Q&A: A Question About IQ
A Question About IQ
Question
Hello honorable Rabbi,
I don’t know whether you’re knowledgeable in this area, but I’ll ask anyway, because I really trust you.
I want to know whether IQ tests really do indicate a person’s intelligence quotient.
Does a person who is assessed after a test as having an IQ of 160 necessarily surpass another person assessed after a test as having an IQ of 140?
Does that person with higher intelligence necessarily do better in Torah study or in learning mathematics and physics, in general and specifically beyond a person with a 140 IQ?
Personally, I experience moments during the day, and in general, in which I have certain flashes of understanding and high-level inference, and at other times the opposite.
Is it possible that a certain person could be assessed with a score of 120, and at certain times of his, which one might call 'highlights,' reach insights of a high level that would not embarrass a person assessed with a score of around 150?
Thank you in advance!
Answer
I’m really not an expert, and there are major debates surrounding this issue. But it seems to me that it’s clear to everyone that intelligence tests do indeed measure something related to intelligence (certain kinds of it), but the connection between that something and abilities in a specific field is far from unequivocal. The predictive power of the psychometric test for success in academic studies is far from complete. So you don’t even need to resort to special moments of exception in order to say that the test is not an unequivocal measure.
Read the book The Unpleasant Truth About Intelligence by Dr. Roy Yuzevitch. There are interesting things there regarding your question. Also see a recent conversation on his YouTube channel about the topic (in English, with subtitles)