Intelligence, longevity and health

Intelligence, longevity and health

1. If intelligence has adaptive value, it should relate to health outcomes; tests of this relationship are known as cognitive epidemiology.

2. Higher intelligence provides individuals with faster, better and more efficient reasoning ability.

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     • self care, risk prevention, optimal treatment
       • health, longevity, accident prevention

3. Calvin et al conducted a meta-analysis and found that an IQ increase of 1 standard deviation resulted in a 24% decrease in the risk of death.

4. It may be that more intelligent people are healthier due to a better health education. Alternatively better education may improve occupational attainment, making people have fewer occupational hazards and live more comfortable, safer lives overall.

5. Capron and Duyme managed to find 4 groups of children, 2 who were born to high social class parents and 2 who were born to low social class parents. In turn each of these groups could be further divided on the basis of whether they were adopted by a low or high social class family. This 2x2 factorial design showed that the social class of both adoptive an biological parents had similar effects on the child's IQ, though the sample size was small.

   • High social status biological parents and high social status adoptive parents - IQ: 119.6
   • High social status biological parents and low social status adoptive parents - IQ: 107.5
   • Low social status biological parents and high social status adoptive parents - IQ: 103.6
   • Low social status biological parents and low social status adoptive parents - IQ: 92.4

6. Psychologits have long been divided on the basis of whether to ignore, emphasise, or deny the importance or consequences of group differences in IQ. There have been 3 major theoretical positions when it comes to interpreting such differences; namely, attributing them to genetic, environmental or measurement factors.

   • Genetic: Poverty and social inequalities are unchangeable
   • Environmental: Society is unfair towards certain groups
   • Test bias: IQ tests are designed to favour certain groups

7. Spencer et al showed that women performed poorer on a maths test compared to controls when they were told, before the test, that gender differences in the test's scores existed.

   • Men typically do better at spatial/math ability tests while women do better at verbal ability tests. However, almost all pioneers in in telligence testing (e.g., Binet, Burt, Terman) believed that there were no sex differences in cognitive ability.

8. Generational decreases in IQ tend to be associated with decreases in SES and generational increases in IQ tend to be associated with increases in SES.

9. Mackintosh found that from the early 1920's studies have reported differences of about 10-20 points between the IQ scores of black and white individuals, in favour of the latter.

   • Rushton and Jensen concluded that race differences in intelligence are mainly due to brain size and reflect 80% genetic to 20% environmental influences.

10. Nisbett studied different views of intelligence in different cultures. People in western cultres tend to view intelligence as a means for individuals to devise categories and to engage in rational debate while people in eastern cultures see it as a way for members of a community to recognise contradiction and complexity and to play their social roles successfully.

11. Hot intelligences: types of abilities that encompass an array of non-cognitive traits

    • Social intelligence. Thorndike. Act wisely in interpersonal relations.
    • Multiple intelligence. Gardner. Bodily, social, spiritual, musical skills.
    • Practical intelligence. Sternberg. Do well in everyday life; being sensitive.
    • Emotional intelligence. Selaovey, Mayer and Goleman. Identify and manage own and other's emotions.
    • In testing hot intelligence there are 5 main questions for research
      • 1. Does it exist?
      • 2. Can it be measured?
      • 3. Is it important?
      • 4. Is it an ability?
      • 5. Is it more important than IQ?
    • Assumptions of hot intelligence theories
      • IQ is not everything
      • Interpersonal skills are independent of cognitive abilities
      • Interpersonal skills are more important in real life than academic abilities
      • Interpersonal skills should be conceptualised as a form of ability or intelligence
    • Psychometric tests of hot intelligences tend to lack sufficient reliability and validity. This is largely due to the difficulties associated with dsigning objective tests.