What Is Being Smart?

Why Do We Value It?

Mark Ashton Smith Ph.D.

2014

CONTENTS
Defining Smart .

How Smart Am I? IQ Test Scores.

Smart Is Trending.

Why Is Smart Trending?

1. Educational and Cognitive Capital

2. Self-Improvement and Self-Optimization

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3. Maintaining Cognitive Ability and Brain Health with Aging

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Being smart is increasingly a highly prized attribute. How many times have you
heard someone introduced in glowing terms as:

x is one of the smartest people I have ever met

How many times have you heard it said that employees are looking for smart,
motivated students who are willing to learn, rather than students with specific
skill sets? Or the recommendation that we work smarter and faster, not
harder? And how many times have you heard of someone in a top position, with
significant strategic, political or theoretical impact on the world, described as
very smart or brilliant?

Defining Smart
Psychologists, AI researchers, research organisations have all come up with
definitions of being smart using the term general intelligence. An excellent
compilation of definitions of general intelligence can be found here. I have
cherry picked a few that capture underlying commonalities of most of these
definitions:

that facet of mind underlying our capacity to think, to solve novel

problems, to reason and to have knowledge of the world. M. Anderson

Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other

things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think
abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from
experience. L. S. Gottfredson

ability to adapt effectively to the environment, either by making a

change in oneself or by changing the environment or nding a new one.
Encyclopaedia Britannica

the capacity to reorganize ones behavior patterns so as to act more

eectively and more appropriately in novel situations the ability to
learn the extent to which a person is educable the ability to carry on
abstract thinking the eective use of concepts and symbols in dealing
with a problem to be solved W. Freeman

intelligence is the ability to solve problems, or to create products, that

are valued within one or more cultural settings. H. Gardner

Achieving complex goals in complex environments B. Goertze

How Smart Am I? IQ Test Scores

Your IQ is a measure of how smart you are.
A persons IQ (intelligence quotient) refers to a standardized test score
measure of general intelligence on an IQ test. Standardized means scored
relative to others in the general population, so you know what percentage have
higher IQs and what percentage have lower IQs.
IQ test scores arent a perfect measure of how smart you are. For instance, they
are arent designed to measure what is known as executive functioning selfmonitoring, goal prioritizing and attention control. But IQ tests are the most
consistent, meaningful and predictive type of psychometric test that
psychologists have devised and make use of. IQ test scores can be used to
predict achievements in a wide range of activities outside the classroom,
including creativity, dietary preference, educational attainment, health,
breadth and depth of interests, leadership, longevity, professional achievement
and income. IQ tests are widely used in our institutions and organisations
because of their consistency and validity. Schools and universities use IQ tests
(or aptitude tests) to select and stream students, companies use IQ tests to
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screen applicants, with estimates of 80% of Fortune 500 companies HR

departments using these kinds of tests for recruitment.
IQ tests are designed so that the average IQ score is 100. IQ test scores have a
distribution in the general population that looks like a symmetrical bell which
is why the IQ distribution is often called a bell curve. You can see this bell in
the figure below:

In this graph, you can see that the majority of people - nearly 70% - have an IQ
score around the average, between 85 and 115. Around 2% have an IQ greater
than 130 which is a very superior intelligence or gifted intelligence. This is
the IQ score needed to join Mensa.
Here is a table that helps us interpret what IQ scores mean:

How stable are IQ scores over time? After childhood a persons IQ test score is
typically quite stable over the decades. IQ scores have been estimated to be
50% heritable due to genetics. The remaining influence on IQ level is
environmental - education, diet, general health, cultural complexity, training
and so on.

Smart Is Trending
Here is a demonstration of global interest in the search term smart on Google
trends. You can see that interest is growing.

Economically and educationally advanced countries show this search trend

even more strikingly. Here is the UKs interest in smart on Google:

Or take Finland. Finland has among the highest educational outcomes in the
word. Here we compare the search term smart with leadership to
demonstrate the search priorities:

Why Is Smart Trending?

1. Educational and Cognitive Capital
Being smart is cognitive capital in our complex, high tech, knowledge economy
in education, training and employment.
Numerous studies show a clear link between IQ level and income or wealth.
Here is some data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. For this sample the
lowest decile (1/10) is people with I.Q below 84, and the highest decile above
116.

In rapidly changing, unpredictable, and complex, learning intensive work

environments IQ is increasingly viewed as valuable cognitive capital, and

there is pressure to accumulate this capital, much like social or financial

capital.
This is one good reason why being smart is widely valued.
But theres more to it than this. Due to the dynamics of our current economy
and institutions, we live in a time that tends to polarize the impact of IQ as
cognitive capital. We live in a period of growing equality of access to education and increasing
stratification of marketplace rewards, both of which have increased the
importance of human capital. One element of human capital is cognitive
ability: quickness of mind, the ability to infer and apply patterns drawn
from experience, and the ability to deal with mental complexity. Another
is character and social skills: self-discipline, persistence, responsibility.
And a third is actual knowledge. All of these are becoming increasingly
crucial for success in the post-industrial marketplace. (Professor Jerry
Muller, Capitalism and Inequality, March 2013, Foreign Affairs)

A central thesis of The Bell Curve, a seminal work

on IQ and its impact in society published in the
90s, is that that those with very high intelligence
- the cognitive elite - are becoming increasingly
separated from those of average and belowaverage intelligence and that this has important
economic and social implications.
This claim finds support if we look at bell curve
data on college students. Going back to 1930 the
average IQ of all college graduates in the US was
111. The average IQ of the elite top 12 Ivy League
colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton &
Stanford was 120. Thats not that big a
difference. (In the bell curve shown below, we calculate the IQs knowing that 1
standard deviation = 15 IQ points, and the mean is 100).

