I came across this discussion, and wanted to save it (and fix the broken links) – in case Quora decides to delete it as it did with all my comments and answers there.
The original question posted on Quora:
“What is more beneficial in all aspects of life; a high EQ or IQ? This question is based on the assumption that only your EQ or IQ is high with the other being average or below this average.”
Below is an answer by Jordan B Peterson,
a psychology professor at the University of Toronto, a clinical psychologist, a TVO essayist, lecturer and panelist, author of Maps of Meaning, entrepreneur, father, husband and son. Featured on HuffPost and Inc.
What is more beneficial in life; a high EQ or IQ?
There is no such thing as EQ. Let me repeat that: “There is NO SUCH THING AS EQ.” The idea was popularized by a journalist, Daniel Goleman, not a psychologist. You can’t just invent a trait. You have to define it and measure it and distinguish it from other traits and use it to predict the important ways that people vary.
EQ is not a psychometrically valid concept. Insofar as it is anything (which it isn’t) it’s the Big Five trait agreeableness, although this depends, as it shouldn’t, on which EQ measure is being used (they should all measure THE SAME THING). Agreeable people are compassionate and polite, but they can also be pushovers. Disagreeable people, on average (if they aren’t too disagreeable) make better managers, because they are straightforward, don’t avoid conflict and cannot be easily manipulated.
Let me say it again: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS EQ. Scientifically, it’s a fraudulent concept, a fad, a convenient band-wagon, a corporate marketing scheme. (Here’s an early critique by Davies, M., Stankov, L. and Roberts, D. Emotional intelligence: in search of an elusive construct. – PubMed – NCBI ; Here’s a conclusion reached by Harms and Crede, in an excellent article — comprehensive and well thought-through (2010): “Our searches of the literature revealed only six articles in which the authors either explicitly examined the incremental validity of EI scores over measures of both cognitive ability and Big Five personality traits in predicting either academic or work performance, or presented data in a manner that allowed examination of this issue. Not one of these six articles (Barchard,2003; Newsome, Day, & Catano, 2000;O’Connor & Little, 2003; Rode, Arthaud-Day, Mooney, Near, & Baldwin, 2008;Rode et al., 2007; Rossen & Kranzler, 2009) showed a significant contribution for EI in the prediction of performance after controlling for both cognitive ability and the Big Five… For correlations involving the overall EI construct, EI explained almost no incremental variance in performance ([change in prediction] = .00. Findings were identical when considering only cases involving an ability-based measure of IE….” See: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247689668_Remaining_Issues_in_Emotional_Intelligence_Research_Construct_Overlap_Method_Artifacts_and_Lack_of_Incremental_Validity
Harms and Crede also comment: “…proofs of validity [for EI[ seem to come from measuring constructs that have existed for a long time and are simply being relabeled and recategorized. For example,one of the proposed measures of ESC,the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (Mikolajczak, Luminet, Leroy, & Roy, 2007), makes use of measures of assertiveness, social competence, self-confidence,stress management, and impulsivity among other things. Most, if not all, of these constructs are firmly embedded in and well-accounted for by well-designed measures of personality traits such as the Hogan Personality Inventory (Hogan & Hogan, 1992) and the Multidimensional Personality Ques-tionnaire (Tellegen & Waller, 2008). The substantial relationships observed between these ESC and trait-based EI measures, and personality inventories, bears this out. It therefore appears that the predictive validity of ESC or EI measures may be accounted for in large part by the degree to which they assess subfacets of higher-order traits relevant to the outcomes being predicted. For example, Cherniss (2010) relates that two studies of self-discipline showed them to be significant predictors of academic performance and then criticizes Landy (2005) for not taking them into account in a review of studies of ‘‘social intelligence.’’ Given that self-control (or impulse control)is widely regarded as a major subfacet of conscientiousness (Roberts, Chernyshenko, Stark, & Goldberg, 2005) and that numerous studies have linked Conscientiousness with academic performance, that there is a link between a facet of Conscientiousness and academic performance is hardly news.”
IQ is a different story. It is the most well-validated concept in the social sciences, bar none. It is an excellent predictor of academic performance, creativity, ability to abstract, processing speed, learning ability and general life success.
There are other traits that are important to general success, including conscientiousness, which is an excellent predictor of grades, managerial and administrative ability, and life outcomes, on the more conservative side.
It should also be noted that IQ is five or more times as powerful a predictor as even good personality trait predictors such as conscientiousness. The true relationship between grades, for example, and IQ might be as high as r = .50 or even .60 (accounting for 25-36% of the variance in grades). Conscientiousness, however, probably tops out at around r = .30, and is more typically reported as r = .25 (say, 5 to 9% of the variance in grades). There is nothing that will provide you with a bigger advantage in life than a high IQ. Nothing. To repeat it: NOTHING.
In fact, if you could choose to be born at the 95th percentile for wealth, or the 95th percentile for IQ, you would be more successful at age 40 as a consequence of the latter choice.
It might be objected that we cannot measure traits such as conscientiousness as well as we measure IQ, as we primarily rely on self or other-reports for the former. But no one has solved this problem. There are no “ability” tests for conscientiousness. I am speaking as someone who has tried to produce such tests for ten years, and failed (despite trying dozens of good ideas, with top students working on the problem). IQ is king. This is why academic psychologists almost never measure it. If you measure it along with your putatively “new” measure, IQ will kill your ambitions. For the career minded, this is a no go zone. So people prefer to talk about multiple intelligences and EQ, and all these things that do not exist. PERIOD.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS EQ. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS EQ. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS EQ.
