The New IQ Score

In Carr’s digression on the “buoyancy of IQ scores” he mentions The Flynn Effect (how intelligence scores have been gradually increasing since World War II). While I have been reading this book, I have found myself disagreeing with a lot of what Carr talks about, and overall being bored with the book. However, this digression caught my attention. I find myself agreeing with this statement by James Flynn. As much as I agree with this point, I do not think that it is because society is necessarily getting smarter per say. I think that instead society has found away to almost “cheat” on these IQ tests. For example, today you can find a plethora of websites that will give you an “IQ test” for a small amount of money, and will send you your score. In a self report study, all that you need to do is report these scores from this online IQ test and low and behold you have helped to raise the national IQ average from a time when these online tests were not available.

            There is another way to “cheat” the system as well. It is not only happening on IQ tests though; it is happing in school systems, especially in the United States. The idea of “teaching the test” has found its way into the school systems. It is when teachers just dictate the material for the class exactly how it will appear on the test so all the student has to do is memorize those details and repeat them for the test. This sort of “phenomenon has left the classroom and has found its way to the SATs as I believe has helped boost today’s IQ scores as well. With so many SAT preparation courses, students can practice exactly what they need to know for the test, and with a little bit of money can take multiple courses and tests, ensuring the student can get practice answering similar questions over and over again. Along with being able to take the test multiple times, colleges and universities that look at these scores (many are no longer looking at the scores from applicants) now just look at your best score in each category of the test. They do this to eliminate bad scores from a “bad day” in order to give students a fair shot. However in grade school, I know my teachers never excused a bad test score and let me retake the test just because of a “bad day.”

            These methods have changed the IQ test from being based on how much intelligence a person has, to how much time they commit to memorize information. Also it now tests how someone’s intelligence based on where/how they do their IQ test, it should take more than ten questions to test someone’s intelligence. Since IQ tests are used to measure society today, they should be conducted the same way any other test or study is conducted. With regulated and repeatable procedures, with a random sampling, and with a group that is large enough and diverse enough to be able to apply the findings to a larger population. It is with these parameters that we as a society will actually know if our societal IQ is increasing or not.

-David Pierson