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Author of “Intelligence, IQ & Perception”4y
I know a 140 IQ is good, but what does it really do?
An IQ of 140 is a mixed blessing. On an IQ scale for which the mean is 100 and standard deviation 15, a person with an IQ of 140 is in the 99.616957th percentile. This means that they have scored higher than 99.6% of the population on the test, an achievement equalled or bettered by only 1 in 261 people.
The “blessing” part of this high score is that it suggests that the person learns easily, can problem-solve at very high levels, and indulge in sophisticated abstract thought. This means that with sufficient work they can learn virtually any academic subject in the natural and social sciences. For such a person, virtually all career choices, except those that require special athletic or musical aptitudes will be available. Furthermore, the learning will be easier than for most people and can be acquired through books or computers with a minimum of external help. If coupled with tenacity and a passion to achieve, it represents an unbeatable combination of personal assets for achieving intellectual goals.
However, there are several potential downsides to such intellectual gifts. Often gifted children are perceived as socially different from their peers and are ostracized, ignored, bullied, or ridiculed. This was the case for people like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk (who had his nose broken when thrown down a flight of stairs). While average children can self-reference to anticipate how others feel, this is often unavailable to those who are socially different. They see the world differently from the average and are sometimes perceived as “weird.” However, this is the difference that enables them to make a difference when they reach adulthood. Jobs, Bezos, and Musk continued to have social conflicts throughout their careers as they founded companies, yet driven by their visions, they were able to change the world. Their personal lives were often fraught with discord, as one might expect from behaviours that are seen as eccentric.
Another potential downside to a high IQ is what Edward de Bono called “the intelligence trap.” Those who have a high IQ are accustomed to being right when most others are wrong–especially in their area of expertise. For this reason, they may tend to dismiss the opinions of others, even when outside their domain of expertise. However, a high IQ is not a valid substitute for knowledge, and those of high IQ who assume that superiority in their field transfers into areas outside their expertise often override the opinions of others who are more knowledgable. Indian astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who won the Nobel Prize in 1983 described how a scientist may fall into this cognitive trap: ( Quote from Hammond, A. L. 1984. A Passion to Know: Twenty Profiles in Science. New York: Scribner. p.5.)
These people [winners of prestigious awards] imagine afterward that the fact that they succeeded so triumphantly in one area means they have a special way of looking at science that must be right. But science doesn’t permit that. Nature has shown over and over again that the kinds of truth which underlie nature transcend the most powerful minds.
The quintessential inventor Thomas Edison had been unrelenting in his belief that direct current (DC) is the best way to transport electricity throughout America. In spite of substantial evidence provided by his employee Nikola Tesla, showing the advantages of alternating current (AC) over DC, Edison continued to insist that alternating current was too dangerous and refused to pay Tesla for his research on AC. Unable to convince his boss, Tesla sold his findings to George Westinghouse who patented the technology that remains the basis of today’s power grid.
Linus Pauling, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962, advocated in his later years for multivitamin therapy in the treatment of various diseases. His 1970 publication, Vitamin C and the Common Cold, extolling the benefits of high-doses of vitamin C for the common cold, laid the foundations for later claims about the effectiveness of vitamin C and lysine in the treatment of atherosclerosis and cancer. Pauling’s claims were not validated by subsequent research.
Steve Jobs, known for his prescience in the computer world, fell prey to quackery cures for cancer. Informed that he was afflicted with pancreatic cancer, the technological visionary sought cures in spiritual healing, holistic medicine, and a spartan diet of fruit juices, while ignoring all the conventional treatments from medical science that might have saved his life. He ignored the mountains of evidence that would have disconfirmed his belief in such unfounded remedies.
So an IQ of 140 is, indeed, a blessing, but it represents intellectual potential that must be harnessed and managed with careful judgment and appropriate humility.
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canisgallicus 