The Importance Of Intelligence Levels On Intelligence

Introduction

Intelligence is the ability to obtain and use knowledge and skills. Intelligence is what assists humans in thinking rationally, acting purposefully, and adapting to the environment. This is a broad description of intelligence. When it comes to specifying intelligence, there is much debate, especially when it comes to how to measure intelligence. There are IQ tests that produce a single intelligence. However, many argue that these tests are too vague and that these tests do not consider factors that play a role in an individual’s intelligence. While this is true, psychologists have used this test to conduct studies on what affects intelligence levels. Three significant factors that have been studied on and that are believed to

Some believe that this is because of heredity, which is the passing of traits from parents to children. While not completely being responsible for intelligence levels, genetic factors are believed to play a huge role in the intelligence of an individual. There have been studies conducted to understand how genes influence intelligence. The best example of a study that shows the relation between intelligence and heredity is the Bouchard twin study done by Thomas Bouchard. In this experiment, the IQ levels of identical twins who were raised apart and the IQ levels of identical twins who were raised together are compared. This allowed Bouchard to to see how much, if at all, heredity affects intelligence. The results of the experiment showed that the correlation of the IQ scores of identical twins who were raised together was .86. The identical twins who were raised apart had an IQ correlation of .72. While this seems to show that heredity greatly affects intelligence, psychologists argue that identical twins who were raised apart are still treated similar to their twin and that this study did not consider any external factors. However, this study has led psychologists to believe that heredity has an approximate 50 percent effect on

Every culture has its own set of virtues, and each culture values different behaviors. So, this means that not every culture has the same concept of intelligence and values the same mental abilities. An IQ score of a student in the United States and the IQ score of a child in a West African tribe would differ because these two cultures vary greatly. Subcultures have to also be considered in this scenario. A subculture is a group of people in a culture that separate themselves from their culture by practicing their own values. Different types of subcultures would be those who live in poor communities, those who live in rural areas, and ethnic families. Because these groups have different situations and different values, their intelligence would vary. The differences in culture have so greatly affected IQ scores, that psychologists have tried to develop a culture-fair test. This is an intelligence test that minimizes the significance of skills and knowledge that may be more common in some cultures than others. However,there has yet been a test that has been created that has no cultural influences. Another problem with the culture theory is that there are many successful and smart people who come from different cultures. They say this is because it really depends on the person’s environment. While many psychologists argue over the concept of intelligence, many will agree that culture has an effect on levels of