{"id":2752,"date":"2012-03-25T21:47:04","date_gmt":"2012-03-25T20:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/?p=2752"},"modified":"2012-03-28T16:05:08","modified_gmt":"2012-03-28T15:05:08","slug":"2752","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/2012\/03\/2752\/","title":{"rendered":"Quote from: Everyday Life as an Intelligence Test: Effects of Intelligence and Intelligence Context"},"content":{"rendered":"

gordon-1997-everyday-life-as-an-intelligence-test-effects-of-intelligence-and-intelligence-context<\/a> (Thanks to this guy<\/a> for making me aware of the paper)<\/p>\n

“Take, for example, complaints concerning a Year IV-6 Stanford-Binet item, which shows three pairs of sharply contrasting drawings of faces and asks, \u201cWhich one is prettier ?\u201d The item has been held up to ridicule as an example of \u201caesthetic comparison,\u201d which is what it is unfortunately called (Terman & Merrill, 1960, p. 79), rather than of choice between responses that are cognitive and so capable of being judged better or worse unequivocally (Jensen, 1980a, p. 5). Standards of beauty can vary from culture to culture, it was pointed out, and so right or wrong cannot be settled objectively, unlike such responses as \u201ctaller\u201d or \u201cshorter.\u201d To such critics, the item lacked, no pun, face validity.”<\/p>\n

I lol’d.<\/p>\n

“The\u00a0 key\u00a0 intellectual\u00a0 problem,\u00a0 as\u00a0 one\u00a0 judge\u00a0 saw\u00a0 it,\u00a0 was\u00a0 that\u00a0 the\u00a0 jurors\u00a0 \u201cwere
\nremarkably\u00a0 poor\u00a0 evaluators\u00a0 of\u00a0 the\u00a0 facts\u201d\u00a0 and\u00a0 had\u00a0 consistently\u00a0 confused\u00a0 logical
\npossibilities\u00a0 with\u00a0 grounds\u00a0 for\u00a0 reasonable\u00a0 doubt\u00a0 by\u00a0 neglecting\u00a0 to\u00a0 give\u00a0 sensible
\nconsideration\u00a0 to probabilities\u00a0 (Rothwax,\u00a0 1996, pp.\u00a0 226,\u00a0 229). A\u00a0 law professor\u00a0 cast
\nthe\u00a0 problem\u00a0 more\u00a0 broadly:\u00a0 \u201cModem\u00a0 trials\u00a0 hinge\u00a0 on\u00a0 complicated\u00a0 assessments\u00a0 of
\neconomic\u00a0 models\u00a0 and DNA\u00a0 evidence\u00a0 .\u00a0 .\u00a0 . Lay juries\u00a0 are\u00a0 simply\u00a0 not\u00a0 equipped\u00a0 to
\nperform\u00a0 this\u00a0 assessment\u201d\u00a0 (Dow,\u00a0 1995, p. A32). Coincidentally,\u00a0 a national\u00a0 survey
\nof adults\u00a0 in\u00a0 1995 had\u00a0 found\u00a0 that \u201conly one\u00a0 in five Americans\u00a0 [21%] can provide\u00a0 a
\nminimally\u00a0 acceptable\u00a0 definition\u00a0 of DNA\u201d\u00a0 (National Science\u00a0 Board,\u00a0 1996, pp.\u00a0 7-
\n8, Appendix\u00a0 Table 7-7).<\/strong> During\u00a0 expert\u00a0 but\u00a0 often\u00a0 dull\u00a0 DNA\u00a0 testimony,\u00a0 the jurors
\nwere\u00a0 visibly\u00a0 bored\u00a0 (Shapiro,\u00a0 1996,\u00a0 p.\u00a0 353;\u00a0 Toobin,\u00a0 1996,\u00a0 p.\u00a0 345).\u00a0 DNA\u00a0 was
\nmentioned\u00a0 10,000\u00a0 times\u00a0 (\u201cSimpson\u00a0 Trial & Trivia,\u201d\u00a0 1995). When\u00a0 presented\u00a0 with
\nthe\u00a0 statement,\u00a0 \u201cThe\u00a0 Simpson\u00a0 jury\u00a0 just\u00a0 wasn\u2019t\u00a0 smart\u00a0 enough\u00a0 to\u00a0 understand\u00a0 the
\nevidence\u00a0 in\u00a0 the\u00a0 case,\u201d\u00a0 26%\u00a0 of Whites,\u00a0 but\u00a0 also\u00a0 10% of\u00a0 Blacks,\u00a0 agreed\u00a0 (Morin,
\n1995, p. A34).\u00a0 If it is reasonable\u00a0 to regard\u00a0 the\u00a0 task of jury\u00a0 service\u00a0 as a kind\u00a0 of job,
\nvalidity\u00a0 generalization\u00a0 theory\u00a0 would\u00a0 indicate\u00a0 that performance\u00a0 of\u00a0 that job\u00a0 must\u00a0 be
\nrelated\u00a0 to g,\u00a0 most\u00a0 especially\u00a0 in\u00a0 complex\u00a0 trials\u00a0 (e.g.,\u00a0 Gottfredson,\u00a0 1986b). “<\/p>\n

