Grady M. Towers

His name was William James Sidis, and his IQ was estimated at between 250 and 300 [8, p. 283]. At eighteen months he could read The New York Times, at two he taught himself Latin, at three he learned Greek. By the time he was an adult he could speak more than forty languages and dialects. He gained entrance to Harvard at eleven, and gave a lecture on four-dimensional bodies to the Harvard Mathematical Club his first year. He graduated cum laude at sixteen, and became the youngest professor in history. He deduced the possibility of black holes more than twenty years before Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar published An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure. His life held possibilities for achievement that few people can imagine. Of all the prodigies for which there are records, his was probably the most powerful intellect of all. And yet it all came to nothing. He soon gave up his position as a professor, and for the rest of his life wandered from one menial job to another. His experiences as a child prodigy had proven so painful that he decided for the rest of his life to shun public exposure at all costs. Henceforth, he denied his gifts, refused to think about mathematics, and above all refused to perform as he had been made to do as a child. Instead, he devoted his intellect almost exclusively to the collection of streetcar transfers, and to the study of the history of his native Boston. He worked hard at becoming a normal human being, but never entirely succeeded. He found the concept of beauty, for example, to be completely incomprehensible, and the idea of sex repelled him. At fifteen he took a vow of celibacy, which he apparently kept for the remainder of his life, dying a virgin at the age of 46. He wore a vest summer and winter, and never learned to bathe regularly. A comment that Aldous Huxley once made about Sir Isaac Newton might equally have been said of Sidis.

For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb [5, p. 2222].

There was a time when all precocious children were thought to burn out the same way that Sidis did. The man most responsible for changing this belief was Lewis M. Terman. Between 1900 and 1920 he was able to carry out a study of about a hundred gifted children, and his observations convinced him that many of the traditional beliefs about the gifted were little more than superstitions. To confirm these observations, he obtained a grant from the Commonwealth Fund in 1922, and used it to sift a population of more than a quarter of a million children, selecting out all those with IQs above 140 for further study. That group has been monitored continuously ever since. Many of the previously held beliefs about the gifted did indeed turn out to be false. The gifted are not weak or sickly, and although the incidence of myopia is greater among them, they are generally thought to be better looking than their contemporaries: They are not nerds.

Nevertheless, in his rush to dispel the erroneous beliefs about the gifted, Terman sometimes made claims not supported by his own data. In fact, in some cases, the data suggests that exactly the opposite conclusion should have been drawn. Terman's own data shows that there is a definite connection between measured intelligence and mental and social maladjustment. The consequences of misinterpreting these data are so grave that it will pay to re-examine them in some detail.

Terman's longitudinal research on the gifted included a constant assessment of mental health and social adjustment. Subjects were classified into three categories: satisfactory adjustment, some maladjustment, and serious maladjustment. Terman defined these categories in the following way.

1. Satisfactory. Subjects classified in this category were essentially normal; i.e., their “desires, emotions, and interests were compatible with the social standards and pressures” of their group. Everyone, of course, has adjustment problems of one kind or another. Satisfactory adjustment as here defined does not mean perfect contentment and complete absence of problems, but rather the ability to cope adequately with difficulties in the personal make-up or in the subject's environment. Worry and anxiety when warranted by the circumstances, or a tendency to be somewhat high strung or nervous–provided such a tendency did not constitute a definite personality problem–were allowed in this category. 2. Some maladjustment. Classified here were subjects with excessive feelings of inadequacy or inferiority, nervous fatigue, mild anxiety neurosis, and the like. The emotional conflicts, nervous tendencies and social maladjustments of these individuals, while they presented definite problems, were not beyond the ability of the individual to handle, and there was no marked interference with social or personal life or with achievement. Subjects whose behavior was noticeably odd or freakish, but without evidence of serious neurotic tendencies, were also classified in this category. 3. Serious maladjustment. a.) Classified as 3a were subjects who had shown marked symptoms of anxiety, mental depression, personality maladjustment, or psychopathic personality. This classification also includes subjects who had suffered a “nervous breakdown,” provided the condition was not severe enough to constitute a psychosis. Subjects with a previous history of serious maladjustment or nervous breakdown (without psychosis) were included here even though their adjustment at the time of rating may have been entirely satisfactory. b.) Classified as 3b were those subjects who had at any time suffered a complete mental breakdown requiring hospitalization, whatever their condition at the time of rating. In the majority of cases the subjects were restored to reasonably good mental health after a brief period of hospital care [6, pp. 99-101].

In 1940, when the group was about 29 years of age, a large scale examination was carried out. Included in that examination was a high level test of verbal intelligence, designated at that time the Concept Mastery, but later re-named the Concept Mastery test form A. Terman found the following relationship between adjustment and verbal intelligence. (These are raw scores, not IQs.)

CMT-A [6, p. 115]

The data show three things. First, that there is a definite trend for the maladjusted to make higher scores on the Concept Mastery test. Second, that women show symptoms of maladjustment at lower scores than men. And third, that 21 percent of the men and 18 percent of the women showed at least some form of maladjustment.

During 1950-52, when the group was approximately 41 years old, another examination was made using a new test, the Concept Mastery test form T. Test scores were again compared to assessments of adjustment. (CMT-T scores are not interchangeable with CMT-A scores. They have different means and standard deviations.)

