Quote:
Originally posted by Sir Goulum:
Well, I apparantly have an IQ of 125 or so... isn't that kinda smart for a person not even out of high school and can't even get honors? [img]tongue.gif[/img]
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Whether you're out of high school is irrelevant. Theoretically, your IQ shouldn't change as you get older (although depending on the test, it might; in a good test, it shouldn't if your actual objective IQ doesn't change). Your IQ is calculated by comparing the score you get with scores typical of your age and whether it is higher or lower than that. It is not a quotient, i.e. mental age / actual age, anymore, as I think Bungleau posted earlier; the term Intelligence Quotient is a hangover from when IQ tests were first created in France to place the children who were of varying ages and education in the proper classes, but quotient is now a misnomer. Tests are normed on all age groups (mostly; some are not appropriate for adults over 75, although administering a full IQ test with an older adult isn't really appropriate anyway) and then individuals' scores are compared to the norms for their age. I'm not sure what 'honors refers to, but having a high IQ doesn't necessarily mean you're going to do well in school. While it is a good predictor of school success, there is not a perfect correlation, and other factors, like motivation, school environment, home environment, teaching style, and so on, will affect your school achievement.
Similarly with job performance, Cerek is right when he says that other factors rather than IQ are relevant to predicting job performance than IQ. And IQ is differentially important for different jobs. Managerial job success is more highly correlated with IQ than assembly line job success, for instance. However, given what we can measure and what variables are influential in all jobs, rather than skills specific to individual jobs, IQ is the best predictor of job performance, which has been demonstrated by a huge number of studies. Again, it is not a perfect correlation, so of course you will get people with high IQs that perform worse than people with lower IQs in particular situations. In fact, I think the correlation is something like .5 or .6, which means there is still 60-70% of the variance in job performance to be explained by other things. And other variables are also important, like Cerek mentioned motivation, extroversion, reaction to authority, initiative, etc., but have lower correlations. Conscientiousness is also highly correlated, and helpfully, IQ and conscientiousness are not correlated so if you can estimate IQ and conscientiousness in potential employees you've got quite a good chance of selecting a good performer.