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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56 citations
Cites background or result from "Why g matters: The complexity of ev..."
...For example, Haushofer et al. (2013) induced a stress event in a laboratory setting, and observed no effect of stress on intertemporal choice....
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...For example, Haushofer et al. (2013) induced a stress event in a laboratory setting, and observed no effect of stress on intertemporal choice. However, other studies (Cornelisse et al., 2013; Moreno, 2015) have since confirmed the impact of stress on a tendency to choose smaller and earlier rewards. Haushofer and Fehr (2014) explain this by postulating that: (1) stress leads to the favoring of habitual behaviors, and (2) earlier rewards come with higher satisfaction levels than delayed ones. Research on time-discounting and working memory, however, has yet to reach a consensus. Shamosh et al. (2008) and Basile and Toplak (2015) report a positive correlation between timediscounting and working memory, with a decreased willingness to wait for a larger reward being related to diminished working memory....
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...The World Bank (in Haughton and Khandler, 2009) further defines poverty in a similar manner but goes on to delineate the psychological aspect of poverty by discussing matters of subjective well-being. However, these definitions remain rather ambiguous and open to questioning. For example, how might one define “dignified living”? What exactly might improper housing constitutes? Where might the line be drawn between the availability of food being accessible or limited? Poverty, therefore, appears to be a multidimensional construct which presents itself with various aspects that can be assessed both on an individualistic (subjective) level, as well as objectively, based on more general predefined criteria. In practice, researchers tend to assess poverty according to various objective poverty lines (e.g., household incomes being lower than 60% of the country median or the income-to-needs ratio). However, poverty lines are not representative of whether or not individuals consider themselves to be poor (see Ravallion, 2016), a psychological aspect of poverty that should be heeded. Mani et al. (2013) found that a subjective experience of poverty is associated with deprived cognitive capacities to a greater extent than objective poverty indicators....
[...]
...For example, Haushofer et al. (2013) induced a stress event in a laboratory setting, and observed no effect of stress on intertemporal choice. However, other studies (Cornelisse et al., 2013; Moreno, 2015) have since confirmed the impact of stress on a tendency to choose smaller and earlier rewards. Haushofer and Fehr (2014) explain this by postulating that: (1) stress leads to the favoring of habitual behaviors, and (2) earlier rewards come with higher satisfaction levels than delayed ones....
[...]
...For example, Haushofer et al. (2013) induced a stress event in a laboratory setting, and observed no effect of stress on intertemporal choice. However, other studies (Cornelisse et al., 2013; Moreno, 2015) have since confirmed the impact of stress on a tendency to choose smaller and earlier rewards. Haushofer and Fehr (2014) explain this by postulating that: (1) stress leads to the favoring of habitual behaviors, and (2) earlier rewards come with higher satisfaction levels than delayed ones. Research on time-discounting and working memory, however, has yet to reach a consensus. Shamosh et al. (2008) and Basile and Toplak (2015) report a positive correlation between timediscounting and working memory, with a decreased willingness to wait for a larger reward being related to diminished working memory. Contrarily, no such significant relationship was found by Steinberg et al. (2009). Similar issues can also be found with self-control....
[...]
55 citations
Cites background from "Why g matters: The complexity of ev..."
...…Reeve & Charles, 2008; Snyderman & Rothman, 1987), that they have a significant and meaningful influence on important real-world outcomes (e.g. Gottfredson, 1997b, 2004; Jensen, 1998; Kuncel et al., 2004; Schmidt & Hunter, 1998), that they have a basis in human biology and physiology (Deary,…...
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...…see Carroll, 1993; Jensen, 1998) has given rise to a broad consensus among experts that cognitive abilities are real psychological constructs (Gottfredson, 1997a; Reeve & Charles, 2008; Snyderman & Rothman, 1987), that they have a significant and meaningful influence on important real-world…...
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...…1997b, 2004; Jensen, 1998; Kuncel et al., 2004; Schmidt & Hunter, 1998), that they have a basis in human biology and physiology (Deary, 2009; Gottfredson, 1997b [special issues of Intelligence]; Lubinski, 2004 [special section of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology]) and is…...
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55 citations
Cites background from "Why g matters: The complexity of ev..."
...4939-1562-0 Gottfredson, L. S. (1997). Why g matters: The complexity of everyday life....
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...Intelligence is a hierarchical construct reflecting multiple, correlated general abilities that hinge on executing goal-directed behavior (Gottfredson, 1997; Jensen, 1998)....
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...Mental operations, including reasoning, planning, problem-solving, and environmental adaptation, interact to reflect broader concepts of intelligence (Goldstein, Princiotta, & Naglieri, 2015; Gottfredson, 1997; Neisser et al., 1996)....
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...4939-1562-0 Gottfredson, L. S. (1997). Why g matters: The complexity of everyday life. Intelligence, 24, 79 –132. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0160-2896 (97)90014-3 Gray, J. R., Chabris, C. F., & Braver, T. S. (2003). Neural mechanisms of general fluid intelligence. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 316–322. http://dx .doi.org/10.1038/nn1014 Green, A. E. (2016). Creativity, within reason: Semantic distance and dynamic state creativity in relational thinking and reasoning....
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...4939-1562-0 Gottfredson, L. S. (1997). Why g matters: The complexity of everyday life. Intelligence, 24, 79 –132. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0160-2896 (97)90014-3 Gray, J. R., Chabris, C. F., & Braver, T. S. (2003). Neural mechanisms of general fluid intelligence....
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55 citations
55 citations
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