If an IQ test told me that I have an IQ of 90… and if I would have a good reason to believe the test’s reliability… I would be extremely confused.
An IQ test giving me a result of 140 or higher, really wouldn’t do anything useful, but that’s because I already know. (Telling you an information you already know is useless. That doesn’t mean the information was useless in the first place; just that its another repetition is.)
For me, knowing of my high IQ provided partial explanation to things I perceived in my life. (It was not a full story of course; one needs to also take into account high neuroticism, and probably some undiagnosed autism. But again; knowing about these concepts further improved my self-understanding.) Such as “why are most people so uninterested in things that I find fascinating?” or “why is learning at school so easy to me, except for subjects that are mostly memorization?”. Or “where could I find people similar to me?”.
There were alternative explanations, such as “the topics I am interested in are inherently weird” or “learning is easy to me because I spend a lot of time reading stuff”, which seemed to almost fit, but not completely. (For example “because I read stuff” is yet another thing that needs to be explained; why I like reading about things, but most kids don’t?)
If an IQ test told me that I have an IQ of 90… and if I would have a good reason to believe the test’s reliability… I would be extremely confused.
An IQ test giving me a result of 140 or higher, really wouldn’t do anything useful, but that’s because I already know. (Telling you an information you already know is useless. That doesn’t mean the information was useless in the first place; just that its another repetition is.)
For me, knowing of my high IQ provided partial explanation to things I perceived in my life. (It was not a full story of course; one needs to also take into account high neuroticism, and probably some undiagnosed autism. But again; knowing about these concepts further improved my self-understanding.) Such as “why are most people so uninterested in things that I find fascinating?” or “why is learning at school so easy to me, except for subjects that are mostly memorization?”. Or “where could I find people similar to me?”.
There were alternative explanations, such as “the topics I am interested in are inherently weird” or “learning is easy to me because I spend a lot of time reading stuff”, which seemed to almost fit, but not completely. (For example “because I read stuff” is yet another thing that needs to be explained; why I like reading about things, but most kids don’t?)