The Context Machine

I was telling a therapist the other day about someone’s score on
the SAT. “Oh,” he said, waving his hand in dismissal, “THAT
thing. It doesn’t measure a THING.”

Let’s set the record state. What he meant was - (1) It doesn’t
measure anything he cared about, or (2) It doesn’t measure
anything that need slow the person down. But it definitely
measures SOMETHING, and if you’re the HR person reviewing test
scores, or the coach reviewing assessments, or the taker looking
at your own results, or the college admission officer, it’s
important to know what a test or assessment DOES measure.

The SAT - Scholastic Aptitude Test - measures aptitude for
college work and SAT scores have been shown to correlate with
success as a college freshman (only). It consists of tests in
Verbal Ability and Mathematical Reasoning.

To refresh your memory, go here http://www.the-big-test.com
ests/index.htm - and take some of the sample tests. What’s your
first reaction? For me, the Sentence Completions are fun. Then I
came to Critical Reading Questions and suddenly felt a need to
make a sandwich. Then came the “if one train leaves the station
at 4 p.m. heading east at 5 mph…” and preparing a 6-course meal
seemed more imperative.

I think it measures your ability to withstand torture. The test
lasts 3 hours and requires incredible concentration. 3 hours,
after all, is an eternity to a high school student. It may
measure more in the testing, than in the knowledge, if you know
what I mean. You have to sit down and read carefully something
that’s irrelevant, just because it’s required. And many the
college students feel that way about freshman year in college!

It’s also an endurance test. It gets harder as you go along,
because your brain gets more tired.

BRIEF HISTORY

The SAT has been called “the 50-year-old system that determines
the course of Americans’ lives.” This sort of college admission
testing began in 1901, but it didn’t really kick in until the U.
Cal. System adopted it in 1960.

Is it biased? It’s been dubbed the “Survey of Affluent
Teenagers,” and the debate rages, but you might be interested to
know that a homeless teenager in California, who had been
completely home-schooled, just scored a perfect 800/800 on the
SAT: ( http://www.thekcrachannel.com/news/574672/detail.html )

It’s believed to have gotten easier over the years; however the
nation’s high school class of 2003 achieved the highest score on
the math section since 1967.

ABOUT THE ARTS …

According to The College Entrance Examination Board, “students
of the arts continue to outperform their non-arts peers on the
SAT.” [Source: http://www.menc.org/information/advocate/sat.html
]. In 2002, “SAT takers with coursework/experience in music
performance scored 57 points higher on the verbal and 41 points
higher on the math than students without.” This is one reason
the arts are encouraged in The EQ Foundation Course©.

Does it relate to anything else in life? Not unless you think
focus, perseverance, and being willing (and able) to do
something mental that’s hard and unpleasant in order to earn a
delayed reward do.

So the optimal word there is “aptitude.” “Aptitude” according to
m-w.com means inclination, tendency; a natural ability; a
capacity for learning; or a general suitability. In this case,
one’s general suitability for college, and that it has been
statistically proven to do.

IQ

Now what does it mean if someone has “a high IQ”? It stands for
Intelligence Quotient and means they did well on an Intelligence
Test. The IQ test was invented in 1905, by a French
psychologist, Alfred Binet. As you know, for a test to have any
“validity” (to mean something beyond speculation) it needs to
have been tested on a lot of people (a large “sample”), and the
IQ test really got a rush during World War I when Robert Yerkes,
a Harvard professor, realizing a captive audience when he saw
one, got permission from the US army to IQ test nearly 2,000,000
recruits.

Most of the abilities measured by an IQ test tend to level off
around age 16. (Some say they’re fixed at birth.) The test
measures such things as factual knowledge, short-term memory,
abstract reasoning and visual-spatial abilities.

“Intelligence is always measured relative to a particular
culture,” says PsychologicalTesting.com. “‘Culture-free’ tests
of intelligence do not exist.” A few examples: Having the
bodily-kinesthetic intelligence to be able to throw a boomerang
accurately is of no practical value if you live in Germany in
2004. Having what it takes to land a plane is of no consequence
unless you should happen to become a pilot.

Being able to predict where oil might be is essential if you’re
a geologist in the oil industry, but not if you’re a chef. What
do they predict? Academic success, school grades, and, according
to one source, about 6% of job success. IQ also correlates with
some “social outcomes”, according to Linda S. Gottfredson,
author of “The General Intelligence Factor.” For a graph, go
here:
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~reingold/courses/intelligence/cache
/1198gottfredbox2.html . To read a summary, go here:
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~reingold/courses/intelligence/cache
/1198gottfred.html .

Is this “intelligence”? It’s a form of intelligence, but we have
hundreds of different mental “abilities,” and an IQ test
measures only a few.

Your “score” is based on an average. An IQ of 100 is higher than
50% of the people taking the test. An IQ of 130 is higher than
95% of the people taking the test.

