Quoth the Raven’s ‘What’s My Score?

’
IQ (Intelligence Quotient) tests have had a bad press. It is often argued that
we have no idea what ‘intelligence’ is, and that if these tests measure
anything meaningful at all, it is just the quality of the test-taker’s
education.In one sense this is true. ‘Intelligence’ isn’t something with an
objective definition on which we can all agree (like, say, height): even
experts disagree as to how we should define the concept. And, yes, many
IQ tests measure things that can be improved with schooling, such as
vocabulary, general knowledge and the ability to see similarities between
different objects (e.g., a table is like a chair, because both are items of
furniture).
But in a more important sense, these criticisms miss the point. Although
we will never all agree on exactly what we mean by ‘intelligence’, people’s
IQ-test scores are a good predictor of both their academic achievement and
their earnings. So whatever it is that IQ tests are measuring, it is something
that we care about. And while many IQ tests measure things that are taught
more or less explicitly in school, many do not.
Enter Raven’s Progressive Matrices, a test first developed in the 1930s
by a psychologist named John C. Raven. Many experts consider this test to
be the best single measure of intelligence because it is a non-verbal test, a
test that is not based on language.* This means that – unlike vocabulary,
general knowledge or ‘similarities’, all of which can be taught in school – it
is a relatively pure measure of intelligence, as opposed to simply the quality
of the test-taker’s education. This also means that the test is relatively fair to
test-takers from different ethnic and socio-economic groups. At least, it is
fairer than – say – a vocabulary test, which might include words that are not
commonly used by the relevant group.
Notice that I have twice stressed the word ‘relatively’. No test will ever
be completely immune to the effects of schooling, if only because school
provides practice in essential test-taking skills such as sitting down, shutting
up and concentrating on doing what you are told. Similarly, no test will ever
be completely ‘culture-fair’, as parents from different ethnic and socio-
economic groups differ in the extent to which they value – and encourage
their children to value – abstract reasoning and logical thinking. In short, no
test is perfect, but a progressive-matrices-style test is the best in town.
So let’s take one. The test begins below. It has twenty-five questions,
and there is no time-limit. Each question takes the form of a 3 × 3 grid (or
‘matrix’) from which one item is missing. Your job is to choose, from eight
possible items on the right, A-H, the one that completes the grid best. (I’m
not going to give you any more instructions than that; you must figure out
for yourself what ‘completes the grid best’ means in each case.)

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Now work out your IQ score.

ANSWERS
Score one point for each correct answer:

1:H, 2:A, 3:C, 4:E, 5:F, 6:D, 7:B, 8:H, 9:C, 10:D, 11:A, 12:H, 13:E, 14:A,
15:F, 16:H, 17:A, 18:G, 19:F, 20:B, 21:F, 22:B, 23:D, 24:F, 25:H.

Before working out your IQ, it’s important for you to know that the only
way to get a proper measure is to take a full test, administered by a
qualified clinical or educational psychologist. That said, the test that you
have just taken is of higher quality than most of those that you will find for
free on the web, and while you should not take your result as gospel, it is
probably in the right ballpark.*
With that caveat in mind, consult the table below to convert your raw
score (number correct) to an IQ.
 IQ scores are designed so that the mean (or average) is 100. So, average
performance corresponds to 12/25 (an IQ of 98) or 13/25 (an IQ of 101).
Look across to the Percentile column to see the percentage of people that
you are smarter than. For example, if you got 19/25, you are smarter than
almost 94 per cent of people; but if you got 10/25, you a smarter than only
about 30 per cent of people (i.e., 70 per cent of people are smarter than
you).
This is all very well, but what does it mean for you? A lot! As well as
some other things that we will meet later in the book (which I’ll keep under
wraps for now) – IQ scores are correlated with …