If we jump forward to 1990 we can see a very different picture.

While the average IQ of all college graduates in the country has barely changed
(from 111 to 113), the average IQ of Ivy League college graduates the elite 12
universities in the US - has increased from 120 to around 140. Thats a
large difference, and demonstrates a dramatic polarization effect in education.
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Elite educational institutes whose students have considerable impact in shaping

society, are increasingly made up of super smart individuals.
Here is a rigorous 2011 study looking at the earnings of the cognitive elite (in
the US) where the sample is entirely of men with an IQ above 135.

The earnings figures starting at $2,100,000 are predictions of lifetime earnings

based on current earnings data. Lifetime earnings are the per-person sums of
earnings from age 18 to 75.
And on the theme of cognitive elites heres an interesting international study
on the IQ-wealth link. Researchers in 2011 analyzed IQ test scores from 90
countries and found that the intelligence of the people especially the smartest
5 percent made a big contribution to the strength of their economies.

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For each one-point increase in a countrys average IQ, the per capita gross
domestic product (GDP) was $229 higher. For the smartest 5% of the
population in each country the cognitive elites it made an even more
dramatic difference to salary: for every additional IQ point in that group, a
countrys per capita GDP was $468 higher. In other words, the IQ level of e.g.
Lichtensteins cognitive elite is much, much higher than the IQ level of
Burundis cognitive elite.
Why are cognitive elites important for economic productivity? The authors of
the study offer some explanations:
IQ is relevant for technological progress, for innovation, for leading a
nation, for leading organizations, as entrepreneurs, and so on
this [high IQ] groups cognitive ability predicts the quality of economic
and political institutions, which further determines the economic
affluence of the nation
In summary, not only is IQ level an important lever for earnings and measures
of professional success, it is also cognitive capital that is increasingly
concentrated in a cognitive elite with IQs over, say, 125.
I think in the modern economy, human capital and cognitive ability are
more important than economic freedom. (Dr. Rindermann)
This is one very good reason why smart is trending.
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Another good reason is for self-improvement under the understanding that

cognitive ability can be enhanced.

Self-Improvement
and Self-Optimization
There is an increasing understanding that many aspects of ones life in
resilience, health, productivity or performance at work or in other areas of
activity, skill and interest are full of untapped potential can be improved by
learning about and applying the right strategies. We live in an age of selfoptimization and self-actualization more than at any other time in history. The
envelope of human potential is being pushed out everywhere in advanced
economies, with an increasing interest in lifestyle design to borrow a term
from Tim Ferris who encapsulates the self-optimizing philosophy.
How smart you are your cognitive
ability and performance - can
potentially be improved by a number
of engaging strategies, including
working memory training, learning
new thinking skills, nootropics
(phytochemicals, supplements and
smart drugs), exercise, intermittent
fasting, meditation, ketogenic
adaptation, and tDCS.
These cognitive interventions are all hot topics in scientific research and many
have robust evidence-based support.
Here is the growing Google search interest in brain training over the past five
years.

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Here is the interest in working memory.

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And here is the interest in nootropics phytochemicals, supplements and

smart drugs to improve brain functioning.

Self-improvement in cognitive ability and brain functioning is highly satisfying

in itself, resulting in better mental clarity and focus, better comprehension,
more efficient learning, and often more insights and ideas that have
consequence in your life. Improving your own cognition using interventions is a
highly effective way of opening up many areas for personal growth and selfimprovement whether for successfully attaining important life goals, further
educating yourself, succeeding professionally, cultivating beneficial habits, or
learning new skills such as additional languages.
Improving IQ figures strongly in the selfquantification movement in which cognitive
and biological capacities such as IQ and general
health are measured and improved through
positive feedback loops in a very systematic
approach to optimizing personal performance and
potential both physically and cognitively.

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A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as

attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers
above all.
Friedrich Nietzsche

3. Maintaining Cognitive Ability and Brain

Health with Aging
Another reason why smart is trending relates to aging and brain functioning
more generally. The demographics of the world are changing fast, with greatly
increasing proportions of older people.
Here is one graph showing this trend in the European Union, showing that now
nearly 20% of the population is over 65, compared to 10% in 1960.

Aging entails many physical, biological, chemical, and psychological changes.

The brain is no exception to this phenomenon. As we age, particularly beyond
our 50s there is a general drop in cognitive performance in processing speed,

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problem solving and reasoning ability, spatial ability, as well as working

memory. This graph shows IQ test performance over the lifespan.

With an aging population and increasing proportion of the population suffers

from dementia. The most common type of dementia is Alzheimers. In 2006,
there were 26.6 million sufferers worldwide. Alzheimers is predicted to affect
1 in 85 people globally by 2050.
Given these data, its clear that tackling different forms of aging-related
cognitive decline is a pressing concern, ensuring that brain health and
performance has become a major cultural priority.

Summary
We should now have a good grasp of what being smart is, why being smart is a
trending, and principle reasons for why it is trending. In subsequent eBooks, I
shall be looking at a number of evidence based strategies for improving IQ.

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