The importance of intelligence in Western societies

Abstract

There are many different questions about intelligence that easily become confused. They concern its measurement, its psychological basis (if any), its heritability and its relevance to human group differences. Even a discussion of the importance of intelligence could range widely. (1) The evolution of intelligence might consider what selection pressures generate and maintain the higher levels of intelligence that humans are generally thought to possess. (2) The persistence of individual differences in human intelligence could consider whether such differences serve some ‘group’ function in establishing clear bases for social hierarchy: individuals might differ just because intelligence is irrelevant to fertility under conditions of social hierarchy. Or the differences might be temporary, because Western social hierarchies depend on intelligence differences that they will soon undermine. (3) Is intelligence an explanatory concept in psychology? Or must attribution of scholastic or other successes to ‘intelligence’ always yield to further analyses that somehow break down intelligence into hypothetical ‘components’? (4) Educational relevance might be the issue: is it important to take intelligence differences into account when deciding on how to educate children? (5) Or the concern might be with democratic sentiment and the importance people attach to intelligence for themselves and in their spouses and children.

Annotation: Conceptions of Intelligence

“…Consequently, understanding the basis of general intelligence and how it constrains the development of specific abilities is likely to impact on educational practice. Brand (1996) has argued that speed is indeed the basis of g, and speed changes during development cause changes in mental age. As a result, he proposes that children's education should be '' streamed '' not by their chronological ages but by their mental ages.…”

Predicting the working alliance over the course of long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy with the Rorschach Ego Impairment Index, self-reported defense style, and performance-based intelligence: An evaluation of three methodological approaches.

“…Additional explanations might be offered for why intelligence was the only variable consistently predicting therapist-rated alliance development. For instance, since intelligence is generally highly valued in society (Brand, 1996), cognitively capable patients could have made a more favorable impression on their therapists, this “halo effect” also influencing their assessments of the working alliance. Whatever the explanation, the generally positive relationship of intelligence to patient- and therapist-rated alliance seems noteworthy.…”

The Study of Dyslexia

“…We know from factor analysis that the general factor in an assessment accounts for three times as much of the variance as all the other factors put together (Brand, 1996). We know from factor analysis that the general factor in an assessment accounts for three times as much of the variance as all the other factors put together (Brand, 1996).…”