academic performance; though one recent study found that IQ seems

to be less important than self-discipline.
income; though this is influenced by many other things too, of course,
including parental income, social class and …
occupation. Unsurprisingly, certain occupations tend to have higher or
lower average IQs than the average for the general population. For
example, doctors (121), college professors (115), high-school teachers
(110), elementary/primary school teachers (107), NFL quarterbacks
(105) and – just about – police offers (101) are above the average
(100), while farmworkers (96), plumbers (96), carpenters (94) and
cleaners (90) are below. Of course, these are just averages. For
example, in the survey in question, the brightest farmworker (121) was
a lot brighter than the thickest college professor (110). Incidentally,
some celebrities rumoured to have particularly impressive IQs are
Stephen Hawing (160), Quentin Tarantino (160), Sharon Stone (154)
and Shakira (140). The highest IQ in the world (210) belongs to a civil
engineer from South Korea, Kim Ung-Young (not to be confused with
the North Korean dictators Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un).
mortality. Yes, stupider people die younger. A recent review found
that the effect seems to be real and not a ‘confound’* caused – for
example – by some people getting diseases that lower their IQ before
eventually killing them. Instead, cleverer people are likely to be better
at avoiding illnesses and injuries, better able to deal with them when
they arise (thanks in part to their increased earning power) and more
likely to eat healthily and exercise (though the effects of social class
are difficult to pick apart here). Another possibility is that there is no
causal link at all, and that a well-put-together brain is just an indicator
of an overall well-put-together body.
birth order. First-born children tend to have higher IQs than their
later-born siblings (even when tested at the same age). This seems to
be caused by two factors. The first is that only firstborns have a period
of undivided parental attention. The second is a paradoxical ‘tutoring
effect’: the older child ‘tutors’ the younger, but this boosts the IQ of
the tutor more than the tutee, presumably because explaining
something first requires you to get it straight in your own head.
parental IQ. The claim that cleverer parents (who, as we have seen,
also tend to be wealthier parents) have cleverer children is perhaps a
rather controversial one in the wider world. But among researchers,
some genetic basis for IQ is basically accepted as fact. Many studies
have shown, for example, that identical twins (who share 100 per cent
of their genes) have more similar IQs than mere siblings (who share 50
per cent of their genes), even if separated at birth. However, figuring
out the relative contributions of genes and the environment is not
straightforward, partly because genetically smarter children may seek
out more intellectually stimulating environments and partly because
the mother’s womb is a particularly important part of ‘the
environment’, but one that is very difficult to disentangle from
genetics (identical twins share not only their genes but also a womb).
 To sum up, how you get on in life is determined partially by your
genetically endowed intelligence, yes, but also by your environment and
your own actions; so it’s up to you to make the most of what you’ve got by
working hard, developing self-discipline and seeking out intellectual
stimulation at every opportunity.

Web Link
The test included in this section was reproduced by kind permission of Eric Jorgenson, who runs an
online IQ-testing site. Why not contribute to this project, by taking the tests at: http://en.iniq.org/?

Footnotes
* More comprehensive measures such as the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale and the Weschler
Intelligence Scale for Children are made up of ten to fifteen individual tests, the results from which
are combined to give the final IQ score. Interestingly, though, scores on different types of test
(vocabulary, short-term memory, processing speed and visual processing) are highly correlated,
meaning that if you score high (or low) on one type of test, you generally score high (or low) on all
of them. For this reason, most psychologists don’t have much truck with the objection that particular
individual tests are unfair. If, say, a Raven’s-style test is such a bad measure of intelligence, how
come it is an excellent predictor of your vocabulary, your verbal reasoning skills, your short-term
memory and so on?
* However, note that these norms come from a sample of (400) participants who took the test online.
People who take online IQ tests generally have higher IQs than the population at large, so this test
probably underestimates your actual IQ a bit, but not too much (probably by no more than 10 points).
* A confound is a third factor that obscures the relationship between two things we’re interested in,
by being related to both of them. For example, say we want to investigate the link between drinking
(the first thing we’re interested in) and heart disease (the second thing we’re interested in). A
confound – a third factor that muddies the waters – would be diet: heavy drinkers are also likely to
eat unhealthily, which is another risk factor for heart disease. Another example, and a more detailed
explanation, is given in the next section.