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IQ and communication

foolish heart

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At least one person needs to flex their communicative cognition to match the others'. It has been my personal experience that it is up to the most intelligent to do this or suffer the consequences.
 

Litvyak

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Using statistical methods to translate several personality traits associated with intelligence, Mr. Simonton has compiled IQ estimates for every American president.

I'm not really convinced by the idea of calculating IQ based on these "traits".

Besides...

It's more difficult to have a deep connection, because interests and accumulated knowledge can create big gaps in sharing.

... this seems to be pretty accurate.
 

onemoretime

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Damn, really good info. I'll be honest - I'm way too good at rationalizing fear. I need to learn to get over that. Too bad that's hard as shit.
 

Stanton Moore

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The point was that communication is an issue. If you wanted to speak to those children about music, communication would be an issue. You wouldn't be able to communicate a lot about what you were thinking.

That is all. How could you even disagree?

It's not about being "better" or any value judgment.

Everything you've said in this thread contains a value judgement.
 

rav3n

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Take the different learning styles of visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Does this mean that everyone in one or two categories has predominantly lesser IQs?
 

Red Herring

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Just out of curiosity: Would that be Cattell, Stanford Binet or Wechsler (in the article)?

Not only have there been dozents of discussions on the definition of intelligence and how to measure it but on top of that I find that, more often than not, when I hear Americans mention high scores that sound impressive to my European ear it´s usually in Cattell, not Wechsler. It´s like talking about the weather without saying if you mean Fahrenheit or Celsius!

What else? Oh yeah, if you have trouble communicating your ideas, there are basically 3 options:

1. Hope and pray everybody else changes and suddenly gets you

2. Give up and become a hermit...with a nice little cave of your own and everything, maybe you can build a little computer out of twigs and pebbles

3. See it as a challenge to improve your communication skills and use the opportunity to seee if your ideas really are all that clear and coherent once you free them of the technical babble and express them in simple words. Several philosophy grads among my friend don´t notice when they get caught up in semantics.
 

miss fortune

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:thinking: I don't really have that much of a problem communicating with anyone who speaks any language that I speak sufficiently... communicating is one of my talents- I can communicate perfectly fine with dumbasses OR geniuses... I am usually one of the most common denominators in the world of communication :rofl1:
 

Mycroft

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I dunno, Night. Aren't you American? Intelligence tends toward precision in speech, leading the average American to the conclusion that you're Some Kind of Queer and not to be trusted.
 
T

ThatGirl

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Wow, old thread.

Actually 15 points can make a huge difference.

I don't have a huge IQ but I still know that is a fact.
 

Sunny Ghost

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Education level might contribute. Maturity too, but not IQ.
Let's say I am a very fast runner. What does that have to do with walking with my grandmother to the park? It's all context dependent. What does my IQ have to do with general communication? And shouldn't a bright person be able to aid someone else by understanding their lack of knowledge and gauging your statements accordingly? I think so. I did it all the time when I tutored language or music. I knew more, so it was my obligation to present the information in such a way that the person could assimilate it and learn. You do this by assessing what he/she knows about, and creating metaphors based on that (if possible).

Edit: re:above guy -- If you are an olympic runner, you probably have to try to walk as slow as a grandma. (Have you ever tried walking half of your normal walking speed? It takes real effort). That's what it's like for the smarter person. It takes effort to translate your ideas such that they'll be understood.

I think it requires some intelligence to know your audience, and adapt your style of communicating an idea to it. Also, if an intelligent person only acts condescending towards the lesser intelligent person (and here, by intelligent, I mean pertaining to a particular subject or topic), then that person is being put into a disadvantage of not ever gaining anything out of the experience. They aren't being given an opportunity to learn the idea or concept that is being explained. I've always agreed with the school of thought that a person that is highly knowledgeable in any arena, can easily break down an idea or concept and explain simply enough for a 5 year old to understand.