By the way, there is also no such thing as “grit,” despite what Angela Duckworth says. Grit is conscientiousness, plain and simple (although probably more the industrious side than the orderly side). All Duckworth and her compatriots did was fail to notice that they had re-invented a very well documented phenomena, that already had a name (and, when they did notice it, failed to produce the appropriate mea culpas. Not one of psychology’s brighter moments). A physicists who “re-discovered” iron and named it melignite or something equivalent would be immediately revealed as ignorant or manipulative (or, more likely, as ignorant and manipulative), and then taunted out of the field. Duckworth? She received a MacArthur Genius grant for her trouble. That’s all as reprehensible as the self-esteem craze (self-esteem, by the way, is essentially .65 Big Five trait neuroticism (low) and .35 extraversion (high), with some accurate self-assessment of general life competence thrown in, for those who are a bit more self-aware). See link
By the way, in case I haven’t made myself clear: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS EQ. OR GRIT. OR “SELF-ESTEEM.”
It’s crooked psychology. Reminiscent of all the recent upheaval in the social psychology subfield: Final Report: Stapel Affair Points to Bigger Problems in Social Psychology
Similar to tests measuring IQ and EQ in individuals, is there a test or theory on how to measure DIQ- Deceptive Intelligence Quotient in an individual?
Psychologists have tried to measure such a thing for years, using Lie Scales, for example, to “correct” other scales for faking good, and self-promotion, and so on. Overall, the results have not been good: there is little evidence that such questionnaires do what they are supposed to do. Assessing the capacity to deceive, and self-deceive, appears to be very difficult. My lab has developed a fake-proof personality questionnaire, however, which does not allow people to present themselves positively across all traits, and which forces them to admit to flaws.
This kind of scale has advantages when used in situations where faking is likely, such as a job application, but may not be as accurate as a standard personality scale, where those filling out the scale are not motivated to look better than they are.
What exactly is IQ (Intelligence Quotient)? What has influence on it? And does it change (raise or decrease) ?
Imagine a universal library of single questions or puzzles that require the ability to abstract to solve. Then imagine that you make a test out of 100 such randomly drawn questions or puzzles, give them to 1000 people,score them, and rank-order their scores. Their IQ will essentially be that rank-order.
If you took any group of 100 such questions, and gave them to the same 1000 people, the rank-order would hardly change at all.
The more common IQ is merely those scores, transformed statistically so that the average = 100 and the standard deviation (a measure of how much, on average, such scores vary in a given population) is 15. Generally there is correction for age, as well.
85% of the population has an IQ score below 115.
98% of the population has an IQ score below 130, 99.9% below 145, 99.99% below 160.
The difference between 50th percentile, 85th percentile, 95th percentile, 99th percentile, and 99.9th percentile is the same, and it is large. The difference between 85th percentile, or 115, and 50th percentile, or 100, is roughly the difference between the average state college graduate and the average high school graduate. The difference between 50th percentile, or 100, and 15th percentile, or 85, is roughly the difference between the average high school graduate and what was known before the days of political correctness as borderline retarded.
It is illegal to draft someone into the US army if they have an IQ below 82. That IQ characterizes about 1 in 10 people.
With an IQ of 85 or lower, it is very difficult to read well enough so that you can follow written directions (a reasonable criterion for true literacy).
IQ is a very good predictor of life success in complex modern societies, challenged in its power by trait conscientiousness, one of the Big Five personality traits.
How is IQ calculated, what does it predict, and can it change?
(note: I also used the first few paragraphs of this to answer a very similar question on Quora: Jordan B Peterson’s answer to What exactly is IQ (Intelligence Quotient)? What has influence on it? And does it change (raise or decrease) ? There is extra information here, however, at the end)
Imagine a universal library of single questions or puzzles that require the ability to abstract to solve. Then imagine that you make a test out of 100 such randomly drawn questions or puzzles, give them to 1000 people,score them, and rank-order their scores. Their IQ will essentially be that rank-order.
If you took any group of 100 such questions, and gave them to the same 1000 people, the rank-order would hardly change at all.
The more common IQ is merely those scores, transformed statistically so that the average = 100 and the standard deviation (a measure of how much, on average, such scores vary in a given population) is 15. Generally there is correction for age, as well.
85% of the population has an IQ score below 115.
95% of the population has an IQ score below 130, 99% below 145, 99.9% below 160.The difference between 50th percentile, 85th percentile, 95th percentile, 99th percentile, and 99.9th percentile is the same, and it is large. The difference between 85th percentile, or 115, and 50th percentile, or 100, is roughly the difference between the average state college graduate and the average high school graduate. The difference between 50th percentile, or 100, and 15th percentile, or 85, is roughly the difference between the average high school graduate and what was known before the days of political correctness as borderline retarded.
It is illegal to draft someone into the US army if they have an IQ below 82. That IQ characterizes about 1 in 10 people.
With an IQ of 85 or lower, it is very difficult to read well enough so that you can follow written directions (a reasonable criterion for true literacy).
IQ is a very good predictor of life success in complex modern societies, challenged in its power only by trait conscientiousness, one of the Big Five personality traits, which is composed of orderliness and industriousness, the latter of which is likely more predictive.
Here’s a bit more detail:
IQ can be usefully conceptualized as composed of two forms: crystallized and fluid. The crystallized form, which is mostly verbal, accumulates, to some degree through life.
The fluid form, which is, perhaps, associated with prefrontal function, more nonverbal, starts to decline rather quickly in the early 20’s, and it’s pretty much a straight road to perdition from there.
Exercise, physical exercise, both cardiovascular and weight-oriented, helps a lot, more than anything else, to deter this loss.
There is some indication that video games can increase IQ, as can proper diet. There’s also nothing wrong with knowledge, which can be increased by reading and writing, more than anything else. Writing down your own ideas clearly and carefully also helps organize your brain, increasing your adaptation, decreasing uncertainty and stress, and improving your physical health.
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