Short answer, yes you can get better at IQ tests by learning the common patterns and practicing the tests. Some people do so, and reach very high IQ scores. But there is essentially no reward for doing this, and thus almost no one bothers to do it. In the absence of practice, IQ is an empirically relatively stable metric which correlates with a number of other empirical outcomes, about as well as anything in the social sciences ever does.
But there is essentially no reward for doing this
Agreed.
Things people want are are not gated by certified IQ scores. Think of jobs, sexual partners, popularity, etc. Except in extraordinary circumstances there's just no incentive to do better on IQ tests for any reason other than just being smarter.
For the purpose of bragging rights, its easier to just lie about your score than it is "cheat" by prepping for the test.
I heard at local Mensa that there is a guy who keeps coming to take the IQ test every year, and every year he fails to pass the Mensa limit. And he's been doing this at least for a decade.
For me, it is difficult to imagine, because Raven's matrices (the IQ test my local Mensa usually uses) is like the same two or three patterns over and over again. How could anyone take the test twice without noticing this? And if you notice the pattern, then you should get at least 80% of questions right very easily, which probably should be enough to pass the Mensa limit...
Maybe I am in the minority, but I think that I in my teenage years I would definetely have studied for an IQ test if I had had to take one.
Let us say that only 1% of people are like me, and the other 99% does not care. With your premises, that 1% would get a very high IQ. This is still a lot of people; is it possible that they are the majority of the people with high IQ? Or do you think that most of the people with IQ > 130 are "natural" (in the sense that scored high without solved made similar exercises before)?
I love the social sciences, but they tend to tell you more about the people studying them then they do about the actual subjects they study. I'm a believer that much of the data in the Social Sciences would benefit from reexamination using recalibrated metrics, as the political shifts in the world of the last 50 years have caused seismic shifts in the ways data is collected, organized, and interpreted. I've got some ideas of major areas of the Social Sciences which need to be reconsidered, as they have significantly impacted legislation in ways that have c...
Technically yes. You could increase your score on IQ tests by practicing them. But there is no point to doing so.
Your general intelligence (also known as -factor) matters. IQ is a good metric for general intelligence. IQ is such a good metric for general intelligence that it is often used as shorthand for -factor. IQ matters because it is a measurement of your general intelligence (-factor). You could increase your score on IQ tests by practicing them but that won't increase your general intelligence. It would just cheat the metric. We treat IQ as a stable, intrinsic characteristic because general intelligence is a stable, intrinsic characteristic.
Thank you for your answer, however, the question is not if it is worthy, or useful to practice for IQ test; the question is if it can be done (and, secondarily, how many people do it).
Usually, the ranking of abilities for a task are well correlated with the amount of practice. There is the rare child prodigy who beats the chess grandmaster, but usually all the people who can beat a chess grandmaster have practiced a lot of chess.
Is IQ special in this respect? Is the majority of people who is extremely good at IQ tests just "naturally" extremely good ...
I did an iq test years ago and got 126, then did one this morning and got 88, which bothered me. So I looked up the kinds of things that are going on in the tests as it's been 30 years since I thought in any of these ways, then did one again 1hr later and got 112. For me personally, who never went to a school that focussed on exams or even did them, I have to first understand the framework they want answers in and I feel like I can now improve on that way of thinking and get a higher score so I'm not that impressed with iq tests as a measure of intelligence and in fact the more I think in that way the more I realise how dull it all is
Small quibble - general intelligence varies by age, and IQ tests are age-adjusted. But that's a small clarification of your basic claim, which is supported by the data as I understand it.
Also, too, one of things g-factor is good for is the ability to learn, and especially the ability to apply previous experience to novel situations. So, the very ability of someone to get better at IQ tests (which when done well are not rote memorization exercises) indicates that there is some "there" there.
You should distinguish between "intelligence as a trait of the brain which we are trying to measure" and "the result of using a specific IQ test". Learning the IQ test is like standing on tiptoes when someone measures your height... yes, you will get a higher result, but you didn't actually grow up, you just cheated the test. You can cheat the IQ test and get a higher score e.g. by learning the right answers, but that doesn't increase your intelligence as such.
(And by the way, please do not take online IQ tests, ever. They are practically all scams. Especially those that say they are endorsed by <whatever organization>; they are not.)
Intelligence is not the same as knowledge or skill. As you get older, you naturally get more knowledge, and you get more skills. And the IQ tests adjust for this; they are calibrated for each age group separately, so a 10 years old would get higher IQ than a 20 years old if both answer correctly 15 out of 20 questions.
In practice, IQ is measured by test (because, how else would you measure it?), and you can cheat by specifically preparing for the test. That increases your test score, but not the underlying intelligence. For example, imagine that someone spends years practicing for one IQ test, and then is unexpectedly given a completely different IQ test. This would probably result in their "true IQ" being revealed.
Shortly, you should imagine intelligence as something like "ability to solve new problems". Of course, there is the technical problem that whenever someone designs a test that measures this ability, people can take the test repeatedly or find the questions and answers online, and then the problems are no longer "new" for them. Yes, this is a problem of tests. It does not make the underlying concept of "ability to solve new problems" invalid.