CMT-T [7, p. 50]

Similar conclusions can be drawn from these data as well. Again, there is a definite trend shown for the maladjusted to make higher scores than the satisfactorily adjusted. Again, women show symptoms of maladjustment at lower scores than men. But the most alarming thing of all is that the percentage of maladjustment shown for both sexes rose in the 12 years since the previous examination. The percentage of men showing maladjustment having risen from 21 percent to 29 percent, and the figure for women having risen from 18 percent to 33 percent! Nearly double what it was before!

How did Terman interpret these data? Terman states:

Although severe mental maladjustment is in general somewhat more common among subjects who score high on the Concept Mastery test, many of the most successful men of the entire group also scored high on this test [7, p. 50].

In other words, Terman deliberately tried to give the impression that the relationship between verbal intelligence and mental and social maladjustment was weak and unreliable. He did this by misdirection. He gave a truthful answer to an irrelevant question. Terman failed to realize that a small difference in means between two or more distributions can have a dramatic effect on the percentage of each group found at the tails of the distribution. The relevant questions should have been “what is the percentage of maladjustment found at different levels of ability, and does this show a trend?” Terman's data can be used to find answers to these questions.

The method used to solve this problem is a relatively simple one but tedious in detail. (See appendix.) The results, however, are easy to understand. Using CMT-T scores for men as an illustration, and pooling the data for some maladjustment and serious maladjustment, the following percentages can be obtained.

PERCENTAGE OF MEN SHOWING SOME OR SERIOUS MALADJUSTMENT AT SIX LEVELS OF ABILITY

By comparison, the Triple Nine Society averages 155.16 on the CMT-T, and the average score for Prometheus Society members is 169.95 [1, 2]. The implications are staggering, especially when it is realized that these percentages do not include women, who show more maladjustment at lower CMT-T scores than men do. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why super high IQ societies suffer so much from schisms and a tendency towards disintegration. In any event, one thing is certain. The currently accepted belief that verbal intelligence is unrelated to maladjustment is clearly a myth.

Nevertheless, while Terman's data do provide a prima facie case for a connection between verbal intelligence and maladjustment, they fail to explain the causal mechanism involved. To obtain such insight requires close observation by a gifted observer. Fortunately, those insights are available to us in Leta S. Hollingworth's book, Children above 180 IQ. Hollingworth not only observed her subjects as children, she also continued to maintain some contact with them after they had reached maturity. So although her book is ostensibly about children, it is in fact laced throughout by her observations on exceptionally gifted adults as well.

Before examining Hollingworth's findings, however, it is necessary to explain how childhood IQs are related to adult mental ability. As a child ages, his IQ tends to regress to the mean of the population of which he is a member. This is partly due to the imperfect reliability of the test, and partly due to the uneven rate of maturation. The earlier the IQ is obtained, and the higher the score, the more the IQ can be expected to regress by the time the child becomes an adult. So although Hollingworth's children were all selected to have IQs above 180, their adult status was not nearly so high. In fact, as adults, there's good reason to believe that their abilities averaged only slightly above that of the average Triple Nine member. Evidence for this conjecture comes from the Terman research data. Terman observed the following relationship between childhood IQs on the Stanford-Binet and adult status on the Concept Mastery test form T.

CONCEPT MASTERY SCORES ACCORDING TO CHILDHOOD STANFORD-BINET IQ [7, p. 58]

The average childhood IQ score for those with childhood IQs above 170 was 177.7 for men, and 177.6 for women. That's quite close to the 180 cutoff used by Leta Hollingworth in selecting her subjects. Note that Terman's subjects who scored above 170 IQ as children averaged 155.8 on the CMT-T at age 41, a score quite close to the 155.16 made by the average Triple Nine member. Such a close match makes it reasonable to generalize Hollingworth's findings to members of both the Triple Nine Society and the Prometheus Society.

Hollingworth identified a number of adjustment problems caused by school acceleration. As this is rarely practiced in today's educational system, these are no longer problems and will not be discussed. There still remain, however, four adjustment problems that continue to perplex the gifted throughout their lives, two applying to all levels of giftedness, and two applying almost exclusively to the exceptionally gifted–i.e. those with childhood IQs above 170, or adult Concept Mastery test (T) scores above 155.

One of the problems faced by all gifted persons is learning to focus their efforts for prolonged periods of time. Since so much comes easily to them, they may never acquire the self-discipline necessary to use their gifts to the fullest. Hollingworth describes how the habit begins.

Where the gifted child drifts in the school unrecognized, working chronically below his capacity (even though young for his grade), he receives daily practice in habits of idleness and daydreaming. His abilities never receive the stimulus of genuine challenge, and the situation tends to form in him the expectation of an effortless existence [3, p. 258].

But if the “average” gifted child tends to acquire bad adjustment habits in the ordinary schoolroom, the exceptionally gifted have even more problems. Hollingworth continues:

Children with IQs up to 150 get along in the ordinary course of school life quite well, achieving excellent marks without serious effort. But children above this mental status become almost intolerably bored with school work if kept in lockstep with unselected pupils of their own age. Children who rise above 170 IQ are liable to regard school with indifference or with positive dislike, for they find nothing in the work to absorb their interest. This condition of affairs, coupled with the supervision of unseeing and unsympathetic teachers, has sometimes led even to truancy on the part of gifted children [3, p. 258].

