Intelligence

What is intelligence? It is interesting that a phenomenon so pervasive can be so difficult to define and quantify. Surely you are familiar with IQ (Intelligence Quotient) tests. Of the many purposes of creating IQ tests and administering these tests to countless persons is the benefit of being able to predict future outcomes. After all, knowing that someone is intelligent is not particularly valuable when isolated from the effect of intelligence in producing a meaningful outcome. Thus one benefit of IQ scores comes from being able to predict that an intelligent person will perform well in certain work scenarios, etc.

While determining a person's IQ score seems useful as it provides us a discrete value to compare to other scores, as a practical matter, the IQ score does not predict future outcomes as well as we would like. Not surprisingly, there are other factors that overcome the predictability of IQ scores. For example, motivation and cultural factors play important roles in success, and of course a more fundamental issue with IQ scores concerns its generality or applicability to diverse situations outside of the test scenarios. For example, someone with a high IQ score may in fact be a very bad electrician. It is not that electricians do not need to be smart, in fact, I would suggest that intelligence is very important to success as an electrician. However, there are many other important skills that are relevant to this trade, such as color vision, manual dexterity, physical strength, attention to detail, understanding complex instructions and procedures, etc.

Intelligence tests can be important when the skills tested are relevant to the work situation. Using this perspective, one could conceivably develop an intelligence test for each job classification, a generally useful idea. More generally, we can consider that there are a seemingly infinite number of different kinds of intelligences, and a truly comprehensive intelligence assessment might require literally thousands of different kinds of questions and demonstrations of skill.

A behavioral perspective on intelligence suggests that each action demonstrates a multitude of intelligence, and each of us posses varied skill (intelligence) with regard to these intelligences. For example, a wonderfully skilled pianist may be substantially deficient in being able to give someone a decent haircut. Certainly the pianist could learn how to cut hair if motivated to do so, but at the time of measurement, the tested pianist did not have that skill and his deficiency would be noted. Once the pianist learned to cut hair he would no longer possesses that deficiency

There is considerable overlap between the concept of intelligence and the emergence of behavior. Moreover, each behavior demonstrates intelligence, and the more behaviors we can demonstrate in diverse situations, the more intelligent we are. Intelligence is not usefully described as a capability. While we can speak of intelligence in the abstract, unused intelligence is not behaviorally valuable. Intelligence observed as behavior is valuable because it effects a meaningful outcome.