How can stereotypes and expectations affect performance?

[KillaMarcilla]

http://www.testonfox.com/

They had a nationally-televised IQ test that was live in the east half of the US, and in Pacific I just finished watching it and getting scored

I got a 55/60, which corresponds to a 127 IQ, apparently

I think that's the top 10% or so, so that's pretty good. I guess I can't join any elitist organizations with that, unless I get lucky or just do slightly better on a more difficult test, though

How'd YOU do if you took it?

 

[Monique]

:) I got the same score!

I was just going to start a topic about it because it is just soooo cool that the scientists were the smartest of the bunch :) lol

It was just annoying that she just kept talking through the quiz.. the most difficult ones for me were the memory (all those addresses) and I didn't get one of the words, was it obliging?

Where did they put up a comparison with the nation and the IQ conversion chart?

 

[KillaMarcilla]

ha ha ha

I missed obliging too

I said indulgent, since it's a more extreme version of obliging, so far as I know, and I guess I missed accomodating right above it

Yeah, you'd really expect scientists to be the smartest, just because you need mathematical intelligence to do any sort of hard science. I think the softer sciences might be more about memory and persistence, though, and not as much about cold, hard, logic

 

[maximus]

i watched a bit of that show. i thought most of the questions were really easy, but i didn't tally up my score. did you have to calculate in your age? because, if not, it's not a real IQ test.

 

[KillaMarcilla]

Yeah, you did

And it said wasn't valid at all if you're under 18 years old or over 70

They also said not to use the test to diagnose any medical conditions, so it might not be a top-notch test

 

[Monique]

Weren't the bodybuilder the ones with the lowest IQs? lol, I thought it was funny that they were actually including blondes as a group :P

 

[Phobos]

20 bonus IQ points to everyone who turns off Fox and all their alien autopsy moon hoax drek

 

[maximus]

Originally posted by Phobos
20 bonus IQ points to everyone who turns off Fox and all their alien autopsy moon hoax drek

ha! but the moon hoax thing was weird. the flag was blowing, phobos, blowing! how can that be? and there was no blast crater! eh?

 

[schwarzchildradius]

Weren't the bodybuilder the ones with the lowest IQs? lol, I thought it was funny that they were actually including blondes as a group :P

No, it was the blondes. ;P

 

[Pauly Man]

They had a similar test here in Oz last year, having another one this year. I think the women kicked arse over the men if I remember.

 

[Phobos]

Originally posted by maximus
ha! but the moon hoax thing was weird. the flag was blowing, phobos, blowing! how can that be? and there was no blast crater! eh?

It's really quite simple. These answers and more explained here...
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

flag...http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#flag
crater...http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#crater

 

[KillaMarcilla]

I dunno, every group on the show got significantly higher than average, with only a little bit of variation..

You know what's kind of funny? If a group of people is told that they'll do poorly on a test because they're inferior to someone else, they almost always do poorly

I saw this documentary where some woman in a really homogeneous town in the 60s wanted to show her students what all the civil rights stuff going on was about, so one day she said that all the brown-eyed children were smarter than the blue-eyed ones and segregated them, and the brown-eyed ones beat the stuffing out of the blue-eyed ones (mentally)

Then, the next day, she said she'd been lying and the blue-eyed children were better people, and the blue-eyed children 0wned up

Then at the end of the day she explained what she'd done and taught everyone a valuable lesson

So it might just be that if women don't expect to do as well as men, they'll do a little worse, and vice-versa

(Although I heard that on average girls don't catch up to men in raw math power until 17 or 18 years, so maybe that has something to do with something)