It seems to me that you can find out a lot about people’s intelligence by talking with them a little, though I’ve underestimated people who were bright enough but didn’t present as intellectual.
You’re also liable to perceive people with low social skills as less intelligent than they are, because the social situation is too hard a burden on their processing capacities.
It’s not really surprising that people’s intelligence seems to be rarely overestimated, though, is it? Smartness is impossible to fake, but you can fake stupidity.
But yes, of course, for various purposes, IQ is not the one thing that we need to know. Who would have doubted that?
Fluidly using the right jargon, and signaling that you ‘know stuff’ without sounding like you’re trying hard too show that you know stuff, requires a fair amount of intelligence. (Incidentally, an inability to maintain a natural flow of conversation when someone knows a lot of stuff is one way highly intelligent people reveal that their social acuity is not that high. Their IQ may be extremely high, but a five minute interview can often easily identify these things.)
A certain degree of being articulate and appropriately assertive can be trained – I think I see this happen in the military. However, I don’t think it’s a fake signal, I think this training really results in greater general intelligence, or greater ability to succeed in any case.
You’re also liable to perceive people with low social skills as less intelligent than they are
Also, you are likely to underestimate the intelligence of people who are not native speakers of your language (because language skills influence all data your heuristics get), or have some speech problems.
Is this based on theoretical reasoning or do you have anecdotal evidence for it? I’m genuinely curious because I don’t know what to think on this issue.
It just follows from my model of the world, that the intelligence of a person correlates with their ability to react quickly, to make and understand jokes, to use a nuanced vocabulary, etc., and all these abilities are impaired when the person must struggle with the language or speech itself.
Of course there are also other things correlated with intelligence which don’t depend on language skills. I’m not saying that an intelligent person will seem like a complete idiot just because they speak another language. It’s more like a person with IQ 150 will seem like a person with IQ 120; and a person with IQ 120 may seem like a person with IQ 90. The difference would depend on their language skils.
I don’t know if anyone tested this experimentally, but it should be easy. Take a few foreigners, give them some standardized English tests and IQ tests… then let them do some verbals tasks (e.g. tell a story) in front of the audience… then let the audience rank them according to their intelligence.
lt;dr—Speaking slowly, making mistakes in difficult phrases, misunderstanding jokes… is evidence of low IQ. But it’s also what foreigners do when speaking your language.
It’s more like a person with IQ 150 will seem like a person with IQ 120; and a person with IQ 120 may seem like a person with IQ 90. The difference would depend on their language skills.
I am pretty sure that this doesn’t happen. The reason is that when you speak a language so badly that you make those kinds of mistakes that make you appear stupid, you also have an accent—and that is a sign to the listener that they have to account for your being someone with potentially poor command of a foreign language.
This won’t make the effect vanish completely, but I think it weakens it quite a bit so that it may not be a big issue in practice.
Incidentally, some people argue that for this reason, it’s better to not even try to have no accent. I’m not sure I agree. For one thing, an accent puts a sort of ceiling on how people will perceive your intelligence—you cannot, for example, make witty puns when you have a strong accent, because people will think it was unintentional and won’t give you credit for it.
And there’s brains like mine, which insist that the pronouncedness of one’s accent is correlated with intelligence. It probably is, though I suspect not as strongly as my brain thinks it is.
It’s not really surprising that people’s intelligence seems to be rarely overestimated, though, is it? Smartness is impossible to fake, but you can fake stupidity.
In a hypothetical world where social skills (presentation) and IQ are inversely correlated, where you don’t know they are inversely correlated, and where you spend most of your time interacting with people in the 140+ IQ range, a person with a 120 IQ could come along and impress you to such a great extent that you immediately hypothesize that their IQ is in the 160+ range, until you see something of substance.
If intelligence is underestimated in some, and talking to someone leads you to believe you can estimate their IQ, and people with better social skills initially appear more intelligent, then it is possible to overestimate intelligence. You just start with the benchmark presentation of someone you know to be intelligent, and when someone who is less intelligent but presents better than them comes along, you overestimate their IQ.
