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INTELLIGENCE

Intelligence can be defined as “the globalability of an individual to think clearly and to function
effectively in the environment”. By analyzing this definition we can get a clearer understanding
of what the intelligence is.
‘Global’ means that a person’s intelligence affects many areas of his life. For example, we think
of smart people as people who are good at many things.
‘Thinking clearly’ means the ability to use both inductive reasoning/inductive logic and
deductive reasoning/deductive logic when forming conclusions, rather than doing so based on
emotional response.
Main feature of intelligence is the ability to use convergent thinking(i.e., putting different ideas
or information together based on what they each have in common when trying to solve a
problem), and this is something that can be tested for by using intelligence tests.
A person with intelligence is also able to interact with other people or things in their surrounding
environment, thereby allowing them to “function effectively” within it. For example, to achieve a
desired goal or outcome.
What is intelligence? You don’t have to be Einstein to be a genius at something. Despite the
theories that we currently have, intelligence is still something which is hard to accurately define.
For example, consider the case when a person does poorly on their exams at school, but then
later goes on to create a successful business.
According to their exam results, this person displayed a low level of intelligence. However, they
later demonstrated a high level of intelligence by creating their own business. So whilst an
intelligence test may give us an idea of what a person is likely to be good at, we cannot say for
certain how intelligent a person really is because different circumstances may have different
effects on the type of intelligence that they display. Despite not having a university degree
Richard Branson went on to become one of the wealthiest men in the world. Does his lack of a
degree mean that he lacks intelligence?
Another reason why we cannot completely define a person’s level of intelligence is, because
intelligence has the status of a “hypothetical construct”.
This basically means that there are theories which help to explain intelligence, but we don’t
know for sure exactly what intelligence is as it can vary depending on how you define it.
Therefore, we can only make an educated guess based on the tests which we have used to
measure it.
These tests of course, may or may not reveal a person’s true degree of intelligence. As a result,
we must always be open to the possibility that we have falsely labelled someone as being
intelligent or as lacking intelligence.
One of the first people to create an intelligence test was a scientist named Francis Galton. He
used the “biometric method”, which attempted to test intelligence by using physiological
measures such as the strength of a person’s grip. Francis Galton viewed intelligence as being
related to the strength of one’s physical abilities. It was soon discovered however, that there was
little correlation between how strong someone was and their academic performance. This
subsequently led other researchers and investigators to come up with new ways of testing and
measuring intelligence.
After Galton’s work, two French scientists named Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon devised a
new way to measure intelligence called “Binet-Simon Scale”. This test measured someone’s
intelligence using the “performance method”, which involved testing intelligence based upon
someone’s ability to give correct answers to a series of questions.

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