Trego's Mountain Ear

Looking at Joe Biden’s senility challenges, I remember back to an earlier Joe who kept insisting that he was definitely smarter than the average bear (sorry, Yogi – I couldn’t resist the quote).  Even to the point of challenging people to an IQ test to prove his intelligence.  And it got me thinking about folks who think of themselves as “really smart.”  And Donald Trump isn’t the only person who describes himself as “really smart.”

I’ve heard some sneer at “book smarts,” as if there is a difference between intelligence applied in the real world and in the academy.  I’m not so sure – I have met quite a few who managed to get an advanced degree without possessing advanced intelligence – when I took the Graduate Record Exam I was seated alongside a woman who was taking it for the third time.  She had to score at the 25th percentile to be admitted to a graduate program for which she had already completed all the coursework.  If I recall correctly, the 25th percentile on the GRE correlated with an IQ of 90. 

The military uses the ASVAB – Armed Service Vocational Aptitude Battery – to determine what training recruits may receive.  The higher the score, the better the training opportunities. 

The thing I’m getting at is that a lot of our opportunities can be limited by a low test score – whether it’s the GRE or the ASVAB – both correlate to IQ scores with fairly high reliability.

So far as correlating IQ with politics, Rinderman found that Brazilians who support Center-Right parties averaged about 105 on IQ, those who supported left or right parties averaged about 94.  Both numbers are in the normal range.  I recall reading a study that we tend to vote for candidates who are no more than a standard deviation above our own score (in IQ, figure that a standard deviation is 15 points).

Both Trump and Biden have made comments that show each believes himself to be in the “really smart” category.  I’d feel better if each just took the same IQ test and released the score.  Come to think of it, I’d like it better if everyone who laid claims to being “really smart” would provide the test results that verified the claim.

The rarity of high IQ scores? 

158                 One in 18,120 – statistically there should be one in Lincoln County

150                 One in 2,330

145                 One in 741

140                 One in 261

135                  One in 102

130                  One in 44

125                 One in 21

120                 One in 11

115                  One in 6

110                  One in 4

Being “really smart” isn’t all that uncommon.