Can you measure intelligence? | Introduction to Psychology 10 of 30 | Study Hall
Summary
TLDRThis video from Study Hall's 'Intro to Psychology' explores the complexity of intelligence, examining how the concept has evolved over time. It highlights different theories, from Spearman's general intelligence to Gardner's multiple intelligences. It also delves into the limitations of IQ tests, discussing how they often reflect cultural biases. The video emphasizes that intelligence is not one-dimensional but multifaceted, including reasoning, problem-solving, and creativity. It concludes by suggesting that intelligence can't be easily measured, as it involves various mental abilities that manifest in different ways depending on context.
Takeaways
- đ§ Intelligence is multifaceted and difficult to define, with various theories proposing different aspects of it.
- đšâđŹ Sir Francis Galton was an early researcher into intelligence, investigating whether it was inherited.
- đ Charles Spearman introduced the 'g factor' for general intelligence, suggesting a common factor behind all intellectual abilities.
- đ€ Raymond Cattell differentiated between fluid and crystallized intelligence, highlighting different ways people can be smart.
- đ Robert Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence includes practical, academic, and creative intelligence.
- đš Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences recognizes at least eight distinct types of intelligence, including emotional and musical.
- đ IQ tests, like the Stanford-Binet scale, measure intelligence but have flaws and biases.
- đ« IQ tests can disadvantage certain groups due to cultural and racial biases in their construction.
- đŁ Language plays a significant role in measuring intelligence, as it's a primary means of expressing cognitive abilities.
- đ€·ââïž Code-switching is an example of intelligence in action, showing adaptability in communication based on context.
- 𧩠Schemas and heuristics are cognitive tools that influence decision-making and illustrate the complexity of intelligence.
Q & A
What is intelligence according to the video?
-Intelligence is defined as the ability to learn, understand, and use reasoning skills. It's a general concept that includes various forms of mental abilities.
How did Sir Francis Galton contribute to the study of intelligence?
-Sir Francis Galton was one of the first scholars to try and figure out if intelligence was inherited, starting the scientific study of intelligence in the mid-19th century.
What is the 'g factor' proposed by Charles Spearman?
-The 'g factor' is a theory proposed by Charles Spearman, which refers to general intelligence. It suggests that intelligence is like athletic ability, where someone good at one thing may be good at others as well.
What is the difference between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence?
-Fluid intelligence involves quick thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving, while crystallized intelligence involves knowledge, memory, and experience that have been stored over time.
What is Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences?
-Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences proposes that there are at least eight different forms of intelligence, including artistic, musical, emotional, and interpersonal intelligence.
Why are IQ tests considered flawed?
-IQ tests are flawed because they often include culturally biased questions, favoring certain groups while disadvantaging others, and intelligence is too complex to be fully captured by a single number.
What is code-switching, and how does it relate to intelligence?
-Code-switching is the ability to adjust the way we speak based on the context or audience. It demonstrates intelligence by showing an understanding of social norms and communication strategies.
What is bounded rationality in decision-making?
-Bounded rationality refers to the idea that decision-making is not always perfectly logical due to limitations like schemas, time constraints, and the information available.
What are heuristics in decision-making?
-Heuristics are mental shortcuts we use to make decisions quickly. While they can be helpful, they aren't always accurate and can lead to biases or incorrect assumptions.
What are schemas, and how do they influence cognition?
-Schemas are mental templates or simplified concepts that help us understand and categorize the world around us. They influence how we make decisions and reason about the world.
Outlines
đ§ The Complexity of Intelligence
Intelligence is a multifaceted concept that is hard to define and measure. People tend to associate intelligence with famous individuals like Stephen Hawking or Hermione Granger. However, intelligence varies from person to person and is challenging to quantify. Psychologists have studied intelligence for over a century, revealing its complexity. Theories like the g factor, proposed by Charles Spearman, and others demonstrate that intelligence encompasses various skills and is similar to physical athleticism in that strengths in one area may translate to others.
