September 22nd, 2011 | By admin
Media Prattling About Political Candidates’ IQs Is Utter Nonesense
By Dr. Dathan Paterno and Dr. Gina Loudon
Published September 23, 2011 :: FoxNews.com
A raging debate in recent years about the intelligence—or lack thereof—of politicians makes one think that IQ scores are doled out like Social Security numbers and with greater transparency.Historian Michael Beschloss claimed about Obama: “This is a guy whose IQ is off the charts. … He’s probably the smartest guy ever to become president.” Our nation’s foremost authority on intelligence, George Clooney, recently stated, “Look, there’s a guy in office right now who is smarter than almost anyone you know.”
One online blogger reasoned, “Since MENSA accepts various IQ tests as well as other cognitive tests to qualify for MENSA membership … Obama’s IQ Score could range anywhere from a low IQ score of 130…to a high IQ score of 148.”
Another, less-fawning author correlated SAT scores and the supposed IQ scores of several public figures: “Thus, giving Obama the benefit of the doubt drops his score to 1104, which is equivalent to an IQ of 116. That’s not bad, but it is significantly less intelligent than Hillary’s 140 IQ, as well as being lower than George W. Bush’s 125 IQ (1206 SAT).”
Rick Perry has been the latest recipient of amateur cognitive assessment. Liberal gadfly Paul Begala opined: “Even among state representatives, even among Texas Aggies (graduates of this cute remedial school we have in Texas), Perry stood out for his modest intellectual gifts…but lack of brains has never been a hindrance in politics.”
Of course, Sarah Palin has been the whipping girl of elites since September 2008. From Tina Fey’s portrayal of her as a bumbling fool who can’t find Russia on a map to U.S. News and World Report contributing editor Bonnie Erbe quoting a woman who had been an acquaintance of Palin (she was two years Palin’s junior at the same high school): “She doesn’t know a lot about politics, it’s more important to the American public that she looks like she does than what she has to say. We’re not holding her accountable the way we hold male politicians accountable. She’s unable to articulate much about her policy on oil or name a Supreme Court decision she disagrees with besides Roe. vs. Wade.”
Blogs are full of amateur psychologists, estimating the IQ of every candidate. All of them sound foolish.
Administering, scoring, and interpreting IQ tests makes up a healthy portion of a psychologist’s practice. Having given hundreds of these tests every year, we can say with authority that most of the media’s prattling about IQ scores of political candidates is unadulterated nonsense.
Very few people take reliable, valid, intelligence tests. It is doubtful that Palin, Obama, Romney, or Perry have taken a standardized IQ test in the past 20 years. Common reasons for taking IQ tests are entrance into a gifted academic program, evaluating for learning disabilities, and admission to Mensa. Even if these scores existed, it would be illegal for the psychologist to publish them. I certainly would get sued if I published confidential patient information. If someone wants to claim they know Rick Perry’s IQ score, that person had better have a good defense attorney. The only people who would likely make their own scores public are Mensa members, and these could easily be conflated (the ego seems to do powerful things to IQ scores).
Ultimately, intelligence is a construct, heavily debated over the decades since formalized intelligence testing began. Popular intelligence measures readily admit that the tests do not evaluate a person’s broader, overall intelligence. Rather, the tests are designed primarily to predict academic achievement. Wechsler chose the four most critical cognitive skills that he believed lead to academic success: verbal comprehension, visual-spatial processing, working memory and overall processing speed. While these certainly comprise the foundation for academic success, a single IQ score cannot do justice to the multidimensional nature of overall or practical intelligence, especially those skills that are required in politics.
Social skills, synthesizing concrete and abstract realities, deductive reasoning, emotional intelligence, flexibility of thought and creativity are just a few examples of cognitive abilities that are surely part of practical intelligence not evaluated on most intelligence tests.Is it altogether meaningless to suggest that a particular person is brilliant, dim-witted or moronic? Notwithstanding the ethical risks inherent in assessing another person’s intelligence—which inevitably speaks volumes about that person’s overall value as a human being—we think that formal, standardized tests cannot possibly assess a public figure’s practical intelligence.
We have developed a list of real world traits by which politicians can and should be judged regarding their intelligence. We call it Practical/Political Intelligence, or PPI for short. In Part II, which will run next week in Fox News Opinion, we will describe the traits of Practical/Political Intelligence, giving examples of public figures who exhibit these traits, some to a greater degree than others.
Dathan A. Paterno, Psy.D., is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Director of Park Ridge Psychological Services, outside of Chicago. Working with children and families for twenty years, his expertise is equipping parents to reclaim their families using scientifically sound and proven methods. His parenting book, Desperately Seeking Parents, includes his parenting philosophy and a wealth of practical advice for modern parents. He also maintains the parenting blog found at www.desperatelyseekingparents.com.
Dr. Gina Loudon is the host of the “Dr. Gina Show” which airs in the Midwest and the South daily from 4 to 7 p.m CT. She is a national speaker analyst and writer on topics ranging from adoption to immigration and is credited as one of the “100 Founding Members” of the Tea Party movement.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/23/new-study-political-pundits-iq-lower-than-chop-suey/#ixzz1Ytf11RtI
