Why g matters: The complexity of everyday life
Summary (1 min read)
Why g Matters: The Complexity of Everyday Life
- This article provides evidence that g has pervasive utility in work settings because it is essentially the ability to deal with cognitive complexity, in particular, with complex information processing.
- Few claims in the social sciences are backed by such massive evidence but remain so hotly contested in public discourse.
- Besides demonstrating that g is important in practical affairs, I seek to demonstrate why intelligence has such surprisingly pervasive importance in the lives of individuals.
- I then use both the employment and literacy data to sketch a portrait of life’s challenges and opportunities at different levels of intelligence.
WHAT DOES “IMPORTANT” MEAN?
- The nature of the job and its context seem to determine whether g has any direct effect on task proficiency, net of job knowlege.
- As is well known in psychometrics (see also Gordon, 1997), the fact that an individual passes or fails any single test item says little about that person’s general intelligence level.
INFLUENCE OF INTELLIGENCE ON OVERALL LIFE OUTCOMES
- The effects of intelligence-like other psychological traits-are probabilistic, not deterministic.
- White adults in this range marry, work, and have children (Hermstein & Murray, 1994), but, as Table 10 shows, they are nonetheless at great risk of living in poverty (30%), bearing children out of wedlock (32%), and becoming chronic welfare dependents (31%).
- At this IQ level, fewer than half the high school graduates and none of the dropouts meet the military’s minimum AFQT enlistment standards.
- Most occupations are within reach cognitively, because these individuals learn complex material fairly easily and independently.
- Such as divorce, illness, and occasional unemployment, they rarely become trapped in poverty or social pathology.
THE FUTURE
- Complexity enriches social and cultural life, but it also risks leaving some individuals behind.
- Society has become more complex-and g loaded-as the authors have entered the information age and postindustrial economy.
- Accordingly, organizations are “flatter” (have fewer hierarchical levels), and increasing numbers of jobs require high-level cognitive and interpersonal skills (Camevale, 1991; Cascio, 1995; Hunt, 1995; Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, 1991).
- There is evidence that increasing proportions of individuals with below-average IQs are having trouble adapting to their increasingly complex modern life (Granat & Granat, 1978) and that social inequality along IQ lines is increasing (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994).
- As the military experience also illustrates, however, what is good pedagogy for the low-aptitude learner may be inappropriate for the high-aptitude person.
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13 citations
Cites background from "Why g matters: The complexity of ev..."
...Based on the arguments of Gottfredson (1997) and Schmidt (2002), that suggested that organisations with employees with lower mental ability will tend to perform worse and produce less than organisations with employees of higher mental ability, and on the findings of Hunter and Hunter (1984), who demonstrated that the correlation between mental ability and work performance increases as the job complexity increases, it becomes clear why armies employ such tests....
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...Based on the arguments of Gottfredson (1997) and Schmidt (2002), that suggested that organisations with employees with lower mental ability will tend to perform worse and produce less than organisations with employees of higher mental ability, and on the findings of Hunter and Hunter (1984), who demonstrated that the correlation between mental ability and work performance increases as the job complexity increases, it becomes clear why armies employ such tests. Another argument is provided by one of the most important research conclusions as provided by Ree, Carretta and Teachout (1995) who made a path analysis for general mental ability, job knowledge and work performance for USAF trainee pilots....
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...Based on the arguments of Gottfredson (1997) and Schmidt (2002), that suggested that organisations with employees with lower mental ability will tend to perform worse and produce less than organisations with employees of higher mental ability, and on the findings of Hunter and Hunter (1984), who…...
[...]
13 citations
Cites background from "Why g matters: The complexity of ev..."
..., 4–button CRT), a pattern consistent with the view that intelligence represents the ability to handle complexity [33]....
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...A second problem is that the effects of speed and working memory on intelligence are examined without controlling for task complexity, which is sensitive to intelligence differences [33]....
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13 citations
13 citations
13 citations
References
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