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.
Did you find this useful? Give us your feedback
Citations
27 citations
Cites background from "Why g matters: The complexity of ev..."
...Higher cognitive abilities are associated with avoidance of a wide array of social and economic misfortunes (Gottfredson 1997; Gottfredson 2004) and appear to promote health (Whalley and Deary 2001)....
[...]
27 citations
27 citations
26 citations
Cites background from "Why g matters: The complexity of ev..."
...Terman astutely observed that there was a wide range of IQ levels within many jobs, but that more prestigious jobs seemed to naturally have a minimum IQ level needed for entry and/or job success (Terman, 1919), a finding supported by modern research (e.g., Gottfredson, 1997b)....
[...]
...In the decades after his death, the pendulum has swung back to valuing genetic explanations for withingroup differences in intelligence (Gottfredson, 1997a), though neither extreme (i.e., purely environmental explanations or purely genetic explanations) will likely ever be a mainstream position…...
[...]
...Likewise, the claim that “special talent” is difficult to detect in an overall IQ score is a mainstream viewpoint today (e.g., Gottfredson, 1997a; Warne, 2016a)....
[...]
...The ingredients that Terman saw as necessary for an IQ-based meritocracy continued to exist well past his death and into the modern era (Gottfredson, 1997b)....
[...]
26 citations
References
11,512 citations
9,611 citations
8,018 citations
7,809 citations
5,832 citations