Using a sample of 1,000 trainee truckers we report three findings. First, we show a strong and significant relationship between an individual’s cognitive skills and preferences, and between the preferences in different choice domains. The latter relationship may be counterintuitive: a patient individual, more inclined to save, is also more willing to take calculated risks. A second finding is that measures of cognitive skill predict social awareness and choices in a sequential Prisoner's Dilemma game. Subjects with higher CS's more accurately forecast others' behavior, and differentiate their behavior depending on the first mover’s choice, returning higher amount for a higher transfer, and lower for a lower one. After controlling for investment motives, subjects with higher CS’s also cooperate more as first movers. A third finding concerns on-the-job choices. Our subjects incur a significant financial debt for their training that is forgiven only after twelve months of service. Yet over half leave within the first year, and cognitive skills are also strong predictors of who exits too early, stronger than any other social, economic and personality measure in our data. These results suggest that cognitive skills affect the economic lives of individuals, by systematically changing preferences and choices in a way that favors the economic success of individuals with higher cognitive skills.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
IQ is All
IZA, a German research institute, studied more than 1,000 truck driver trainees and found out that IQ predicts success and not only in the truck driving but in life.
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5 comments:
What is truly fascinating is how very few people are actually trying to find out the neurological basis of these differences, given how profoundly IQ affects quality of life. It is a sort of 'no-go' zone for most of academia. IQ differences pose a real challenge to philosophical concepts of freedom of choice; people with low IQ seem to have less freedom than the rest of us, and somehow we are scared to deal with this. But a low IQ is a kind of prison, and they are suffering.
Say we all became suddenly fearless, how should we deal with human differences?
The first step would be to impose a custodial state, authoritarian but paternalistic, on those parts of the world which are perpetually and truly dysfunctional; I don't have to mention them by name.
The second step would be to fund a serious research project to discover the basis of these differences, at least the ones which matter and which cause serious disabilities. This might suggest medically and ethicaly possible solutions; re-classify low IQ as a disease, bona fide, adn deal with it as such.
But would high IQ people co-operate? Why would they participate in a project which would eliminate their competitive edge? And also, we would not wish to eliminate the variety "which is the spice of life".
This is simplistic and your question really deserves a much more comprehensive answer, but this is a start.
G-d save us from a bureaucratic, custodial state. G-d save us from State defined ¨health¨ and obligatory treatment of ¨disease¨. North Korea is a mild form of such a state, political uncorrectness is diagnosed a diseased condition corregible by re-education. In camps.
Regarding the question if high IQ people would cooperate, I have put that question to myself but I didnt dare to think it to the end. After all, Anonymous, I earn money thanks to my capacity to solve engineering problems that are unaccessible to others. I am engaged as consultant mostly because my clients (1)are too lazy or incompetent or (2) they have a more profitable businesses than spending their time on the problems they hire me to solve. On one hand, I am afraid of a world where everybody is intelligent as myself, but on the other hand, I voluntary choose to live in a over-literate Ashkenazi environment, and I am not dying of hunger. On the other hand... well, I ran out of hands, but not of arguments.
Yes, I am very conflicted about this as well.
But I do not advocate a custodial state except in dire circumstances, such as when anarcho-primitivism is released and then only for as short a time as possible. The alternative is to 'let them rot'; not good, as I have seen at first hand.
Very low IQ is already medicalised, and at least partially understood; I just think we could do the same for low IQ, and treatment would of course be voluntary, and might be more effective.
But I take your points very well. It will be difficult to protect freedom, if we give these powers to the state. And all too easy to impose uniformity in the name of 'fairness'; not my intention, but could be the outcome anyway. We are headed there, sooner or later.
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