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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Cites background from "Why g matters: The complexity of ev..."
...…y algunos rasgos de personalidad (como extraversión y neuroticismo de la teoría de los cinco grandes de la personalidad) correlacionan directamente con desempeño en el trabajo transversalmente a una variedad importante de ocupaciones y puestos de trabajo (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Gottfredson, 1997)....
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2 citations
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Cites background or methods from "Why g matters: The complexity of ev..."
...Kanazawa (2004) and Miller (2004) have stated that g poses a problem for the concept of “strong modularity” in the mind; g is apparently a “module” that affects almost all everyday activities (Gottfredson 1997)....
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...(1999) is that of component amplitude. As with com p nent latency, variations in wave amplitude are a common dependent variable in E RP methodologies, and amplitude may vary in response to task demands acro ss nditions. Amplitude variations are produced by the summation of polaris ations across relatively larger or smaller neuronal populations in relationship with t he cognitive demands of the task. As such, some variation in component amplitude is e xtremely common in ERP methodologies, although as stated earlier, the sens itivity of the ERP technique to individual differences is also an issue here, but o ne which can be compensated for by later statistical analysis and correction. Burns, Nettelbeck and Cooper (1997) make brief ment ion of 28 studies where component amplitude measures were related to IQ....
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...15 Allison et al. (1994) referred to facial ERP compon ents as N200s, and whether it is termed the “subdural N200” by Allison et al. (1994) or the N170 by Bentin et al....
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...15 Allison et al. (1994) referred to facial ERP compon ents as N200s, and whether it is termed the “subdural N200” by Allison et al. (1994) or the N170 by Bentin et al. (1996), controversy was and still is present over the laterality of these face processing effects. Using direct cortical rec o dings, Allison et al. (1994) found bilateral effects of face processing, whilst scalp surface-mounted electrodes showed inconsistent effects in Bentin et al....
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...15 Allison et al. (1994) referred to facial ERP compon ents as N200s, and whether it is termed the “subdural N200” by Allison et al. (1994) or the N170 by Bentin et al. (1996), controversy was and still is present over the laterality of these face processing effects....
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