A second adjustment problem faced by all gifted persons is due to their uncommon versatility. Hollingworth says:

Another problem of development with reference to occupation grows out of the versatility of these children. So far from being one-sided in ability and interest, they are typically capable of so many different kinds of success that they may have difficulty in confining themselves to a reasonable number of enterprises. Some of them are lost to usefulness through spreading their available time and energy over such a wide array of projects that nothing can be finished or done perfectly. After all, time and space are limited for the gifted as for others, and the life-span is probably not much longer for them than for others. A choice must be made among the numerous possibilities, since modern life calls for specialization [3, p. 259].

A third problem faced by the gifted is learning to suffer fools gladly. Hollingworth notes:

A lesson which many gifted persons never learn as long as they live is that human beings in general are inherently very different from themselves in thought, in action, in general intention, and in interests. Many a reformer has died at the hands of a mob which he was trying to improve in the belief that other human beings can and should enjoy what he enjoys. This is one of the most painful and difficult lessons that each gifted child must learn, if personal development is to proceed successfully. It is more necessary that this be learned than that any school subject be mastered. Failure to learn how to tolerate in a reasonable fashion the foolishness of others leads to bitterness, disillusionment, and misanthropy [3, p. 259].

The single greatest adjustment problem faced by the gifted, however, is their tendency to become isolated from the rest of humanity. This problem is especially acute among the exceptionally gifted. Hollingworth says:

This tendency to become isolated is one of the most important factors to be considered in guiding the development of personality in highly intelligent children, but it does not become a serious problem except at the very extreme degrees of intelligence. The majority of children between 130 and 150 find fairly easy adjustment, because neighborhoods and schools are selective, so that like-minded children tend to be located in the same schools and districts. Furthermore, the gifted child, being large and strong for his age, is acceptable to playmates a year or two older. Great difficulty arises only when a young child is above 160 IQ. At the extremely high levels of 180 or 190 IQ, the problem of friendships is difficult indeed, and the younger the person the more difficult it is. The trouble decreases with age because as persons become adult, they naturally seek and find on their own initiative groups who are like-minded, such as learned societies [3, p. 264].

Hollingworth points out that the exceptionally gifted do not deliberately choose isolation, but are forced into it against their wills.

These superior children are not unfriendly or ungregarious by nature. Typically they strive to play with others but their efforts are defeated by the difficulties of the case… Other children do not share their interests, their vocabulary, or their desire to organize activities. They try to reform their contemporaries but finally give up the struggle and play alone, since older children regard them as “babies,” and adults seldom play during hours when children are awake. As a result, forms of solitary play develop, and these, becoming fixed as habits, may explain the fact that many highly intellectual adults are shy, ungregarious, and unmindful of human relationships, or even misanthropic and uncomfortable in ordinary social intercourse [3, p. 262].

But if the exceptionally gifted is isolated from his contemporaries, the gulf between him and the adult authorities in his life is even deeper.

The very gifted child or adolescent, perceiving the illogical conduct of those in charge of his affairs, may turn rebellious against all authority and fall into a condition of negative suggestibility–a most unfortunate trend of personality, since the person is then unable to take a cooperative attitude toward authority. A person who is highly suggestible in a negative direction is as much in bondage to others around him as is the person who is positively suggestible. The social value of the person is seriously impaired in either case. The gifted are not likely to fall victims to positive suggestion but many of them develop negativism to a conspicuous degree [3, p 260].

Anyone reading the super high IQ journals is aware of the truth of this statement. Negative individuals abound in every high IQ society.

Hollingworth distilled her observations into two ideas that are among the most important ever discovered for the understanding of gifted behavior. The first is the concept of an optimum adjustment range. She says:

All things considered, the psychologist who has observed the development of gifted children over a long period of time from early childhood to maturity, evolves the idea that there is a certain restricted portion of the total range of intelligence which is most favorable to the development of successful and well-rounded personality in the world as it now exists. This limited range appears to be somewhere between 125 and 155 IQ. Children and adolescents in this area are enough more intelligent than the average to win the confidence of large numbers of their fellows, which brings about leadership, and to manage their own lives with superior efficiency. Moreover, there are enough of them to afford mutual esteem and understanding. But those of 170 IQ and beyond are too intelligent to be understood by the general run of persons with whom they make contact. They are too infrequent to find congenial companions. They have to contend with loneliness and personal isolation from their contemporaries throughout the period of their immaturity. To what extent these patterns become fixed, we cannot yet tell [3, p. 264].

Hollingworth's second seminal idea is that of a “communication range.” She does not state this explicitly, but it can be inferred from some of her comments on leadership.

Observation shows that there is a direct ratio between the intelligence of the leader and that of the led. To be a leader of his contemporaries a child must be more intelligent but not too much more intelligent than those to be led… But generally speaking, a leadership pattern will not form–or it will break up–when a discrepancy of more than about 30 points of IQ comes to exist between leader and led [3, p. 287].

The implication is that there is a limit beyond which genuine communication between different levels of intelligence becomes impossible. To say that a child or an adult is intellectually isolated from his contemporaries is to say that everyone in his environment has an IQ at least 30 points different from his own. Knowing only a person's IQ, then, is not enough to tell how well he's likely to cope with his environment. Some knowledge of the intellectual level of his environment is also necessary.

