Literature Review on IQ - Essay Example

In Stephen Ceci’s IQ to the Test. Psychology today, he explains that the history of IQ testing first started technically in 1905 by Alfred Binet and later it evolved into different methods. Now over 100 years old, IQ testing is now one of the primary tools that are used for identifying children who have mental retardation and also learning disabilities. IQ testing has also helped many governments, companies, and organizations all over the world today place their new recruits in positions which suit their skills and abilities (Ceci 11).

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, weighs in on nature versus nurture debate and tries to argue that all the other things i.e. our cultural legacy, our parents, our time of birth and where we come from help to shape our success. The book deals with the societal and cultural forces which bring about opportunistic individuals. By using a series of case studies, Gladwell argues that most people believe in the myth that successful individuals are self made but instead, he says that they are always the beneficiaries of extraordinary opportunities, cultural legacies and hidden advantages which makes them able to learn and work hard in ways that others cannot.

He defines an outlier as somebody out of the ordinary i.e. one who does not fit into our ordinary understanding of achievement (Gladwell 16). Gladwell tells us that once a person reaches a certain IQ, then he is likely to be successful just like somebody with a much higher IQ score. It turns out from his argument that IQ is a minor gauge of success since most successful people usually have an IQ that is above average but IQ alone cannot predict success. There are other factors such as creativity that may come into play.

Gladwell shows this using several examples like a creative test that is given to two children and it occurred that the child who scored high marks on an IQ test was in fact much less creative than the other child i.e. the child with a high IQ gave correct answers but they didn’t have the glimmer of creativity that the other child provided in his answers (Gladwell 84). This is to say that IQ is just one small piece of the solutions that make someone to succeed and that having a high IQ does not necessarily mean one will succeed, though there may be a lowest amount IQ threshold required for success.

Gladwell suggests that the connection between success and IQ only works up to a certain point and that once somebody has attained an IQ of about 120 then having extra IQ points does not translate into any advantage.Here,I believe the author makes two incorrect inferences (Gladwell 86). Gladwell argues that great men and women are beneficiaries of collaboration, time, specialization, culture and place. An outlier’s way for success isn’t personal myth but it is the combination of time and opportunity on task.

Outliers is divided into two parts i.e. part one and part two. In Part one, which is entitled opportunity, Gladwell tries to discredit several notions that geniuses are born not made, that people succeed mostly through their own ideas, and that courage trumps luck when explaining life outcomes. This part Contains five chapters which are organized around stories based on unsystematic research intended to prove that outliers, including geniuses are mainly products of one or another kind of