What is the importance (if any) of knowing your IQ?

Answer 1

We know our weight and height. Why wouldn't we want to have at least a rough idea about our ability or have an explanation as to why we may feel different than other people in some ways. Its probably not important for the person with an average IQ to have a number (right around 100), but for people who fall at the narrower end of the bell curve it can be helpful to understand how similiar or different they may be from others and which areas of abilities are their strongest.

Even the person with generally average IQ, though, may want to know which areas are his strongest (either to help direct him in terms of jobs or to help him understand why he may have trouble at one thing but excel at something else). Understanding what we're dealing with is usually a good thing.

IQ tests measure the different types of thinking abilities and are usually designed in a way that will "overcome" the issue of people who don't test well. People can (and often do) have very high math-related skills but have lower ability when it comes to thinking associated with "common sense". At the same time, there are people who excel in all areas of thinking skills.

People with lower than average ability in one area or more than one can benefit from having a good understanding of what they can learn or things that can be done to assist them with learning. People with nice above average IQ's, who may have all their life known they learn things more easily than average people may, can see exactly how common or uncommon their degree of ability is; and they can understand better why they haven't had to work as hard as some others have.

People with very high abilities can learn more about what people with high abilities live with because there is a specific set of things people with high abilities do have to deal with more on a day-to-day basis no matter how well adjusted and down-to-Earth they may be.

IQ may be one of the last things people are not allowed to talk about. People talk about their weight problems, money, drug use, problems with their children, sex, politics, religion, and whatever else - but when it comes to IQ people don't seem to realize often enough that its just something people get - like their height in inches.

Because non-mainstream IQ's tend to get overlooked or misunderstood by school systems many students don't get the education or motivation from school that they should. Often,
the students who achieve excellence in academics and grades are the students who thrive more in an academic environment aimed at average and nicely above average students. As a result, academic achievement and IQ don't always match; and people who did not excel in school can enter adulthood not realizing what their abilities really are. Having a rough idea about one's level of abilities isn't a bad idea.

The world is full of people who have abilities they don't even realize they have. All they know is that they weren't at the top of their class in high school and were instead kind of seen as having not-so-remarkable ability and being destined for mediocrity.

Our blend of the different types of abilities is probably the most fundamental thing we have when it comes to our personalities, our ability to cope, our aspirations, our interests, and any number of other very fundamental things related to who we are.

Knowing our IQ (which is a number created by factoring in all the results on the different tests of different abilities) isn't about ego. It isn't something people should be afraid of. We are what we are. If we are slower in some things we need to figure out how to compensate for that (or at least understand why we didn't do that well in Calculus). If we have very high abilities in some things knowing that can help us understand ourselves better. People who are low-end IQ, average IQ, nicely above average IQ, or way-above-average IQ should not be ashamed or afraid of IQ numbers any more than they are their height measurement.

Finally, we can think of a height (let's say "5 feet, 8 inches); and we can realize that all people with that height measurement are different. They have different hair color, different face shapes, different weights, different eyes, and on and on and on. If IQ were something that people were as open about as they are height the world would start to see that an IQ of x (just like a height of 5 ft 8 in) looks and sounds different on each individual who happens to share that particular IQ score. There would be better understanding of ways in which IQ is significant and ways in which it isn't; and there would be better understanding of the people who have the different types of IQ's.

As it is now, schools often lose the children with the highest potential because they don't know always understand what it looks like. Children with high potential learn early that if they are not to be attacked they had better act very humble and hide any signs of abilities they have. They learn to blend. Many children who aren't as skilled when it comes to understanding human nature don't know enough to hide their abilities, but those children are often the ones who have interpersonal problems when dealing with classmates.

Many potentially exceptional students have a "There are children starving in the world" attitude, so they can't get all that motivated on class exercises. Many realize, too, that they can have a social life by cutting back on the studying because they can get pretty decent (but not outstanding) grades with little effort. Some can be extremely skilled at blending but may feel very isolated in realilty. That can come from their choice to hide their abilities in order to fit in socially, and they can know that; but they may not be mature enough or aggressive enough to be able to overcome their wish to fit in with the mainstream. Because they feel they live a secret life, though, they don't tend to be happy; and getting motivated can be difficult.

We live in a culture where so many fight for their right to be open about who they are - the recovered drug addicts, gay people, transgendered people, people who have suffered financial ruin and come back, battered women, and on and on and on.

One group has very few people speaking up for them and cannot do it themselves - children with high abilities. Their situation is not well understood by most people, including school officials. Policies are not aimed at identifying them and addressing their academic needs. There is little talk about how these children can always feel the need to defend themselves against attacks from people who somehow sense these children are different and feel the need to "take them down a peg".