đ The Evolution of Intelligence Theories
Over time, psychologists have developed multiple theories to explain intelligence. Raymond Cattell proposed fluid and crystallized intelligence, while Robert Sternberg introduced the triarchic theory, which includes practical, analytical, and creative intelligence. Howard Gardnerâs theory of multiple intelligences suggests at least eight distinct types, such as musical and emotional intelligence. Despite these efforts, a clear definition of intelligence remains elusive, and modern definitions tend to focus on the general ability to learn, understand, and reason.
𧩠IQ Tests: Strengths and Limitations
IQ tests, often associated with measuring intelligence, were pioneered by Alfred Binet in the early 20th century. While helpful in some contexts, these tests have significant flaws, especially in their cultural biases. Historically, IQ tests favored privileged groups, often marginalizing minorities and people from diverse backgrounds. Even Binet himself cautioned against reducing intelligence to a single number, noting that intelligence can change over time. As a result, IQ tests are considered flawed and not fully representative of a personâs cognitive abilities.
đŁïž The Role of Language in Intelligence
Language plays a critical role in how intelligence is expressed and measured. Different languages shape thought processes, as shown in examples like the Hopi languageâs unique way of expressing time. Intelligence can also manifest in diverse forms of language use, such as code-switching, which involves adapting language based on social context. These variations make it difficult to capture intelligence through standardized tests, which often fail to account for such complexity.
đĄ Cognition and Decision Making
Cognition, which involves mental processes like attention and reasoning, is closely tied to intelligence. People rely on schemas, or simplified mental templates, to make sense of the world and make decisions. However, decision-making is often limited by âbounded rationality,â where cognitive limitations, such as time or incomplete information, prevent perfectly logical decisions. This applies in real-world scenarios, such as choosing a kickball team in gym class, where strategies like elimination or heuristics (mental shortcuts) are used to make quick, but sometimes flawed, decisions.
đ§ Intelligence, Context, and Decision Making
Intelligence is expressed through decision-making, which is influenced by the context and cognitive strategies a person uses. Mental shortcuts, or heuristics, play a role in quick decisions, but they may not always be accurate. This highlights how context affects both cognition and the expression of intelligence. Whether it's making decisions in everyday situations or solving puzzles under pressure, intelligence is shaped by the environment and limitations people face.
đ The Challenge of Measuring Intelligence
Measuring intelligence is a complex task. IQ tests and other measures struggle to capture the diverse ways intelligence is expressed, particularly given the influence of context, language, and cultural factors. Theories of intelligence have evolved to become more inclusive, recognizing that there are many forms of intelligence. A truly comprehensive test would have to assess a wide range of skills and mental abilities, something no single test can accomplish. As a result, appreciating intelligence means valuing its many forms and expressions.
Mindmap
Keywords
đĄIntelligence
đĄFluid Intelligence
đĄCrystallized Intelligence
đĄIQ Test
đĄg factor
đĄTriarchic Theory of Intelligence
đĄMultiple Intelligences
đĄBounded Rationality
đĄSchema
đĄCode-switching
Highlights
Intelligence is a complex and multifaceted concept, difficult to define and measure.
Early attempts to study intelligence began with Sir Francis Galton in the mid-19th century.
Charles Spearman introduced the idea of general intelligence (g factor) in the 20th century.
Raymond Cattell proposed two types of intelligence: fluid intelligence (quick thinking) and crystallized intelligence (knowledge and experience).
Robert Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence (1988) included analytical, creative, and practical intelligence.
Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences proposed at least eight forms, including musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligence.
The concept of intelligence has evolved over time, becoming more inclusive to encompass different types of mental abilities.
IQ tests, like the Stanford-Binet, are often used to measure intelligence but have limitations and biases, especially against marginalized groups.
Psychologists like Alfred Binet warned that intelligence cannot be reduced to a single number and may change over time.
Measuring intelligence is difficult because it often relies on language, which varies greatly between cultures and individuals.