Raven's matrices are only one example of an IQ test. Performance across a wide range of domains, from pattern recognition to sensory discrimination to knowledge to reaction time is correlated. This widespread pattern of correlations is likely due to the performance on these many domains sharing causes, with the broadly shared causes being called g.
Since g affects your performance on tests, IQ tests to an extent measure g. However, as you point out, you can often just practice a test to become better. This practice will only make you better at that specific test, though; training your pattern recognition skill with matrices will not make you better at distinguishing the weights and colors of objects using your senses. That is, practice doesn't change your g, but instead improves the test-specific skills called s.
Your IQ score is a combination of g and s factors (and other factors too). And it doesn't even exist unless you take an IQ test. So it can't be a stable innate characteristic of an individual. But g - that is, whatever underlies performance across wildly different tests - must exist independently of the tests, as a characteristic of the individual, and empirically it appears reasonably stable in adulthood, and highly genetic.
Roughly speaking, the IQ score measures one's ability to recognize patterns, so it isn't a direct measurement of intelligence per se, but of an ability that correlates strongly with several other abilities that people associate with the much fuzzier concept of intelligence.
If you practice for IQ tests, you're going to become better at detecting the specific kinds of patterns used in IQ tests, but then your IQ score will correlate less with your general pattern-recognition ability, and in turn with those other traits, so at some point your score will stop reflecting your general intelligence.
To increase your intelligence as a whole you'd have to become better at recognizing more and more complex patterns in general, and not only for when you're focusing on problems, but on the automatic, as a passive ability. That would require quite a lot of cerebral plasticity, which is something adults almost universally lack.
Now, having a great pattern recognition, and by extension a high IQ score, by itself, doesn't suffice to say someone is actually intelligent in a broad sense, because when one is very good at detecting very hard-to-perceive patterns (hard to perceive for the majority), they also become very good at detecting patterns that aren't there at all. For example, conspiracy theorists -- the kind who creates conspiracy theories, not mere followers -- are usually very high IQ individuals whose pattern-recognition went in quite wrong directions. Hence, a high IQ is, at best, a very raw measure of one's cognitive potential, more than one's cognitive execution. This one does require training to be turned into something actually able to accomplish great things.
Be as it may, there have been some studies on what does increase the average IQ scores for populations at large. The main factor, above everything else, is better nutrition during infancy. That helps the brain to develop without hindrances, resulting in most of those children, when they grow, being able to recognize much more patterns than peers of theirs who were malnourished in their first years. That one factor cannot be compensated for later in life. And on top of that, access to excellent education in a stable environment during one's formative years also helps with a few extra points.
Finally, it should be noted that the effects of IQ scores are better understood (because easier to study) for lower IQs than for higher IQs. For lower IQs there are lots of correlations with anti-social behavior, criminality, impulsiveness, mental illnesses etc. For higher IQs there are correlations with mathematical prowess and having better incomes, probably because we live in a society that values professions requiring pattern recognition (engineering, law, finance, programming, anything requiring complex strategizing etc.), but not much beyond that.
Thank you for your answer!
If you practice for IQ tests, you're going to become better at detecting the specific kinds of patterns used in IQ tests, but then your IQ score will correlate less with your general pattern-recognition ability, and in turn with those other traits, so at some point your score will stop reflecting your general intelligence. [...]
Are you sure of this? Maybe the sort of people who are motivated to get an high score in a IQ test are the same sort of people who are motivated to get good grades in the college, who work harder to advance...
A lot of actor's have children that grow up to be actors because they hung out with actors growing up. A lot of politicians have children who grow up to be politicians because they hung out with politicians growing up. A lot of ex-convicts have children that grow up to be ex-convicts because they hung out with ex-convicts growing up. Access to resources, or lack of them, seem to have a huge impact on human potential. I often wonder how many of our characteristics are truly innate, and not just learned or trained. Nature or Nurture? An argument for nature undercuts the idea that education and good opportunities should be made available to everyone.
There are three components:
Interesting, can you direct me to some scientific papers which prove conclusions (1) and (3)?
(I already believe (2))
As an European, I did never have any IQ test, nor I know anybody who (to my knowledge) was ever administered an IQ test. I looked at some fac-simile IQ tests on the internet, expecially Raven's matrices.
When I began to read online blogs from the United States, I started to see references to the concept of IQ. I am very confused by the fact that the IQ score seems to be treated as a stable, intrinsic charachteristic of an individual (like the height or the visual acuity).
When you costantly practice some task, you usually become better at that task. I imagine that there exists a finite number of ideas required to solve Raven matrices: even when someone invents new Raven matrices for making new IQ tests, he will do so by remixing the ideas used for previous Raven matrices, because -as Cardano said- "there is practically no new idea which one may bring forward".
The IQ score is the result of an exam, much like school grades. But it is generally understood that school grades are influenced by how much effort you put in the preparation for the exam, by how much your family cares for your grades, and so on. I expect school grades to be fairly correlated to income, or to other mesures of "success".
In a hypothetical society in which all children had to learn chess, and being bad at chess was regarded as a shame, I guess that the ELO chess ratings of 17 year olds would be highly correlated with later achievements. Are IQ tests the only exception to the rule that your grade in an exam is influenced by how much you prepare for that exam? Is there a sense in which IQ is a more "intrinsic" quantity than, for example, the AP exam score, or the ELO chess rating?