If the optimum range of intelligence lies between 125 and 155 IQ, as Hollingworth suggests, then it follows that 155 can be thought of as a threshold separating an optimum adjustment zone below it from a suboptimum range above it. Other psychologists have also noticed how this score tends to divide people into two naturally occurring categories. Among these is one of the doyens of psychometrics, David Wechsler. He comments:

The topics of genius and degeneration are only special cases of the more general problem involved in the evaluation of human capacities, namely the quantitative versus qualitative. There are those who insist that all differences are qualitative, and those who with equal conviction maintain that they are exclusively quantitative. The true answer is that they are both. General intelligence, for example, is undoubtedly quantitative in the sense that it consists of varying amounts of the same basic stuff (e.g., mental energy) which can be expressed by continuous numerical measures like intelligence Quotients or Mental-Age scores, and these are as real as any physical measurements are. But it is equally certain that our description of the difference between a genius and an average person by a statement to the effect that he has an IQ greater by this or that amount, does not describe the difference between them as completely or in the same way as when we say that a mile is much longer than an inch. The genius (as regards intellectual ability) not only has an IQ of say 50 points more than the average person, but in virtue of this difference acquires seemingly new aspects (potentialities) or characteristics. These seemingly new aspects or characteristics, in their totality, are what go to make up the “qualitative” difference between them [9, p. 134].

Wechsler is saying quite plainly that those with IQs above 150 are different in kind from those below that level. He is saying that they are a different kind of mind, a different kind of human being.

This subjective impression of a difference in kind also appears to be fairly common among members of the super high IQ societies themselves. When Prometheus and Triple Nine members were asked if they perceived a categorical difference between those above this level and others, most said that they did, although they also said that they were reluctant to call the difference genius. When asked what it should be called, they produced a number of suggestions, sometimes esoteric, sometimes witty, and often remarkably vulgar. But one term was suggested independently again and again. Many thought that the most appropriate term for people like themselves was Outsider.

The feeling of estrangement, or at least detachment, from society at large is not merely subjective illusion. Society is not geared to deal effectively with the exceptionally gifted adult because almost nothing objective is known about him. It is a commonplace observation that no psychometric instrument can be validly used to evaluate a person unless others like him were included in the test's norming sample. Yet those with IQs above 150 are so rare that few if any were ever included in the norming sample of any of the most commonly used tests, tests like the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory, the Kuder Vocational Preference Record, the MMPI and so on. As a consequence, objective self-knowledge for the exceptionally gifted is nearly impossible to obtain. What he most needs to know is not how he differs from ordinary people–he is acutely aware of that–but how he is both like and unlike those of his own kind. The most commonly used tests can't provide that knowledge, so he is forced to find out in more roundabout ways. It is his attempts to find answers to these questions that may explain the emergence of the super high IQ societies. Where else can he find peers against which to measure himself?

There appear to be three sorts of childhoods and three sorts of adult social adaptations made by the gifted. The first of these may be called the committed strategy. These individuals were born into upper middle class families, with gifted and well educated parents, and often with gifted siblings. They sometimes even had famous relatives. They attended prestigious colleges, became doctors, lawyers, professors, or joined some other prestigious occupation, and have friends with similar histories. They are the optimally adjusted. They are also the ones most likely to disbelieve that the exceptionally gifted can have serious adjustment problems.

The second kind of social adaptation may be called the marginal strategy. These individuals were typically born into a lower socio-economic class, without gifted parents, gifted siblings, or gifted friends. Often they did not go to college at all, but instead went right to work immediately after high school, or even before. And although they may superficially appear to have made a good adjustment to their work and friends, neither work nor friends can completely engage their attention. They hunger for more intellectual challenge and more real companionship than their social environment can supply. So they resort to leading a double life. They compartmentalize their life into a public sphere and a private sphere. In public they go through the motions of fulfilling their social roles, whatever they are, but in private they pursue goals of their own. They are often omnivorous readers, and sometimes unusually expert amateurs in specialized subjects. The double life strategy might even be called the genius ploy, as many geniuses in history have worked at menial tasks in order to free themselves for more important work. Socrates, you will remember was a stone mason, Spinoza was a lens grinder, and even Jesus was a carpenter. The exceptionally gifted adult who works as a parking lot attendant while creating new mathematics has adopted an honored way of life and deserves respect for his courage, not criticism for failing to live up to his abilities. Those conformists who adopt the committed strategy may be pillars of their community and make the world go around, but historically, those with truly original minds have more often adopted the double life tactic. They are ones among the gifted who are most likely to make the world go forward.

And finally there are the dropouts. These sometimes bizarre individuals were often born into families in which one or more of the parents were not only exceptionally gifted, but exceptionally maladjusted themselves. This is the worst possible social environment that a gifted child can be thrust into. His parents, often driven by egocentric ambitions of their own, may use him to gratify their own needs for accomplishment. He is, to all intents and purposes, not a living human being to them, but a performing animal, or even an experiment. That is what happened to Sidis, and may be the explanation for all those gifted who “burn out” as he did. (Readers familiar with the Terman study will recognize the committed strategy and the marginal strategy as roughly similar to the adjustment patterns of Terman's A and C groups.)

If the exceptionally gifted adult with an IQ of 150, or 160, or 170 has problems in adapting to his world, what must it have been like for William James Sidis, whose IQ was 250 or more?

