Is IQ a Predictor of Success?

It is a belief especially in our African society that if a child is able to score good grades at school, they a sure to become success stories in future. But this not as straight forward as we would wish to believe. Intelligence alone does not guaranty a smooth straight way to success. So what does?

 According to Wikipedia, intelligence quotient (IQ) is a total score derived from one of several standardized tests designed to assess human intelligence. 

In the early 1920’s a Scientist called Lewis Terman began the “Terman project” to investigate the idea that genius-level IQ was associated with social and personal maladjustment. This project involved approximately 1500 children from California between the ages of 8 and 12 who had an IQ of at least 140, the minimum required to be considered a genius. The average IQ score of the group of participants was 150, and 80 of these children had scores above 170.  Many of these members did become very successful doctors, lawyers, business executives, professors, and scientists with an average salary of $33,000 dollars at a time when the average yearly income was $5,000. Two-thirds of them had earned college degrees and a large number of the participants had gone on to earn graduate and professional degrees.

However not all of these high IQ subjects were so successful. A Researcher Melita Oden, who had carried on the research after Terman's death, decided to compare the 100 most successful individuals (group "A") to the 100 least successful (group "C"). While they essentially had the exact same IQs, only a few people from group C had become professionals, most earned just slightly above the average yearly income, and they had higher rates of alcoholism and divorce than individuals from group A.What could explain this disparity? If IQ predicts success, why did these individuals with similar intelligence scores fare so differently in life?Terman had noted that as children the individuals in group A tended to exhibit "prudence and forethought, willpower, perseverance, and the desire to excel." Later as adults, those from group A tended to rate higher than those from group C on three key traits: goal-orientation, self-confidence, and perseverance. These Key traits fall under what is referred to as Emotional Intelligence (EQ). That is to say, IQ + EQ = Success. So IQ – EQ = you can guess! No success.

This suggests that while IQ can play a role in life success, personality traits or Emotional Intelligence are also important factors in determining outcomes.

Now looking back at our Africa and particularly Uganda where caning in schools is a norm for directing “Understanding” by inflicting pain, one can conclude that this primitive way of thinking could have caused more harm than good to the development of individuals and our societies at large.

The same blame can also be directed to parents or Guardians who instead of inculcating values of goal-orientation, self-confidence and perseverance on their children, instead choose the "quick fix" of fear and harshness to scare the child into good performance at school. There is also the fact that training or teaching of children in most of our schools right from nursery to University is totally void of the consideration to the naturing of a child’s IQ or intellectual capabilities.

May be for Africa’s future to be more prosperous, we need to be more intentional in preparing our future generations for the future.

More on this research can be got from https://www.verywell.com/are-people-with-high-iqs-more-successful-2795280

More about Emotional Intelligence can be got from https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-emotional-intelligence-eq/

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