Can You Ever Be Too Smart for Your Own Good? Comparing Linear and Nonlinear Effects of Cognitive Ability on Life Outcomes

Abstract

Despite a long-standing expert consensus about the importance of cognitive ability for life outcomes, contrary views continue to proliferate in scholarly and popular literature. This divergence of beliefs presents an obstacle for evidence-based policymaking and decision-making in a variety of settings. One commonly held idea is that greater cognitive ability does not matter or is actually harmful beyond a certain point (sometimes stated as > 100 or 120 IQ points). We empirically tested these notions using data from four longitudinal, representative cohort studies comprising 48,558 participants in the United States and United Kingdom from 1957 to the present. We found that ability measured in youth has a positive association with most occupational, educational, health, and social outcomes later in life. Most effects were characterized by a moderate to strong linear trend or a practically null effect (mean R2 range = .002–.256). Nearly all nonlinear effects were practically insignificant in magnitude (mean incremental R2 = .001) or were not replicated across cohorts or survey waves. We found no support for any downside to higher ability and no evidence for a threshold beyond which greater scores cease to be beneficial. Thus, greater cognitive ability is generally advantageous—and virtually never detrimental.

Developmental Histories Facilitating the Emergence of Creative Scientific Expertise: The Role of Developed Cognitive Talents, Education, and Social and Cultural Contexts

“…As noted earlier in our discussion regarding the threshold hypothesis, a greater degree of developed aptitude appears to be beneficial in the sense of improving the likelihood of a wide range of educational, occupational, and life outcomes, not just limited to but also including STEM (e.g., Lubinski and Benbow, 2006;Park et al, 2007;Brown et al, 2021). This means that focusing on prospective samples of intellectually talented or gifted students who have had their talents largely developed and have also been followed up over the decades can provide some insights into the attributes, educational factors, and other contextual variables that can contribute to the development of creative scientific or STEM expertise.…”

Improving Gifted Talent Development Can Help Solve Multiple Consequential Real-World Problems

“…Findings within the top 1% of aptitudes are replicated in both nonrandom (Lubinski and Benbow 2020) and random gifted samples (Wai 2014). There does not appear to be a threshold beyond which more aptitude no longer matters for a wide range of life outcomes both within gifted samples (Lubinski and Benbow 2020) and also across multiple population-representative samples in the US and UK (Brown et al 2021). Even when drawing from a large sample of US leaders across a variety of domains such as business, the media, politics, law, and those with enormous wealth, when retrospectively profiling where these leaders attended higher education, roughly half attended educational institutions that largely selected for the top 1% of aptitude on standardized admissions tests (Wai 2013).…”

Malleability of Statistical Perception: Impact of Validity Presentation on College Admission Test Policy Preferences

“…Despite imperfections, standardized college admission tests (i.e., ACT and SAT) are construct-valid measures of developed general mental ability and one of the best predictors of an array of future academic, career, and life achievements (e.g., Brown et al, 2021;Kuncel et al, 2004;Robertson et al, 2010) and these tools have been carefully calibrated due to decades of criticism to minimize bias and adverse impact (e.g., Cronbach, 1975;Phelps, 2005;Sackett et al, 2008). Nevertheless, test critics maintain that standardized tests are not predictive of academic performance.…”

“…Criticisms notwithstanding, standardized selection tests such as college admission exams largely reflect individual differences in developed general mental ability (ACT: Koenig et al, 2008;SAT: Frey & Detterman, 2004) and are one of the best predictors of achievements at school, work, and life (Brown et al, 2021;Kuncel et al, 2004;Rohde & Thompson, 2007). In undergraduate admissions, the predictive validity of standardized tests (i.e., ACT, SAT), which denotes the association between test scores and academic achievement, ranges from 0.51 to 0.67 for predicting cumulative GPA and individual course grades.…”