Aldous Huxley once wrote:

Perhaps men of genius are the only true men. In all the history of the race there have been only a few thousand real men. And the rest of us–what are we? Teachable animals. Without the help of the real man, we should have found out almost nothing at all. Almost all the ideas with which we are familiar could never have occurred to minds like ours. Plant the seeds there and they will grow; but our minds could never spontaneously have generated them [4, p. 2242].

And so we see that the explanation for the Sidis tragedy is simple. Sidis was a feral child; a true man born into a world filled with animals–a world filled with us.

* * * *

Some of those reading this paper may find the portrait painted here to be completely incredible. Their own experiences were nothing at all like those described, nor were those of most of their gifted friends. But the point of this article is not that there's some special hazard in having an exceptional IQ: There's not. The point is that the danger lies in having an exceptional IQ in an environment completely lacking in intellectual peers. It's the isolation that does the damage, not the IQ itself.

It is the belief of this author that the super high IQ societies were created primarily by those who have adopted the marginal strategy, and by rights ought to be aimed at fulfilling the needs of this subdivision of the exceptionally gifted. It's obvious from reading the journals that those who have followed the committed strategy rarely participate in society affairs, rarely write for the various journals, and indeed have little need to belong to such a group. They have far more productive outlets for their talents. It's the exceptionally gifted adult who feels stifled that stands most in need of a high IQ society. The tragedy is that none of the super high IQ societies created thus far have been able to meet those needs, and the reason for this is simple. None of these groups is willing to acknowledge or come to terms with the fact that much of their membership belong to the psychological walking wounded. This alone is enough to explain the constant schisms that develop, the frequent vendettas, and the mediocre level of their publications. But those are not immutable facts; they can be changed. And the first step in doing so is to see ourselves as we are.

Source : http://prometheussociety.org (From The Prometheus Society's Journal, Gift of Fire Issue No. 22, April 1987. This article was re-issued in Issue 72, March 95.)

The mathematical technique called factor analysis was invented by psychologists specifically to answer the age old question, “Is there more than one kind of intelligence?” We now know that there are two: one called fluid g, measured by culture fair tests such as the Raven Progressive Matrices or the LAIT, and another called crystallized g, measured by culture loaded tests like the Concept Mastery Test or the Miller Analogies Test. What we call g has been defined as the ability to “educe relations and correlates,” or in more everyday terms, the abilities for inductive (“relations”) and deductive (“correlates”) reasoning. Culture fair tests measure the ability to educe relations and correlates using abstract diagrams, and other material that requires only a minimum of formal learning. Culture loaded tests measure the ability to educe relations and correlates using learned and over learned material, such as vocabulary, algorithms for arithmetic or multiplication, recognition of common objects and their uses, etc. Ordinary IQ tests measure both kinds of intelligence, but not necessarily to the same degree; they are generally biased in favor of crystallized g.

The currently accepted relationship between these two kinds of ability is called the investment theory of intelligence. It says, in effect, that we are all born with a certain raw ability, or the eduction of relations and correlates, which can be measured with culture fair tests. As we get older, we “invest” this fluid g in certain kinds of judgment skills, such as those involved in doing a mathematical word problem, or parsing a sentence. When we are young, the theory goes, our formal educations are so much alike that we all invest our fluid g in much the same kinds of judgment skills. That means that our fluid intelligence and our crystallized intelligence are so similar at an early age that it's almost impossible to tell them apart. After we leave school, however, we all begin to invest our fluid g abilities in different things. Measures of fluid g and crystallized g begin to draw apart. Those that invest their fluid g in school-like activities, such as accounting or law, continue to show intellectual growth on conventional (crystallized) IQ tests. Those that put their intelligence to work in other ways, such as becoming ranchers or artists, will not show the same intellectual growth, and may even show a decline in IQ on conventional measures of intelligence.

Many years ago, Mensa was faced by a serious policy decision about the kind of intelligence that it wanted to select for. It turned out that three out of four prospective members who were selected using a culture fair test could not pass a culture loaded test. At the same time, it also turned out that three out of four prospective members who could pass a culture loaded test could not pass a culture fair test. In the end, Mensa chose to use culture loaded tests exclusively in selecting its members. Almost all other high IQ societies, with the exception of Four Sigma and Triple Nine, have followed suit. As a consequence, there are now three qualitatively different kinds of high IQ societies extant. One kind, represented by Four-Sigma and most of the membership of the Triple Nine Society, was recruited with the LAIT–a culture fair test–and is made up mostly of people gifted with fluid intelligence. A second kind, represented by Mensa, Intertel and ISPE, was recruited by more conventional tests, and is made up of those gifted primarily with crystallized intelligence. Some individuals, however, have joined or qualified for membership in both kinds of societies, and are about equally gifted with both kinds of ability. A large minority of Triple Nine members, as well as a majority of those in Prometheus, appear to belong in this category.

None of this would matter except that each kind of ability brings with it its own kind of cognitive style, its own kind of personality, and its own set of values. In fact, the contrast between persons gifted with fluid g and those gifted with crystallized g is so sharp that, with a little practice, most people find that they can learn to tell them apart at a glance. Those gifted with fluid g (LAIT) tend to be socially retiring, independent of the good opinion of others, analytical, interested in theoretical and scientific problems, and to dislike rigid systematization and routine. Those gifted primarily with crystallized g (conventional tests) tend to be sociable, quick in reactions, artistic, and to dislike logical and theoretical problems. And then there are those who are equally gifted with both kinds of ability, and tend to be mixtures of all these qualities–sometimes paradoxically so: Prometheans tend to be paradoxical.