Happens to me all the time… (practicing overestimation, not being overestimated). One of the biases I’ve struggled with most.
You’re also liable to perceive people with low social skills as less intelligent than they are, because the social situation is too hard a burden on their processing capacities.
It’s not really surprising that people’s intelligence seems to be rarely overestimated, though, is it? Smartness is impossible to fake, but you can fake stupidity.
But yes, of course, for various purposes, IQ is not the one thing that we need to know. Who would have doubted that?
The right jargon, and sounding like you know stuff (otherwise called being assertive), goes a long way.
Fluidly using the right jargon, and signaling that you ‘know stuff’ without sounding like you’re trying hard too show that you know stuff, requires a fair amount of intelligence. (Incidentally, an inability to maintain a natural flow of conversation when someone knows a lot of stuff is one way highly intelligent people reveal that their social acuity is not that high. Their IQ may be extremely high, but a five minute interview can often easily identify these things.)
A certain degree of being articulate and appropriately assertive can be trained – I think I see this happen in the military. However, I don’t think it’s a fake signal, I think this training really results in greater general intelligence, or greater ability to succeed in any case.
Also, you are likely to underestimate the intelligence of people who are not native speakers of your language (because language skills influence all data your heuristics get), or have some speech problems.
Is this based on theoretical reasoning or do you have anecdotal evidence for it? I’m genuinely curious because I don’t know what to think on this issue.
It just follows from my model of the world, that the intelligence of a person correlates with their ability to react quickly, to make and understand jokes, to use a nuanced vocabulary, etc., and all these abilities are impaired when the person must struggle with the language or speech itself.
Of course there are also other things correlated with intelligence which don’t depend on language skills. I’m not saying that an intelligent person will seem like a complete idiot just because they speak another language. It’s more like a person with IQ 150 will seem like a person with IQ 120; and a person with IQ 120 may seem like a person with IQ 90. The difference would depend on their language skils.
I don’t know if anyone tested this experimentally, but it should be easy. Take a few foreigners, give them some standardized English tests and IQ tests… then let them do some verbals tasks (e.g. tell a story) in front of the audience… then let the audience rank them according to their intelligence.
lt;dr—Speaking slowly, making mistakes in difficult phrases, misunderstanding jokes… is evidence of low IQ. But it’s also what foreigners do when speaking your language.
I am pretty sure that this doesn’t happen. The reason is that when you speak a language so badly that you make those kinds of mistakes that make you appear stupid, you also have an accent—and that is a sign to the listener that they have to account for your being someone with potentially poor command of a foreign language.
This won’t make the effect vanish completely, but I think it weakens it quite a bit so that it may not be a big issue in practice.
Incidentally, some people argue that for this reason, it’s better to not even try to have no accent. I’m not sure I agree. For one thing, an accent puts a sort of ceiling on how people will perceive your intelligence—you cannot, for example, make witty puns when you have a strong accent, because people will think it was unintentional and won’t give you credit for it.
And there’s brains like mine, which insist that the pronouncedness of one’s accent is correlated with intelligence. It probably is, though I suspect not as strongly as my brain thinks it is.
In a hypothetical world where social skills (presentation) and IQ are inversely correlated, where you don’t know they are inversely correlated, and where you spend most of your time interacting with people in the 140+ IQ range, a person with a 120 IQ could come along and impress you to such a great extent that you immediately hypothesize that their IQ is in the 160+ range, until you see something of substance.
If intelligence is underestimated in some, and talking to someone leads you to believe you can estimate their IQ, and people with better social skills initially appear more intelligent, then it is possible to overestimate intelligence. You just start with the benchmark presentation of someone you know to be intelligent, and when someone who is less intelligent but presents better than them comes along, you overestimate their IQ.
Happens to me all the time… (practicing overestimation, not being overestimated). One of the biases I’ve struggled with most.