Code-switching, the ability to adjust language based on context, is a form of intelligence that is hard to capture in tests.
Schemas, mental templates that help us categorize the world, play a role in how we reason and make decisions.
Bounded rationality explains that decision-making is limited by factors such as time, information, and mental shortcuts like heuristics.
Heuristics, or mental shortcuts, are used in decision-making but are not always accurate and can lead to errors.
Intelligence is expressed in many forms, and its measurement must be flexible to accommodate different cognitive abilities and cultural contexts.
Transcripts
To learn more about earning college credits with Â
Study Hall courses visit gostudyhall.com or click the link in the description.
Take a moment to think of someone whoâs really smart. A friend, a relative, heck, Â
even a fictional character! I bet someone came to mind pretty quickly. Maybe Stephen Hawking, Â
Ursula K. LeGuin, me, Enola Holmes, or Barack Obama. Or my all-time favorites, Â
Wade from Kim Possible and Hermione Granger.
What makes them intelligent? Is it their command of a particular Â
kind of knowledge? Razor-sharp reasoning skills? Resourcefulness?
Now think about another person who is also really smart. Are they intelligent in the same way?
We all have an idea of what intelligence is, but when we really think about it, Â
intelligence is difficult to really pin down.
Even for psychologists! Because it turns out that intelligence is as multifaceted Â
as humans are. Itâs not easy to describe, and itâs even harder to quantify. That makes Â
intelligence a fascinating subject of research. As intelligent beings, we love a good puzzle.
Hi, Iâm Deja Fitzgerald, and this is Study Hall: Intro to Psychology.
Intelligence might seem like it should be a simple concept to get a handle on â I mean, we talk about Â
how smart people are all the time! But like many things in psychology, intelligence is complex, Â
and our concept of it has changed over time. That change shows how difficult it is to pin down.
People have been pondering intelligence for ages, but it wasnât until the mid 19th Â
century that scientists really began to study it. Thatâs when the English scholar Â
Sir Francis Galton tried to figure out if intelligence, as he defined it, was inherited.
And, in the 20th century, the British psychologist Charles Spearman proposed Â
something called the g factor, which is short for general intelligenceâand coincidentally Â
the name of my next mixtape. General intelligence wasnât exactly a new concept, Â
but Spearman was the first to express it in statistical terms.
The idea is that intelligence is like being athletic. An olympic Â
sprinter is probably not going to be the star player in the World Cup, Â
but theyâre probably going to be better than, well, me.
So maybe the same thing applies to intelligence. Someone whoâs really Â
good at one thing, like computer programming, might also be better Â
than a random person at something else brainy, like learning a second language.
But then, in the 1940s, psychologist Raymond Cattell theorized that no, Â
wait, we donât have one g, we have two kinds of intelligence.
Thereâs fluid intelligence, which is all about being able to reason and solve problems Â
abstractly â basically quick thinking. And then thereâs crystalized intelligence, Â
which is about knowledge thatâs been stored or crystallized in your brain and involves facts, Â
memory, and experiences. This is more like expertise.
This idea of 2 different kinds of intelligence opened up new perspectives on how people are Â
intelligent in different ways. But it didnât explain some key things, like creativity.
In 1988, psychologist Robert Sternburg developed the triarchic theory of intelligence, Â
which proposed that we have 3 kinds of intelligence that cover our common sense, Â
academic abilities, and creativity.
And around the same time, psychologist Howard Gardner argued that there are Â
at least 8 forms of intelligence in his theory of multiple intelligences. Â
This theory includes everything from artistic and musical intelligence to Â
the abilities to understand emotions and values in yourself and others.
So, over time psychologists have been breaking up intelligence Â
into more and more kinds as views on what intelligence encompasses continue to evolve.
Each of the theories weâve discussed has its merits, but none of them is a Â
definitive explanation of intelligence. And while we still donât have a precise Â
idea of what intelligence is, we do have a working definition that smushes together Â
what weâve learned by exploring all these theories and more over the last century.