The discovery that there are really two kinds of intelligence was made by Raymond B. Cattell in 1940, and was repeatedly confirmed in the following years. The issue of multiple intelligence, consequently, should have been considered resolved decades ago. Nevertheless, there has been a recent resurgence of interest in these theories among some younger psychometricians who either do not understand factor analysis, or simply refuse to accept its results. One such theorist is Howard Gardner.

Gardner postulates the existence of seven different intelligences: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, body-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. He says that he is ”…convinced of the existence of an intelligence to the extent that it can be found in relative isolation in special populations (or absent in isolation in otherwise normal populations); to the extent that it may become highly developed in specific individuals or in specific cultures; and to the extent that psychometricians, experimental researchers, and/or experts in particular disciplines can posit core abilities that, in effect, define the intelligence. (Frames of Mind, p. 9.) In defense of his seven intelligences, Gardner offers evidence drawn from studies of ”…prodigies, gifted individuals, brain-damaged patients, idiot savants, normal children, normal adults, experts in different lines of work, and individuals from diverse cultures.” (ibid.) In short, he offers virtually no statistical or psychometric support for his thesis, but relies instead almost completely on a patchwork of anecdotes and idiosyncratic impressions. The most troubling aspect of Gardner's work is that his theory is at least partially testable with currently available psychological instruments, and yet he makes no effort to obtain the necessary proof. It's true that we have no test for intrapersonal intelligence or body-kinesthetic intelligence, and the only test of interpersonal intelligence available was developed for the mentally retarded (the Vineland Social Maturity Scale), but tests do exist for all the other “intelligences” Gardner postulates. Why doesn't he use them to obtain the appropriate correlations, factor analyze them, and, then show that these abilities are in fact co-equal intelligences? The obvious answer is that Gardner already knows that they aren't. He says on page 284 of Frames of Mind:

“And what of my use of the loaded term 'intelligence'? As hinted at earlier, part of the motivation for using this term is my desire to put forth a more viable model of intelligence: I seek to replace the current, largely discredited notion of intelligence as a single inherited trait (or set of traits) which can be reliably assessed through an hour-long interview or a paper and pencil test. But it should be said here as well that nothing much hangs on the particular use of this term, and I would be satisfied to substitute such phrases as 'intellectual competences,' 'thought processes,' 'cognitive capacities,' 'cognitive skills,' 'forms of knowledge,' or other cognate mentalistic terminology. What is crucial is not the label but, rather, the conception: that individuals have a number of domains of potential intellectual competence which they are in the position to develop, if they are normal and if the appropriate stimulating factors are available.”

No competent psychometrician has ever claimed that an intelligence test measured all mental abilities. No competent psychometrician has ever claimed that some of the abilities left out of intelligence tests aren't valuable. What he would claim is that an ability must meet certain other requirements before it merits being called intelligence. In the first place, it must be a mental ability, which leaves out Gardner's body-kinesthetic intelligence. In the second place, it must be an ability. This means that it must be objectively observable under standardized conditions, and that there must be objective criterion of better-worse performance. This seems to leave out Gardner's intrapersonal intelligence. How can one measure a person's capacity for self-understanding? How could you tell the difference between self-understanding and self-deception? And aren't these attributes of personality, in any event?

The most important objection that a psychometrician would offer, however, is that Gardner is attempting to jettison the criterion of “the indifference of the indicator”. This principle was enunciated by Charles E. Spearman in 1923, and says, in effect, that the specific content of an item in an intelligence test is unimportant, so long as all persons taking the test understand it. No item can be without content, of course, but the principle emphasizes that the content of an item or a test is merely the vehicle for measuring g, and is unimportant in itself. That's why a test of verbal analogies can be used to estimate an individual's mathematical ability. Or why a test of number series can be used to predict a person's ability to write poetry or solve anagrams. That’s why intelligence is conceived to be a general ability, and why it's given the symbol g. Most of Gardner's “intelligences” are content specific, and not general abilities at all. (It may seem at first glance that the existence of fluid g and crystallized g are violations of the same principle, but this is a misunderstanding. The distinction between culture fair tests and culture loaded tests is often mistakenly thought to be the same as the distinction between nonverbal tests and verbal tests. This, however, is simply not the case. Verbal items (or any other kind of item) can be used, in principle, to measure either fluid g or crystallized g, depending on how much prior knowledge is necessary to understand the item. The verbal items on the LAIT, for example, are very nearly pure measures of fluid g. They make little demand on a person's verbal knowledge, but large demands on his ability to “educe relations.”) The fact is that Gardner is little more than an IQ basher. His research on computational modules has merit and promises to be an important contribution to cognitive science, but it in no way disproves the existence of a general cognitive ability, nor does it justify his assertion that IO tests have been largely discredited. Nothing could be further from the truth. As with many other IQ bashers, he deliberately attempts to minimize the scope of what intelligence tests can do. He tries to present the picture that IQ tests can only predict school-like performance, and that none too well. The reality is that a score obtained from a conventional IQ test can be used to predict performance in a profusion of activities outside the classroom, many of them bearing only the slightest resemblance to bookish or puzzle solving behavior. As evidence for this, here is a partial list of activities (and other qualities) that are positively or negatively associated with IQ.

