The Trouble With Intelligence and Success

The book I chose to read for the independent novel study is Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. As I was reading it, one quote that stood out to me was in Chapter Three: “The Trouble With Geniuses, Part 1”. This section was about IQ; more specifically, how a high IQ translated into a real-life advantage. It seems, the higher the IQ was, the more successful the person would be, right?

“But there’s a catch. The relationship between success and IQ works only up to a point. Once someone had reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn’t seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage.” (Gladwell 79)

Gladwell goes onto quote Liam Hudson, who says “[a] mature scientist with an adult IQ of 130 is as likely to win a Nobel Prize as is one whose IQ is 180.” (Gladwell 80). With this quote, he relates IQ to height in basketball; that the player just has to be tall enough for the team. This is just like IQ; the person just has to be above the threshold in order to be successful.

The concept of this was a new one to me; although it seems there’s a lot of evidence to back it up. It was just something I had never heard before, and, well, it’s fairly optimistic. By this logic, a person isn't born with only a certain amount of success that they can achieve in their life: it’s the actions that count, after all. Along with the surroundings, and a much more complex system that Gladwell explains throughout the book; basically, our life shapes us. It seems obvious. But then again, it kind of seems opposite of common logic. If IQ represents intelligence, and one person has a higher IQ than another, then they are said to be smarter than the other person, are they not? (Although, I think IQ has a more complex definition than simply ‘intelligence’). If they are said to be smarter, shouldn’t they be more successful?

It’s interesting to think, that in our society, it really isn’t the people with the highest IQ who reach the top. It’s a combination of drive, and pure luck. Luck, for example, as being born into a family that can afford lessons in a certain subject that cause a student to become an expert in the very thing. Occurances such as this seem to be more powerful than IQ.

However, there is still the threshold that must be reached, of 120 IQ points. IQ is still a very powerful measure of intelligence; it just isn’t the only effect on success.

I’ll leave with something that I and quite a few other people have been working on for quite sometime, and are still unsure about.

“The super IQ test was created by Ronald K. Hoeflin, who is himself someone with an unusually high IQ. Here’s a sample question, from the verbal analogies section. “Teeth is to Hen as Nest is to ?” If you want to know the answer, I’m afraid I have no idea.” (Gladwell 71)

If you can figure it out, with a logical answer, I will put on a hat for the sole purpose of tipping it to you.