The Wechsler IQ tests are generally considered to be the best
available measure and are preferred by the Social Security
Administration. http://www.wvu.edu/~law/clinic/docs/margiqss.pdf
. Incidentally, someone is considered “presumptively disabled on
the basis of mental impairments,” if their IQ is 59 or less, and
an individual with an IQ of 70 “has a 50-50 chance of mastering
elementary school curriculum, and will have a hard time
functioning independently without considerable social support.”
(Source: The General Intelligence Factor,” Linda S. Gottfredson).

ON-THE-JOB?

Check out Gottfredson’s graph re: training style and IQ. For an
IQ range of 70-130, she lists 6 progressive learning styles:

Slow, simple, supervised [70-80] Very explicit, hands-on
[80-95] Mastery learning, hands-on [90-110] Written materials,
plus experience [100-110] College format [110-120] Gathers,
infers own information [115 and above] Occupation? Around 80 -
assembler, food service, aide’s aide Around 100 - clerk,
teller, police officer, machinist, sales Around 115 - manager,
teacher, accountant Around 130 - attorney, chemist, executive

SOME ALLEGED IQs

John Locke, Philosopher, 165; Benjamin Franklin, Scientist, 165;
Ludwig Von Beethoven, Composer, 165; Ulysses S Grant, General,
130; Bobby Fisher, Chess Player, 187; Leonardo da Vinci,
Painter, 180; Martin Luther, Theologian, 170; John Stuart Mill,
Economist, 200.

Daniel Goleman and others in the field of what’s called
Emotional Intelligence are busy gathering data that IQ, and even
performance on the SAT, are not the best predictors of success
in life, or happiness, which isn’t a surprise to most of us.
Analogous to money, the complete absence of either is not good,
but the presence of vast quantities of either do not predict
happiness. MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES

Enter Howard and his Multiple Intelligences”(
http://www.ericfacility.net/ericdigests/ed410226.html ), because
the standard IQ tests do not measure such things as musical or
artistic talent or physical coordination.

For example, one of Gardner’s intelligences is called
Bodily-Kinesthetic, i.e., “using one’s mental abilities to
coordinate one’s own bodily movements.” An IQ test also does not
measure emotional stability, awareness, or a number of other
important things. As Arakkal Sebastian says in an article about
IQ, there are all too many stories throughout history of very
smart individuals “who nevertheless were incapable of solving
the problem of how to be a human whose actions had [sic: would
have] a positive effect on one’s fellow humans.”

Nonetheless, something called a “g” factor has been gleaned by
comparing one person’s scores across various IQ tests. Attained
through something called “factor analysis,” (see article from
Scientific America -
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~reingold/courses/intelligence/cache
/1198gottfred.html ) the g factor seems to measure
“intelligence,” as in ability to deal with cognitively
complexity. Says Scientific American, “More complex tasks
require more mental manipulation, and this manipulation of
information - discerning similarities and inconsistencies,
drawing inferences, grasping new concepts and so on -
constitutes intelligence in action. Indeed, intelligence can
best be described as the ability to deal with cognitive
complexity.” “g” corresponds to mental aptitude (reasoning,
problem solving, abstract thinking, quick learning), rather than
accumulated knowledge, but those correlate. “Cognitive” is our
keyword here. Yes, the world is cognitively complex. However, it
is perhaps infinitely more emotionally complex.

ENTER EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage
your own emotions and those of others for positive outcome.

Emotional Intelligence consists of a wide range of capacities
which enable people to excel, such as intentionality,
creativity, resilience, self-awareness, impulse control,
persistence, and empathy. Four areas of mastery are (1)
Identifying emotions, (2) Using emotions, (3) Understanding
emotions, and (4) Regulating emotions. The EQ-Map® is one
assessment: http:/ inyurl.com/z94t .

According to Daniel Goleman, one theorist among many, but the
one who popularized the concept in his book, Emotional
Intelligence (http:/ inyurl.com/z9ny ), people who possess high
Emotional Intelligence are the people who truly succeed,
“building flourishing careers, and lasting, meaningful
relationships.”

Cognitive intelligence has long been studied. You can see some
of the research on Emotional Intelligence here:
http://www.eoconsortium.org .

While our IQ is fixed at some point, we can improve and develop
our EQ over our lifespan, i.e., it can be learned. Our EQ in
many important ways facilitates our IQ.

EXAMPLE

If I asked you right now to multiple 11 x 111 in your head, and
to take as long as you need, you probably wouldn’t have too much
trouble using your cognitive intelligence to “solve” this
problem.

But what if Ben Stein asked you that on television, in front of
1,000,000 viewers, and you had 10 seconds and $10,000 was at
stake. This situation could render your cognitive intelligence
dysfunctional if you were not able to handle the pressure,
perform under stress, focus, and prevent “flooding” from anxiety
from disabling your neocortex!

There are many resources available for increasing your Emotional
Intelligence - certified EQ coaches, books and eBooks, distance
learning courses, EQ Learning Labs and teleclasses. Take an EQ
assessment (http:/ inyurl.com/z94t ). Then delight in the fact
that whatever your “score” is, it can be improved.

Please keep in mind that since EQ involves learning emotional
and social skills, you can’t “just” read about it. Read about it
yes, to get the fundamentals and vocabulary, but then work with
someone trained in the field so you can put theory into practice
and get feedback.