I also think that if you are speaking with someone with a possibly lower iq than oneself, by adapting or speaking more on that level, you are capable of seeing what real intelligence they do have. (Some people remember facts, and therefore know shit. Others don't retain that type of information, and may therefore be ignorant towards a topic... yet, they may be quick to grasp and comprehend.) And same when I speak with people of higher intelligence than myself... if they are condescending or try to belittle me, I can't possibly gain anything from the experience, nor will they see anything of worth in me as they aren't even offering me an opportunity to show what intelligence I do have.

However, I don't give much to scores and numbers on IQ tests. There are many different types of intelligence.
 

lunalum

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I've heard the case made the significant differences in IQ of like 15 or so points makes it more difficult to communicate between the two parties because they think differently. For the most part, it comes to the one with the higher IQ generating more complicated ideas that the one with the lower IQ doesn't comprehend as easily, or doesn't understand at all as the case may be. Even a slight lag in ability to understand basic concepts can create serious barriers to communication and stifle the quality social interaction.

So to those of you who have studied IQ to any extent, do you think this premise is true? Please do expand upon the idea if you can.

Nah, I think it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to link IQ similarities and the ability to communicate.

If anything, there could be some correlations in similar verbal IQs and communicating better, but even that is a stretch.

The IQ test doesn't evaluate if a person understands all "basic concepts," so a lag in this ability is likely to be undetected by the test.

I'll give two examples for now:

(a.) Person A has a full scale IQ of 80, and has dedicated his/her whole life to soaking in as much information as possible.

Person B has a full scale IQ of 140, and has decidated his/her whole life to watching escapist TV shows and eating potato chips.

When these two meet to discuss a topic that is new to both of them, sure they are going to approach things very differently, but guess which one is going to end up looking like a fool ;)

(b.) Person X has a full scale IQ of 100, but with a verbal IQ of 130 and a performance IQ of 70.

Person Y has a full scale IQ of 100, but with a verbal IQ of 70 and a performance IQ of 130.

These two are likely to process information quite differently, and unless a whole bunch of other factors even them out, they will probably have difficulty communicating.


Anyways, the gap between people who have trouble communicating due of them lagging behind in understanding, isn't likely to be summarized by simply a 15 point IQ gap. Looking outside the IQ box to things like different components of IQ, education, background, motivation/interest, layman's estimates of intelligence, etc. is necessary.

When all those are taken into consideration and there is still a gap, surely there is going to be difficulty in communicating.
 

lunalum

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Well IQ measures various types of intelligence, and I do think it is an accurate indication of certain qualities inherit to the individual.

'Indication' in the most general sense. Intelligence, as a general term, is nowhere close to fixed. And also if you are talking of test results.... so many things can go wrong with testing so that it could totally miss these certain qualities.

An IQ test can reveal many things about your various strengths and weaknesses.

This is what it actually is quite good at.

It is possible (as I've heard it being suggested) that you will likely get along more easily with those who have a similar IQ level. Anecdotally I'd say it's likely true, but I'll only call it true if I can find a study on it.

This is an interesting theory though. Too bad that know very few people closely, and even fewer who have actually taken a real IQ test. A study would be tricky...

And yes, part of intelligence is being able to take complicated concepts and simplify them for others to understand. It's one aspect of intelligence.

Pretty much, yes. Though I should point out that you are bordering on using IQ and intelligence interchangebly here, which is a HUGE no no.

However, some people will always take the emotional response to the subject of IQ it seems :/ .

I admit I am having fun poking holes in all this ;)

With all the research that I've done on this, it's funny how very few people can communicate about IQ without flaws to poke at.

And I'm sure most of those people have full scale IQs far beyond mine....
 

redacted

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It seems pretty obvious that intelligence is a factor when two people are communicating. There are clearly many other factors (education level being a huge one). But doesn't it seem to be more likely than chance that two people at similar IQ levels would have other communication-relevant traits in common?

I think IQ similarity MUST positively correlate with communication ability between two people. I'm not making the claim that it's the limiting factor, or even that it's the most important factor. But it's like... similarity on any scale is likely to make communication easier -- why not IQ?

Also, personal anecdotal evidence makes me think intelligent people group together (not necessarily high IQ people, but correlated). Even ignoring other factors, people specialize their communication towards their social groups, making it harder to speak to others.
 
