Is Intelligence A Predictor Of Job And Life Success?

Is Intelligence a predictor of job and life success?

Over the years, intelligence has been defined in many different ways and called many different things. There are the abbreviations: “IQ” (intelligence quotient), “g” (general intelligence), “GCA” (general cognitive ability) and “GMA” (general mental ability). Whatever we call it, the way we measure it has not really changed in many years. On how intelligence helps performance, most people will suggest that it is by improving things like problem solving and decision-making. Some research has shown that intelligence levels are more important than experience for the ability to think strategically. The most important impact of intelligence seems to be on the acquisition of job knowledge. IQ scores are used as predictors of educational achievement, job performance and income. People higher in intelligence acquire more job knowledge and acquire it faster. An example of the importance of this comes from a series of studies run by the US military in the 1980s. They found that recruits with below average intelligence required more than three years to reach the same levels of performance that recruits with higher intelligence began with. Even with on-the-job experience, enlistees with lower intelligence continue to lag behind those with higher intelligence.

A summary of over 400 studies found that the validity of intelligence in predicting employees’ performance was 0.38 for low-complexity jobs. But for medium-complexity roles the validity was 0.51 and for high-complexity jobs it was as high as 0.57. This would mean that for high-complexity jobs it can account for over 32 percent of the causes of success. Later research has supported these findings and extended them to show that intelligence tests appear able to predict performance in almost all jobs in all cultures.

2. Explain the related psychological phenomenon or theory in general.

Nature vs. Nurture Debate in regard to Intelligence. The nature vs. nurture debate has shifted from, whether our genetics or the environment influences our psychological processes, to how much both, biology or the environment have an impact. Both nature and nurture have been researched with evidence to support both sides. The nature side or the genetic side argues that intelligence is inherited in the way that a person is born with their maximum mental ability. On the other hand the nurture side or environmental side argues that the environment plays a significant role in a person’s mental ability. The nature theory takes it to say that traits such as intelligence, personality are also in our genetics. This can be tested thanks to the birth of monozygotic or identical twins born from the same cell. Most data suggests that the genetic effect is more powerful.

The nature versus nurture debate concerns the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities ("nature," i.e. nativism, or innatism) versus personal experiences ("nurture," i.e. empiricism or behaviorism) in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits.

Nature Nurture

What is it?: In the "nature vs nurture" debate, nature refers to an individual's innate qualities (nativism). In the "nature vs nurture" debate, nurture refers to personal experiences (i.e. empiricism or behaviorism).

Example: Nature is your genes. The physical and personality traits determined by your genes stay the same irrespective of where you were born and raised. Nurture refers to your childhood, or how you were brought up. Someone could be born with genes to give them a normal height, but be malnourished in childhood, resulting in stunted growth and a failure to develop as expected.

Factors: Biological and family factors Social and environmental factors

This debate within psychology is concerned with the extent to which particular aspects of behavior are a product of either inherited (i.e. genetic) or acquired (i.e. learned) characteristics.

Nature is that which is inherited / genetic. Nurture which refers to all environmental influences after conception, i.e. experience.

3. Relate the event to the psychological concept as clearly as you can.

There have been articles which present and interpret evidence of IQ differences between groups. A major publication was from Herrnstein and Murray's (1994) "The Bell Curve". This book provided information in the direction of 'nature', generating debate and controversy in psychology, sociology, education, and politics.

"The work's main thesis is that an individual's intelligence - no less than 40% and no more than 80% of which is inherited genetically from his or her parents - has more effect than socioeconomic background on future life experiences." Manolakes (1997), p.235

Nature

Physiological/Biological. Psychologists taking this approach believe that behavior can be explained via innate influences such as hormones and genetic influences

Psychoanalysis - Psychologists taking this approach believe that behavior is controlled by the innate aggression and sex drives. They do recognize that society restricts these drives and that these drives are controlled via the ego and the superego.

Nurture

Behaviorism - Behaviorists believe that human behavior is learnt

Humanism - This area of psychology explores the impact of a wide range of social and environmental influences on human behavior.

Evidence suggests that family environmental factors may have an effect upon childhood IQ, accounting for up to a quarter of the variance. Adoption studies indicate that, by adulthood, adoptive siblings are no more similar in IQ than strangers (IQ correlation near zero), while full siblings show an IQ correlation of 0.6. Twin studies reinforce this pattern: monozygotic (identical) twins raised separately are highly similar in IQ (0.74), more so than dizygotic (fraternal) twins raised together (0.6) and much more than adoptive siblings (~0.0). Recent adoption studies also found that supportive parents can have a positive effect on the development of their children.

Individuals with "intelligent" (high IQ) family members tend to be intelligent themselves; this brings the question of whether intelligence is inherited or learned (nature vs. nurture), or a combination of both. The role of genes and environment (nature and nurture) in determining IQ is reviewed in Plomin

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