Smarts are a big advantage when it comes to success in school. It doesn't mean that emotional intelligence isn't important in life.
May 13, 2006 (Press Release) --
Six months is an awfully cute age for babies. They're often getting their first teeth, and with some help, many can sit up and take in the world from new heights.
Psychologists know something else about these chubby wonders--namely, how to predict their IQ scores with a simple test.
They show babies a photograph; then they show the picture again, with a similar one alongside it. Because babies tend to spend more time studying new images, the researchers measure how long the baby looks at the old photo compared to the new one. The faster the babies recognize they've already seen the first photo, the better their visual memories--which correlates to a higher IQ.
Researchers concede that the test isn't perfect, and that IQ can be influenced by what parents do, among other things. Even so, it means that when your baby is six months old, you can tell something pretty significant.
But how significant? After all, IQ has been linked to everything from wealth to longevity. So how much should a new parent freak out?
Not so much. Mostly, it tells how he or she will do in school, since school performance is what IQ scores predict best. And we know school is important.
But do book smarts guarantee success in life? Of course not, unless your definition of success includes brilliant people like Theodore John Kaczynski, the Harvard alum and former Berkeley math professor who turned out to be the murderous terrorist known as the Unabomber.
A bountiful IQ provides some distinct advantages, though. And no matter how appealing concepts such as emotional intelligence sound, not everyone is convinced that they can make all the difference for someone really short-changed in the smarts department.
After Daniel Goleman wrote the 1995 book Emotional Intelligence, many people embraced the idea that how we manage our emotions--a learned ability--has more to do with our ability to succeed in life than our less malleable IQ.
Goleman argued that emotional intelligence helps us learn better, choose more wisely, act less aggressively, and do other things that are advantageous, and has more to do with success than raw IQ.
As compelling and logical as it sounded, not all researchers were convinced. And since then, they've poked a few holes in the idea that good emotional intelligence helps a person triumph over all odds.
conducted a study of gifted students to see how their levels of emotional intelligence helped them succeed in school academically and socially. Fans of emotional intelligence as a predictor of success would have liked to see a clear link between emotional intelligence and success in school.
But, the Review reported, this wasn't the case, at least for this particular group of students. When you consider this in the light of other research that links IQ to school performance, it's hard to deny that yes, smarts are a big advantage when it comes to success in school. It doesn't mean that emotional intelligence isn't important in life; it just might not be the advantage in the classroom that has been suggested in the past.
When it comes to doing well in school, well, it helps to be smart. Would I sound dumb if I said "duh"?
Source: http://www.msn.com/
Psychologists know something else about these chubby wonders--namely, how to predict their IQ scores with a simple test.
They show babies a photograph; then they show the picture again, with a similar one alongside it. Because babies tend to spend more time studying new images, the researchers measure how long the baby looks at the old photo compared to the new one. The faster the babies recognize they've already seen the first photo, the better their visual memories--which correlates to a higher IQ.
Researchers concede that the test isn't perfect, and that IQ can be influenced by what parents do, among other things. Even so, it means that when your baby is six months old, you can tell something pretty significant.
But how significant? After all, IQ has been linked to everything from wealth to longevity. So how much should a new parent freak out?
Not so much. Mostly, it tells how he or she will do in school, since school performance is what IQ scores predict best. And we know school is important.
But do book smarts guarantee success in life? Of course not, unless your definition of success includes brilliant people like Theodore John Kaczynski, the Harvard alum and former Berkeley math professor who turned out to be the murderous terrorist known as the Unabomber.
A bountiful IQ provides some distinct advantages, though. And no matter how appealing concepts such as emotional intelligence sound, not everyone is convinced that they can make all the difference for someone really short-changed in the smarts department.
After Daniel Goleman wrote the 1995 book Emotional Intelligence, many people embraced the idea that how we manage our emotions--a learned ability--has more to do with our ability to succeed in life than our less malleable IQ.
Goleman argued that emotional intelligence helps us learn better, choose more wisely, act less aggressively, and do other things that are advantageous, and has more to do with success than raw IQ.
As compelling and logical as it sounded, not all researchers were convinced. And since then, they've poked a few holes in the idea that good emotional intelligence helps a person triumph over all odds.
conducted a study of gifted students to see how their levels of emotional intelligence helped them succeed in school academically and socially. Fans of emotional intelligence as a predictor of success would have liked to see a clear link between emotional intelligence and success in school.
But, the Review reported, this wasn't the case, at least for this particular group of students. When you consider this in the light of other research that links IQ to school performance, it's hard to deny that yes, smarts are a big advantage when it comes to success in school. It doesn't mean that emotional intelligence isn't important in life; it just might not be the advantage in the classroom that has been suggested in the past.
When it comes to doing well in school, well, it helps to be smart. Would I sound dumb if I said "duh"?
Source: http://www.msn.com/
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