For lots of more similarly depressive survey data, see this book<\/a>.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

The paper is really interesting. The author uses a very simple population-IQ-model that is so simple that is very surprising that it works so well to predict stuff. Here is an illustration from the paper.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(The number given for IQ=115 is wrong. 115 is 2sd from 85, and so the number shud be 97.72%)<\/p>\n

The idea is that there is a critical IQ for something. The simple interpretation of this is that above that IQ, no one makes the mistake in question (or does the thing in question, if we want to be more value-free in our description) and below it everybody makes it every time. This is very similar to the model i used to predict the average IQs of danish students given that some set percentage has to come thru the education. An alternative and more realistic interpretation is that at the critical IQ, the probability of making the mistake is .5. So that if the IQ is higher than the critical IQ, then the pr<.5, and if lower than the critical IQ, the pr>.5. If the distribution of making the mistake around the critical IQ is normally distributed, or just not skewed, the same results shud result.<\/p>\n

This is pretty cool in itself, but the cooler thing is that the model successfully predicts (or postdicts in this case) the rates for all kinds of thing such as HIV-infection rates, crime rate, poverty rates, single-motherhood (but to a lesser degree, see the paper for discussion), opinion polls about various things such as belief in not guilty at the O. J. Simpson trial and belief in black conspiracy theories (i had never heard of these before reading the paper).<\/p>\n

Reading the paper, i really want to extend this to more things. Coincidentally, i have long thought about the gender difference in belief in superstitious stuff like religion. In Denmark, there is a huge 20 point gender difference (~50% vs. ~70% for men and women, respectively). I also know that there is a small g difference between men and women. I want to see if the population-IQ-model can predict the data. It seems that it cannot fully account for the data. Using a 5 IQ gender difference, and a 15% increased variance in male IQ, i tried (trial and error<\/a>) to see if i cud find a critical IQ that wud explain the data. The closest match seems to be around 104 which yields the predictions: 53.7% religiousness in males, and 67.9% in females. Rather close to the mark, but still there seems to be another factor. To make it worse, the gender difference is probably not a whole 5 points, but more likely in the 3-4 department, making the discrepancy between the model and the data to be explained even larger.<\/p>\n

Some papers about gender differences in g\/IQ<\/p>\n

Helmuth Nyborg – Sex-related di\ufb00erences in general intelligence g, brain size, and social status<\/a><\/p>\n

Males have greater g Sex differences in general mental ability from 100,000 17-to 18-year-olds on the Scholastic Assessment Test<\/a><\/p>\n

R. Lynn and P. Irwing – Sex differences on the Progressive Matrices a meta-analysis<\/a><\/p>\n

The first study does find rather large gender differences, both in g and in variance. Afaict, the second study does not report a difference in variance but cites some other studies that did. The last study also found an IQ gender difference but didn’t seem to report any variance difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

gordon-1997-everyday-life-as-an-intelligence-test-effects-of-intelligence-and-intelligence-context (Thanks to this guy for making me aware of the paper) “Take, for example, complaints concerning a Year IV-6 Stanford-Binet item, which shows three pairs of sharply contrasting drawings of faces and asks, \u201cWhich one is prettier ?\u201d The item has been held up to ridicule as an example of \u201caesthetic comparison,\u201d which is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1839,9,2591],"tags":[1878],"class_list":["post-2752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychometics","category-humor","category-intelligence-iq-cognitive-ability","tag-every-day-life","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2752"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2755,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2752\/revisions\/2755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}