Woman With A PhD Is Confident That She's Smarter Than Marine With A High School Diploma — So They Both Take An IQ Test
Mangostar | Shutterstock When six strangers gathered to take an IQ test, one of them openly expressed her assumption, suggesting that she believed one of them would not fare as well as the others. However, she was proved wrong when all of their results were revealed.
But maybe the real question is: What is intelligence anyway? Is it book smarts? Emotional intelligence? Street smarts? A combination of it all? The truth is, being a math whiz doesn't necessarily make you "smarter" than an artist or a poet, and the same can be said for the level of education you have.
A woman with a Ph.D. believed that she would score higher on an IQ test than a marine with a high school diploma.
In a YouTube video from the channel “Jubilee,” as part of their “Ranking” series, six people came together to take an IQ test. One of the subjects was 30-year-old Maria, who has a Ph.D. in cancer biology and completed her graduate education at the University of South Carolina. She now claims to work in the Biotech industry.
Most of the other subjects also shared that they had a college education from prestigious schools, including Harvard and Yale. The only one who wasn't a college grad was 21-year-old Tyler, who has a high school education and is a Marine.
When the group was asked what intelligence meant to them, Tyler responded, “I think intelligence is better defined as your adaptability and your problem-solving skills more than it is your education.” He later added that common sense is the most essential quality to have when it comes to intelligence, more so than an education. According to Maria, it is one’s EQ, IQ, common sense, and street smarts that contribute to one's overall intelligence.
The group was asked to rank themselves in order from most to least intelligent.
Maria ranked herself as the second most intelligent of the group, given her impressive background. She ranked Tyler as the least intelligent. “It has nothing to do with your background,” she said to him. “I don’t really think you have the highest EQ out of all of us personally.”
She later went on to say that she ranked Tyler as the least intelligent due to his “demeanor, body language, and the way he carries himself.” She was not the only one who felt this way. Out of the six members, three others also ranked Tyler as the least intelligent.
Despite the group’s beliefs, Tyler confidently ranked himself as the most intelligent of the group. “I know what I’m about, and I’m sure of that,” he said.
The group members were then asked to put their intelligence to the test by taking an IQ test. An IQ test is a standardized assessment designed to measure a person's cognitive abilities in various areas, including problem-solving, logical reasoning, memory, and comprehension.
The IQ test results ranked Tyler as the third-highest in the group, with a score of 131, while Maria was ranked the lowest, with a score of 112.
However, after learning their results, not all of the group members were satisfied. One member named Sada claimed that IQ tests are now known to be “flawed” and based on incorrect sample sizes. She argued that the test could not prove how intelligent she actually was since she had dyslexia.
Maria stood by her claims that one’s intelligence is based on common sense and street smarts, and cannot be determined solely with an IQ test. “There’s more to that person than that test,” she said. Others believed that one could perform better on an IQ test if they had studied for it beforehand.
Tyler admitted that until that day, he had never taken an IQ test before, or knew what it entailed. “This is my villain redemption arc!” he said, referring to how most of the group initially perceived him. “I’m climbing up the ladder!”
Intelligence is not solely determined by one’s level of education.
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Sada was certainly onto something when she questioned the validity of IQ tests in general. In fact, a 2012 study found that there are at least three distinct components of intelligence, and they are not only difficult to measure but also involve so many variables that it would be impossible for a single test to yield an accurate result.
"There are multiple types of intelligence," explained researcher Adam Hampshire, PhD. He is a psychologist at the Brain and Mind Institute Natural Sciences Centre in London, Ontario, Canada. "It is time to move on to using a more comprehensive set of tests that can measure separate scores for each type of intelligence."
The fact is, all six panelists in Jubilee's video are intelligent, regardless of their level of education or career path. The specific IQ test that they took couldn't possibly measure each individual's capabilities.
"A high IQ is like height in a basketball player," explained David Perkins, who studies thinking and reasoning skills at Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "It is very important, all other things being equal. But all other things aren't equal. There's a lot more to being a good basketball player than being tall, and there's a lot more to being a good thinker than having a high IQ."
In the end, it doesn’t matter if you have a Ph.D. or a high school diploma. Your education is just one of many factors that contribute to your overall intelligence. But that wasn't really the point of the Jubilee experiment. The point was: don't judge someone based on stereotypes, and that is something we can all get behind.
Megan Quinn is a writer with a bachelor's degree in English and a minor in Creative Writing. She covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on justice in the workplace, personal relationships, parenting debates, and the human experience.
