Intelligence and Western Iq Test Essay

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This essay is concerned with a single major question: is it appropriate to give an IQ test as part of a job interview? In order to answer this question, we need first to give a meaning to the word intelligence. Do we measure it by how well we are doing at school, or how well we fit in majority’s norms? Can a test show how motivated we are or how we can handle stressful situations? Does everybody have the same understanding for intelligence? The biggest question: can a test say how successful we are going to be in real life? It would have been so easy if we were able to know how good somebody is going to be in his job based on a single test, but I don’t think that we have reached the point to do so, I believe that there are a lot of skills that can’t be tested with an IQ test.
Nowadays people are fighting for equality and the majority is trying to accept minority’s differences. However, I don’t think that is the case because as Sternberg is saying that intelligence is whatever is required to meet adaptive demands in culture(Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2000). There are a lot of different types of cultures in the world, therefore there should be a lot of different understandings of intelligence. I do not think that a western IQ test can combine all of them. For example, some Africans believe that intelligence is made from four broad concepts: academic intelligence, social qualities, practical thinking and comprehension. Researches show that people in Kenya who have performed better on practical tests, which are very important for the locals, tend to have lower IQ scores (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 1997). I do not think these people are stupid just because they have different values and I do not believe that employers are choosing employees only based on their skills and that there is no discrimination nowadays.
Over the past several years, women have done a lot to have the same rights as men, but still males tend to have an average of 3.6 IQ points higher than females (Storek & Furnham, 2014), maybe it is because males are over-confident and females are under-confident or because males are better are on Vandenberg Mental Rotation Task (Vandenberg and Kuse, 1978) and they tend to have 1SD higher points than females (Linn & Petersen, 1985; Masters & Sanders, 1993). Another key thing to remember is that Gardner is saying that there 9 different types of intelligence (Gardner, 1983) and these different types of intelligence are linked to different, interacting parts of the brain. It takes years for researches to test all of the parts, what can we expect from a test then? Also, autistic people seem to have a low performance on IQ tests but some savants have great skills. For instance, Kim Peek whose IQ scores were 87 can read a page for 8 to 10 seconds and remember it by heart, the psychological report concluded that his classification is not a valid description of his intellectual ability (Treffert and Christensen, 2005). Thus, I believe that we cannot judge about people’s intelligence and skills only by an IQ test. Cattell is introducing us to two types of general intelligence: fluid intelligence (gf)-the ability to deal with novel problem solving and crystallized intelligence (gc)- the ability to apply previously acquired knowledge (Cattell, 1961). With this in mind we can say that IQ measures pretty good our gf intelligence but it cannot measure the gc one which is as important as the first one (Mackinstosh,2011). Furthermore, similar to IQ there is EQ, which measures emotional intelligence: the ability to identify, assess, manage and control the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups. Its principles help in evaluating employee behavior, management styles, attitudes, interpersonal skills and potentials and is considered to have great relevance in areas like job profiling, planning, recruitment and selection (Serrat 2009). Higher EQ not only allows people to better understand
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