Why g matters: The complexity of everyday life
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide evidence that intelligence has pervasive utility in work settings because it is essentially the ability to deal with cognitive complexity, in particular, with complex information processing, and the more complex a work task, the greater the advantages that higher g confers in performing it well.
About: This article is published in Intelligence.The article was published on 1997-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 1300 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Everyday life & Cognitive complexity.
Summary (1 min read)
Jump to: [Why g Matters: The Complexity of Everyday Life] – [WHAT DOES “IMPORTANT” MEAN?] – [INFLUENCE OF INTELLIGENCE ON OVERALL LIFE OUTCOMES] and [THE FUTURE]
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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TL;DR: For example, this paper found that the predictive validity of g cognitive tests is moderated by the criteria and other predictors considered in selection research, but the resulting gradients of g's effects are systematic.
Abstract: g is a highly general capability for processing complex information of any type. This explains its great value in predicting job performance. Complexity is the major distinction among jobs, which explains why g is more important further up the occupational hierarchy. The predictive validities of g are moderated by the criteria and other predictors considered in selection research, but the resulting gradients of g's effects are systematic. The pattern provides personnel psychologists a road map for how to design better selection batteries. Despite much literature on the meaning and impact of g, there nonetheless remains an aura of mystery about where and why g cognitive tests might be useful in selection. The aura of mystery encourages false beliefs and false hopes about how we might reduce disparate impact in employee selection. It is also used to justify new testing techniques whose major effect, witting or not, is to reduce the validity of selection in the service of racial goals.
187 citations
Cites background from "Why g matters: The complexity of ev..."
...Researchers in the fields of information processing, decision making, and goal setting stress the importance of the number, variety, variability, ambiguity, and interrelatedness of information that must be processed to evaluate alternatives and make a decision. Wood (1986), for example, discussed three dimensions of task complexity: component complexity (e....
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TL;DR: D-PFCA remained significant in regression analyses controlling for intelligence (or g) and personality, and workplace performance among managerial-administrative workers and factory floor workers at a manufacturing company.
Abstract: Studies 1and 2 assessed performance on a battery of dorsolateral prefrontal cognitive ability (D-PFCA) tests, personality, psychometric intelligence, and academic performance (AP) in 2 undergraduate samples. In Studies 1 and 2, AP was correlated with D-PFCA (r = .37, p <.01, and r =.33, p <.01, respectively), IQ (r =.24, p <.05, and r =.38, p <.01, respectively), and Conscientiousness (r =.26, p <.05, and r =.37, p <.01, respectively). D-PFCA remained significant in regression analyses controlling for intelligence (or g) and personality. Studies 3 and 4 assessed D-PFCA, personality, and workplace performance among (a) managerial-administrative workers and (b) factory floor workers at a manufacturing company. Prefrontal cognitive ability correlated with supervisor ratings of manager performance at values of r ranging from.42 to.57 (ps <.001), depending on experience, and with factory floor performance at pr =.21 (p =.02), after controlling for experience, age, and education. Conscientiousness correlated with factory floor performance at r =.23.
185 citations
TL;DR: Sternberg et al. as discussed by the authors reviewed the theoretical and empirical supports for their bold claim that there exists a general factor of practical intelligence that is distinct from "academic intelligence" and which predicts future success as well as g, if not better.
180 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: The authors applied this procedure to meta-analytic validities of two personality measures (Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability) and general cognitive ability measures and found that the increases in validity estimates are greater for cognitive ability than for personality, reducing the relative validity of personality.
Abstract: A recently developed procedure produces substantial improvements in the accuracy of corrections for range restriction and reveals that predictive validities of employment selection methods are higher than previously thought. This study applied this procedure to meta-analytic validities of 2 personality measures (Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability) and general cognitive ability measures. Results show that the increases in validity estimates are greater for cognitive ability than for personality, reducing the relative validity of personality. In addition, the incremental validity of these personality measures over that provided by cognitive ability is smaller than previously estimated. Path analyses based on the more accurate data reveal relatively smaller path coefficients from these personality traits to job and training performance. These findings have implications for theories of job performance and for the practical value in selection of personality measures relative to cognitive ability measures.
178 citations
Additional excerpts
...This follows from the fact that GMA is an “all purpose tool” that can be used to solve any kind of problem (Gottfredson, 1997; Jensen, 1998), including the problem of how to meet the social requirements of a job....
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TL;DR: A meta-study of repeated prisoner's dilemma experiments run at numerous universities suggests that students cooperate 5-8% more often for every 100-point increase in the school's average SAT score.
Abstract: Are more intelligent groups better at cooperating? A meta-study of repeated prisoner's dilemma experiments run at numerous universities suggests that students cooperate 5–8% more often for every 100-point increase in the school's average SAT score. This result survives a variety of robustness tests. Axelrod [Axelrod, R., 1984. The Evolution of Cooperation. Basic Books, New York] recommends that the way to create cooperation is to encourage players to be patient and perceptive; experimental evidence suggests that more intelligent groups implicitly follow this advice.
175 citations
Cites background from "Why g matters: The complexity of ev..."
...Additionally, the ability to recognize patterns in an ambiguous situation is a strong positive correlate of intelligence (Deary 2001, Jensen 1998, 34-38, Gottfredson 1997 and 2006)....
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...As Gottfredson (1997, 94) notes, “For practical purposes, g [the general intelligence factor] is the ability to deal with cognitive complexity--in particular, with complex information processing.”...
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References
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