POSITIVE CORRELATES:

Achievement motivation

Altruism

Analytic style

Anorexia nervosa

Aptitudes: cognitive abilities; 'abstractness' of integrative complexity

Artistic preferences and abilities

Craftwork

Creativity, fluency

Dietary preferences (low-sugar, low-fat)

Educational attainment

Eminence, genius

Emotional sensitivity

Extra-curricular attainments

Field-Independence

Health, fitness, longevity

Height

Humor, sense of

Income

Interests, breadth and depth

Involvement in school activities

Leadership

Learning ability

Linguistic abilities (including spelling)

Logical abilities

Marital partner, choice of

Media preferences (newspapers, TV channels)

Memory

Migration (voluntary)

Military rank

Moral reasoning and development

Motor skills

Musical preferences and abilities

Myopia

Occupational status

Occupational success

Perceptual abilities (for briefly-presented material)

Piaget-type abilities

Practical knowledge

Psychotherapy, response to

Reading ability

Regional differences

Social skills

Socio-economic status of origin (parental)

Socio-economic status (achieved)

Sports participation

Supermarket shopping ability

Talking speed

Values, attitudes

NEGATIVE CORRELATES:

Accident-proneness

Acquiescence

Aging

Alcoholism

Authoritarianism

Conservatism (of social views)

Crime

Delinquency

Dogmatism

Hysteria vs other neurosis

Impulsivity

Infant mortality

Psychoticism

Racial prejudice

Reaction times

Smoking

Truancy

Weight height ratio, obesity

The data in these tables were obtained from studies using conventional (crystallized) intelligence tests. Comparable data for culture fair (fluid) intelligence tests is more meager, partly because culture fair tests haven't existed as long, and partly because much less practical use has been made of them. One useful goal that the Four Sigma and Triple Nine Societies might adopt would be to provide the same kind of validation studies for culture fair tests like the LAIT that already exist for conventional tests. Perhaps tests of fluid intelligence would be utilized more if we knew more about them. Four Sigma and Triple Nine are in a unique position to help provide that knowledge.

Another multiple intelligence theorist is Robert J. Sternberg of Yale University (Beyond IQ; Intelligence Applied; Conceptions of Giftedness; Practical Intelligence: Nature and Origins of Competence in the Everyday World). Like Howard Gardner, Sternberg wants to break intelligence down into its component parts; unlike Gardner, however, Sternberg may actually have discovered one or more new kinds of intelligence. He calls his new theory the triarchic theory of intelligence because, as the term suggests, he believes that he has identified three kinds of intelligence: componential, experiential and contextual.

Componential: This is intelligence as conventional IQ tests measure it. It's called componential intelligence because Sternberg found a way to analyze the thought processes involved in solving IQ test items into components and metacomponents. He not only studied how a person solves an item, but also how a person chooses the strategy he does when attempting an item. People who are good at these things have high IQs, and are especially acute at analyzing arguments, or in situations calling for critical thinking. They are the typical members of the high IQ societies.

Experiential: This is the ability to have new insights. Traditional methods of studying intelligence concentrate on what's going on inside a person's head. Sternberg's approach to insight ability focused on finding out how experience mediated one's internal, mental world, and how one's internal world changed one's experiences. When he and his graduate student Janet E. Davidson began studying insight ability, they found that nobody knew what it was because every one had assumed that it was only one thing. Sternberg and Davidson soon discovered that there are three insight abilities, which they called selective encoding, selective combination and selective comparison.

Selective encoding is the ability to focus on the really critical information in a problem. When one of Sir Alexander Fleming’s bacterial experiments was spoiled by a mold, he recognized that the mold's ability to kill the bacteria was more important than his ruined experiment. His ability to see the implications of the accident eventually lead to the development of penicillin.

Selective comparison is the ability to see an old thing in a new way, or a new thing in an old way. When the tyrant of Syracuse suspected that his goldsmith had cheated him when making a gold crown, he asked Archimedes to find out if the crown really was made of pure gold, but forbade him to destroy it in the process. Archimedes solved the problem when he suddenly realized that the water overflowing from his bathtub when he stepped into it demonstrated a method of measuring the volume, and thereby the density, of any irregularly shaped object. He saw that if the density of the crown was different from that of an equal weight of gold, then the crown had to be an alloy. He immediately leaped from his bathtub, and ran through the streets naked, yelling, “Eureka!, I've found it!” (Having insights tends to do that to people.)

Contextual: This is the ability more commonly called street smart. It's learning how to play the game, and learning how to manipulate the environment. Most definitions of intelligence include environmental adaptability in them, but ordinary IQ tests don't measure this very well. Sternberg calls this kind of ability contextual because it involves tacit learning. This is knowledge that is not explicitly expressed or taught, but is only implied or indicated. It has to be learned directly from one's environmental context. People who are good at this tend to come out on top in almost any real world situation, even if they are not especially intelligent in terms of IQ or insight. The head of General Motors or the President of the United States are good examples of people with this kind of ability. The Psychological Corporation in San Antonio, Texas, is now developing the Sternberg Multidimensional Abilities Test. It will be based completely on Sternberg's triarchic theory, and will provide measurements of all three intellectual abilities. Once published, studies using this test will quickly tell us if Sternberg's experiential and contextual abilities genuinely qualify as new intelligences. On the face of it, there's good reason to believe that his experiential (insight) ability has a good chance. It is a mental ability, it is a mental ability, and it appears to meet the principle of the indifference of the indicator; all good signs. The status of Sternberg's contextual ability is harder to evaluate, but in any event, we will soon know; factor analysis will tell the tale.