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I'm amazed that everyone here is just expressing opinion without looking for data, as if it's fact.

My first thought was to look for publications and studies on this, since obviously IQ and degree of sociability are two things that are widely tested.

My conclusion is that there is conflicting literature. The studies that have been conducted aren't well designed and typically draw bigger conclusions than either sample size or age range allows for.

An e.g. is this recent study, published last year, which claims that the adult males studied among the "high IQ" group showed a lower propensity towards mental illness and instability, and were highly sociable. The author then goes on to claim that the "unstable" group may be the "intermediate" (IQ=130-160) group instead. But if you look closely at his statistics, he basically only had a sample size of 11 for America and 2 for Europe. Of which, he claimed that because only 4 out of the 11 had diagnosed psychiatric disorders, and 3 "only" had neurotic behavior but were undiagnosed, the majority of them were psychologically normal! And he similarly made the claim for Europe based on the amazing sample size of 2.

This study instead focussed on childhood IQ and with a big enough sample size sought to show that children with higher IQs were less well-adjusted. However, this says nothing about adult IQs and how adults relate to each other. As most social skills are gained through teenage years through to early adulthood, it's quite a stretch to extend this conclusion to that of adult interaction. The brain isn't fully developed till the age of 24, after all.

There's quite a bit more information and statistics out there, if people would like to go look. But in my preliminary search (I'm not interested enough to look further than google) I haven't seen a study done properly - in a longitudinal fashion, with multiple testing criterion, involving a large enough sample size. The cost is probably prohibitive.

The only reason why I actually went so far as to search out information was to point out that in this thread, all there's been so far is simply assumptions and personal opinion.
 

lunalum

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But doesn't it seem to be more likely than chance that two people at similar IQ levels would have other communication-relevant traits in common?

I think IQ similarity MUST positively correlate with communication ability between two people. I'm not making the claim that it's the limiting factor, or even that it's the most important factor. But it's like... similarity on any scale is likely to make communication easier -- why not IQ?

I agree.

But the question remains about how much the two are correlated.

Does a similarity in IQ make communication any easier than a similarity in liking unicorns?

Until I can find some relevant studies or at least some anecdotal evidence (one where the person actually knows the real IQ of the other), it seems like liking unicorns could make communication easier more than similar IQs would.
 

ColonelGadaafi

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Aslong as neither of the partners are mentally impaired, communication should not be a problem, even when dealing with abstract concepts. Education on said subject should fill the gap. And besides, a person can up their cognitive performance and their ability to comprehend subjects, proven with research. But i think people here put the finger on the important points, interest's/values and commonalities are far more important in communcation then gaps in "intelligence". Something i also want to adress is personality and mental patterns, which may and may not be influenced by said "intelligence".
 

Mole

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???????

I've been amazed to discover that some respond to the emotion in my speech but not the ideas.

I like to bounce between the two - sometimes in harmony, sometimes counter-point, and sometimes with humour.

But when I realise they are only hearing the emotion, I back right off and speak only at the emotional level.

And what is amazing is that they don't realise they are only operating at one level. ???????
 

Stanton Moore

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I've been amazed to discover that some respond to the emotion in my speech but not the ideas.

I like to bounce between the two - sometimes in harmony, sometimes counter-point, and sometimes with humour.

But when I realise they are only hearing the emotion, I back right off and speak only at the emotional level.

And what is amazing is that they don't realise they are only operating at one level. ???????

That's what happens when people can't figure out what you're talking about.
 

Mole

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That's what happens when people can't figure out what you're talking about.

I like reading books I don't quite understand. And I am permanently on the lookout for new ideas. It's as though a new idea tickles a special part of my brain.

So what's the alternative? The same old, same old? Just repeating the same old ideas and feelings back and forth to one another. Is that all there is?
 

lunalum

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So you see the importance of going slightly beyond what you understand but not totally?

Going totally out of the norm is like trying to speak a language to those who don't know the language at all.

It is this overdeviation from what the recipient knows that tends leads to miscommunication.

Then it is different knowledge that causes a lot of the problem, not different IQ.
 
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