are ranked by the average IQ of their representatives. On the impact of IQ on various aspects of human behavior , an uncountable amount of research has been conducted. In fairness, the validity of IQ compliance with the real level of human development has long been questioned. And now, relatively recently, Canadian scientists published a study in which they finally debunked IQ as a tool for comparing who is smarter and who is smarter.

What is the point?

Researchers at Canadian Western University ( Western University ) argue that "intelligence quotient" cannot be considered a correct assessment of a person’s mental abilities. Scientists say you cannot use any single component to understand how a person copes with computational and cognitive tasks. The fact is that human intelligence consists of multiple and clearly separated subsystems, each of which should be evaluated independently of the others. Scientists back up their findings, published in the journal Neuron, with the results of an online survey of more than 100,000 people.

"The number of subjects we were amazed, " - says Adrian Owen, head of the research group, " we expected only a few hundred responses, but thousands and thousands of people of all ages from all over the world participated in the study ."

Anyone with access to the Internet could take part in the study. Each subject had to pass 12 cognitive tests, evaluating the ability to memorize, logic, planning and attentiveness. The test results showed the level of development of at least three abilities: short-term memory, logic and verbality. No single parameter, like “IQ,” can assess how well or poorly a person has these intelligence subsystems.



In addition to testing, the researchers also used the results of a functional magnetic resonance scan of a group of subjects in order to evaluate the brain's performance while solving various problems. It was found that each cognitive component is associated with a separate part of the brain, which confirmed the theory about the different specialization of certain areas in our main body. Moreover, different parts of the brain showed different performance from different study participants.

The link between our lifestyle and the brain

Scientists also investigated the subjects' way of life, their habits, and discovered the relationship between age, gender, and brain functioning (Hussars, be silent!). “ Regular brain training does not help in the development of cognitive abilities, unlike age, which has a profound effect on memory and logic. “- says Mr. Owen. Other factors influencing were smoking, stress and video games. " It is very curious that people who regularly play video games have demonstrated significantly better abilities in both solving logical problems and short-term memory, " said Adam Hampshire. “ Lower results on short-term memory of verbal function were shown by smokers, while people who are regularly experiencing stress have the lowest rates on short-term memory. “- added Hampshire (damn ...).

G factor

The origins of the concept of assessing human intelligence date back to 1904, when psychologist Charles Spearman ( Charles Spearman ) suggested a connection between seemingly unrelated tasks such as memorization, reading, and arithmetic calculations. He called this interrelation the g-factor (from “ general ”: main, main) and suggested using the ability to solve different mental tasks as an assessment. Since then, over the course of the 20th century, many tests of intelligence have been developed using a wide arsenal of methods. All this diversity is still used to evaluate children, students, recruits and potential employees, despite the numerous criticisms of specialists.
“ We proved that it’s absolutely impossible to evaluate different people by the same numerical parameter, this is the most important thing ,” said Owen, adding that it is necessary to continue the research. " We need to move on and find out how to measure the difference in the intelligence of people, this is the subject of our future research ."

Below are links to several different online IQ tests that anyone can check for themselves.
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4
Test 5