DISCUSSION

Interpreting the results of a factor analysis is a bit like attempting to read the entrails of a chicken, as the ancient Roman priests once did to discover the will of the gods. It is more difficult than actually carrying out the mathematical procedures, which are quite difficult in themselves. It takes a lot of practice, and even a skilled interpreter can easily go wrong. The trickiest part of the problem, but also the most fun, is naming the factors that the procedure reveals. Sometimes factors can't be characterized verbally at all. The safest procedure, and one often followed in the investigation of intelligence, is to assign letters to the factors discovered instead of just names. This is why the general factor is called g, and why special factors such as verbal comprehension is called v, verbal fluency called w, spatial ability called k, and so on. How does an investigator tell if he has discovered a g factor? The rule of thumb is that he has found a g when one of his factors accounts for at least twice as much variance as any other factor in the same analysis. In the case of intelligence tests, it usually turns out that one factor alone accounts for more of the variance than all the other factors combined. What is often misunderstood by laymen, and sometimes forgotten even by experts, is that all a factor analysis can do is cut up the data in a mathematically parsimonious way. In order to detect a factor, at least two of the tests in the battery must load on that factor. If there aren't two tests in a battery that load on verbal ability, for example, no verbal factor will be uncovered. That's why it took so long to discover that there were two g factors, fluid and crystallized. Conventional IQ tests measure both kinds of intelligence, but the loadings on fluid g are so small that at first it took a special trick to identify it. Once Cattell suspected its existence, he made up new tests that loaded heavily on fluid g, and used them to prove that there definitely was another form of intelligence than that measured by conventional IQ tests. A similar situation presently exists with reference to the new theories of multiple intelligence. It may be that there really is a third form of intelligence not yet confirmed simply because no test has yet been invented to measure it. As things stand now, only fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence are definitely known to exist. I joined the high IQ societies looking for people with strong insight abilities. Instead, I found an army of logical analysts who wanted to nitpick everything to death. I really shouldn't have been surprised at this, as this was the very quality they were originally selected for. Nevertheless, I not only felt disappointed with the high IQ societies, I also felt I didn't belong in them despite my IQ. The fact is, I don't enjoy arguments of any kind, and logical puzzles bore me. What I do enjoy, more than I can say, are insight puzzles like this one:

A hunter went hunting for bear. He walked five miles east of camp, but couldn't find any game. So he walked five miles north, where he saw a bear and shot it. Then he walked five miles directly back to camp. What color was the bear?

It is precisely items of this kind that Sternberg is using to construct his test of experiential (insight) intelligence. I don’t know if his test will turn out to be a measure of a genuinely new kind of intelligence, or whether it will turn out to be a special factor like verbal fluency, and frankly I don't care. What I know for certain is that whichever way it turns out, it's of immense personal importance to me. You see, it's the source of almost all of the essays I write for the high IQ societies. (But not this one, however.) I know from personal experience that the three kinds of insights identified by Sternberg and Davidson really do exist, because I use them all the time. I can even point to specific essays I've written and tell you which kind of insight sparked it. I don't claim that my insights are profound, only that I seem to have a lot of them, and that most of my readers seem to find them interesting. I am not, of course, the only individual in the high IQ societies who writes this kind of essay, but we do seem to be spread exceedingly thin. So thin, in fact, that I really don't believe it. I think there are many more people with this “knack” in the high IQ societies than have ever appeared in the journals. I think we see so few of them because most of them realize what kind of harsh treatment new ideas receive in the journals, and don't want to run that gauntlet themselves. And to be quite candid, I can't say I blame them very much.

Source : http://www.prometheussociety.org

Did you know that Homo erectus had an IQ of about 45? This is not just a guess, but the result of an experiment carried out by Thomas Wynn, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado.

Homo erectus produced a category of stone tool that anthropologists call the Acheulean tool industry. Dr. Wynn discovered that it takes a mental age of at least seven years to learn how to reproduce an Acheulean tool. Using the classic formula

IQ = 100 x (Mental Age) / (Chronological Age)

and using 16 for chronological age, we get an IQ estimate of 44. Using 15 for chronological age, we get an IQ estimate of about 47. An IQ of 45 seems to be a good compromise.

I used to be an anthropologist, and lived for several years with an indian tribe, which gives me a perspective on IQ that no one else in the super-high IQ societies is likely to share. So let me take this opportunity to expand your vision of human intelligence.

IQ tests measure something real and something terribly important, but they do not assess all of what is called intelligence. Many important mental abilities are left out. Abilities responsible for art, music, dance, cooking, mechanical invention, clerical exactness, foreign languages, caring for a baby, defeating an enemy in war, and so on, have little connection with IQ. They have little connection because literacy and numeracy have little to do with excellence in these fields.

IQ tests are powerful predictors only in the fields in which literacy and numeracy are of central importance. These are the core abilities responsible for the creation, maintenance and progress of civilization. Without them there could be no literature, law, religion, philosophy. There could also be no mathematics, science, technology, market economy, computer science, etc. No one could have more respect for these qualities than I have, but I don't mistake them for an index of human worth. There are other mental qualities of equal worth not assessed by IQ tests.