Intelligence is the ability to learn, understand, and use your reasoning skills. Itâs pretty Â
general, and that makes it inclusive and allows us to value different forms this ability can take.
These theories about what is and isnât intelligence all developed because psychologists Â
first tried to measure intelligence. And when it comes to assessing intelligence, Â
thereâs one number that often comes to mind: the intelligence quotient â aka IQ.
While not the first to develop a test to measure intelligence, Â
early attempts at a reliable IQ test came from experiments by French psychologist Â
Alfred Binet and his colleague Henri Simon around the turn of the 20th century. Their Â
work helped create an IQ test called the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. There Â
are other types of IQ tests out there, but most of them give the same kind of score, Â
and all were designed to at least partly assess certain aptitudes and weaknesses of students.
These tests follow something called a normal distribution, Â
or a bell curve. Most people will score around average, which is 100, Â
with extreme scores on either side occurring with less and less frequency.
Now it seems helpful to have a number for gauging relative intelligence, Â
but there are some serious issues with IQ tests.
For example, parts of intelligence tests include questions about facts that are Â
assumed to be common knowledge. Like asking people to identify a historical explorer. Â
Those questions leave out people who may not have learned the information or for Â
whom the information is irrelevant to their culture or the area where they live. And Â
they favor groups who are ideologically or racially similar to the test-makers.
As you may have guessed, most of these test-makers were white men with a certain level of privilege. Â
Black Americans, Indigenous peoples, immigrants, and people born or raised outside the US have Â
been systematically disadvantaged by these tests which have, at times, Â
served to further marginalize and perpetuate stereotypes of already minoritized groups.
So we have to wonder what IQ tests are really measuring. And these concerns Â
aren't new - even Binet was cautious to note that intelligence is too complex of Â
a thing to be reduced to a number, and that it can change over time.
Bottom line: IQ tests are flawed. Big time.
Does that mean what we need is a test with better questions? Well, Â
itâs probably going to take a lot more than designing questions to measure intelligence. Â
To understand why, weâll need to look at some things related to intelligence.
One reason why measuring intelligence is difficult is because researchers can really only measure how Â
people show their intelligence. And thatâs often done through language.
Language is just a system of socially shared symbols that can be written, Â
spoken, or physically expressed, as in languages like American Sign Language.
Language requires common rules, called grammar, which dictates how we can express ourselves and Â
even what we think. Like in Hopi, an Indigenous language from whatâs now the Southwestern US, Â
events that occur in the past or future are given spatial terms.
Basically, instead of adding â-edâ to the end of a word, Â
a Hopi speaker would say that the event occurred at a great distance Â
away from them. This is very different from how time is communicated in English!
So languages can work in different ways, and that means intelligence can Â
be expressed in different ways, and it can be hard to decide what to look for.
But even when people share a common language, testing intelligence is hard because peopleâs Â
ability to use language can vary. We often associate a large vocabulary with Â
intelligence. But someone with a more modest vocabulary can also express their intelligence Â
through language. Their intelligence might just be expressed differently, like with Â
code-switching. Thatâs when a person changes the way they speak depending on the situation, Â
maybe by using a different tone, different words, or even an entirely different language. Â
Like how I might use a more serious tone if Iâm negotiating with a car salesman.
Changing the way we speak is intelligence in action. Code-switching shows that Â
we understand the context weâre in and reasoning about how we should communicate Â
in that context. And thatâs something an intelligence test canât easily capture.
Behaviors like code-switching sit at the intersection of language and cognition, Â
which is the mental process of knowing, which can involve abilities ranging from Â
attention to reasoning. And cognition is crucial to our intelligence, because our Â
ways of knowing about the world feed into our understanding and reasoning about the world.
We can see that with code-switching. We adjust our language based on what Â
we know about the context, like the kind of person weâre talking with.