A better understanding of IQ's in general and a good understanding of students' IQ's would most likely result in major changes in the eduational system; and those changes would probably benefit children of all IQ levels because understanding IQ's better means understanding ALL children better.

A better understanding of IQ's wouldn't just benefit the kids in the top two or five percent on the Bell Curve. It would benefit all kids, but particularly the very high number of students who have well above average abilities (even if not quite the top two percent) that nobody, including those students, know they have.

With more awareness about IQ's and different types of abilities employers who have employees in jobs that may have previously been seen as job for average people may change the job description of some of these jobs, give people more responsibility or more growth potential; and stop seeing some people in some jobs as of limited potential.

Knowing our own IQ or our children's IQ can help us understand ourselves better (and help with our understanding of our relationships with others as well) and help with planning education or helping our children to understand themselves. A generally better understanding of IQ in our society (and a general understanding that it isn't some big, mysterious, powerful, piece of information nobody can handle) could put an end to the never-ending and fruitless attempts to make fix our schools and to have more satisifying jobs that offer more growth potential.

Answer 2

Knowing your IQ is just like sitting for an examination.
It may not be very accurate in measuring a person's intelligent but it does divide people according to different intellectual class.

It is good to know in which class we are, but for sure there are no clear boundary and there are no really stupid people. A person with lower IQ can even solve some problems that a person with higher IQ could not, though the higher IQ person can solve more problems.

Make good use our intellectual ability for the good of the people and the world we live in.

Answer 3

The IQ quiz as we know today began with the Stanford-Binet test. Theodore Simon and Alfred Binet devised the IQ test in 1905. Their post test analysis was used to indicate a need for more teaching and didn?t necessarily imply an inability to learn. This philosophy is still held today with professionals and researchers.
Currently, the most common administered IQ test today is the WISC-IV test, the original WISC was developed by David Wechsler in 1974. The WISC methods test for ?Verbal IQ?, ?Performance IQ?, picture completion, coding, picture arrangement, block design, and object assembly. When all areas are completed a combined final IQ is determined, a strong emphasis is also placed on determining weak and strong areas.

IQ, an abbreviation for "intelligence quotient", is a score believed to measure general cognitive ability derived from a set of standardized tests. It is expressed as a number normalized so that the average IQ in an age group is 100 -- in other words an individual scoring 115 is above-average when compared to similarly aged people. The distribution of IQ scores is more-or-less Gaussian, that is it follows the famous "bell curve".

Modern ability tests produce scores for different areas (e.g. language fluency, three-dimensional thinking, ...), with the summary score being the most meaningless. It is much more useful to know which are the strenghts and weaknesses of a person than to know that he or she beats n percent of the populace in some "general intelligence" measure. Two persons with vastly different ability profiles may score the same IQ, but may exhibit different affinity to a given task, or may not be valued equally intelligent by other people.

IQ scores are sometimes proposed as an objective measure of intelligence, but of course a test encodes its creators beliefs about what consitutes intelligence. What various cultures dub "intelligence" differs. Most people also think that creativity plays a significant role in intelligence; creativity is almost unmeasurable by tests.

Scores between 90 and 110 are considered average -- so a person scoring 95 is simply average, not below-average. For children scoring below 80 special schooling is encouraged, children above 125 are "highly gifted". IQ scores outside the range 55 to 145 are essentially meaningless because there are not enough people to make statistically sound statements.

Answer 4

I spent eight years in college and I never thought to find out my IQ. I think that its over rated because people who don't do test well won't do well. The IQ test doesn't measure people's common sense or artistic ability. There are a lot of things that it doesn't measure. And I have worked for geniuses and they were book smart but that's as far as their brain went.

I think that the only reason to take the test and see what your IQ is, is if someone has disabilities and wants to find out what their level of intelligence is in order to get disability. I have also seen kids in special ed classes who were tested so that the school could get more funding. That made sense.

Answer 5

No importance unless it's a good score and it makes you feel better about yourself. There are something like seven different kinds of intelligence. Only one is tested with standard IQ tests. So, how much does it really tell you?

Unless your IQ is at or below 60 which makes you mentally retarded, I dont think there is much benefit in knowing what it is.

Answer 6

None just curiousity...kids should maybe have it done in school but usually dont unless very gifted...i know my daughters IQ

Answer 7

I really don't believe in them. Some of the people I know who have high IQ's are actually dumber than ****!

Answer 8

Maybe to let you know what you are capable of learning, as far as math studies. Maybe to also boost your ego a little bit.

Answer 9

bragging rights, kinda like penis size, no real point to knowing it and if someone is giving you numbers they're a little inflated to over compensate for something.

Answer 10

So people can go, "HAHA I'm smarter than you, so that makes me better!"

yea...it's an ego thing.

Answer 11

it tells you that how much attention you have given to your studies.