Our response to context often uses schemas. A schema is our basic idea Â
about a thing â a simplified concept of that thing. So at a car dealership, Â
I might have a âcar salesmanâ schema, which is like a mental template or Â
a set of assumptions for what a car salesman is like and how they behave.
Categories of people are just one kind of schema. And we have schemas for basically Â
everything we use to imagine the world, especially social norms: like no talking Â
during movies because I am paying too much to be there already, and I will shush you!.
Schemas also feed into decision making, which is another aspect of cognition. Â
While we might like to think that we make decisions in a purely rational way, Â
the human mind is often limited by our schemas and other aspects of cognition.
This is called bounded rationality, the idea that our decision-making Â
is not perfectly logical because of limitations. Like the accuracy of our Â
schemas, the amount of information available, and time constraints.
But even if theyâre not completely logical, there are a few strategies we can use to Â
make decisions. And we can explore some of them through everyoneâs favorite class⊠gym.
Letâs pretend youâre in fourth grade. Youâre captain of the kickball team Â
and you want to put together the very best team.
You could use a single-feature strategy and pick one criteria to make decisions. For kickball, Â
that one criteria might be leg length. Maybe people with long Â
legs can really knock that ball far out into the field.
Or you could use an additive strategy. Thatâs when we think of multiple important aspects, and score Â
each option using these aspects. Then, we choose the option or options with the highest score.
For kickball, you might consider 3 aspects: athletic ability, teamwork, Â
and gym clothes that also have yellow and blue â I mean, Â
youâll for sure perform better if your team has color harmony!
Then youâd do a quick ranking of all your classmates with these criteria Â
to pick team members. That might mean picking a classmate in a blue t-shirt Â
who is pretty good at sports and teamwork, and also picking someone Â
who is OK at athletics but really good at teamwork, even though sheâs wearing green.
Then thereâs a strategy thatâs sort of the opposite: elimination by aspects. This is Â
when you think of an aspect thatâs critical, and then eliminate all options that donât have this Â
aspect. Using this strategy, you can eliminate all the kids who just donât like kickball.
We also have heuristics, which are mental shortcuts we use in decision-making. Â
Heuristics are interesting because they vary from person to person. If you associate taller Â
people with athleticism, youâd probably pick all the tallest classmates for your team.
But heuristics arenât necessarily true. Maybe your very tall friend isnât very coordinated and Â
strikes out in the first inning. Thanks, Andrea, for cutting my professional kickball career short.
By looking at decision making and other aspects of cognition, we can better Â
understand intelligence and why measuring it is challenging. In order to use our intelligence, Â
we must use our cognition, and how we use our cognition depends on the context.
If weâre pressed for time, like picking all the team members for our kickball Â
team in just 1 minute, we may resort to heuristics that are fast but could Â
be inaccurate. Whether weâre in gym class or at work, when we use these mental shortcuts Â
or other cognitive approaches, our decisions may not be as perfectly logical as weâd like.
And, if our cognition is limited by the situations weâre in, so too is our Â
expression of intelligence. But weâre always in some kind of situation, whether itâs taking Â
a test under time pressure or talking with people who have certain expectations of us.
We couldnât lead the lives we do without our ability to learn, Â
understand, and use reasoning skills. We use our intelligence every day, Â
and even after over a century of study, it remains mysterious.
But not for lack of trying. And that effort has expanded our views on intelligence and made them Â
more inclusive. That allows us to recognize and better value a wide range of mental abilities.
And what would it take to measure those abilities? A lot. In TV show terms, Â
an intelligence test would be like Jeopardy crossed with Big Brother and Survivor crossed Â
with some Iron Chef and The Price is Right and... well, you get the picture. It would Â
be the sort of test none of us would ace. And that says something important about Â
how we can appreciate intelligence. It takes all kinds to make humanity as rich as it is.
If youâre enjoying Study Hall Intro to Psychology and are interested in Â
taking an online course and earning college credit, go to gostudyhall.com Â
or click on this button to learn more. Thanks for watching, see you next time!
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)