2.3 The Limits of Testing

If I score low on an IQ test, does that mean I’m not intelligent?

According to many experts, the answer is no. These tests assess only certain cognitive abilities, prioritizing logical–analytical thinking and overlooking many others. They are not “neutral”: they are created within a specific cultural context and reflect the reasoning style and knowledge of the people who designed them.

In the 1980s, Howard Gardner introduced the theory of multiple intelligences, suggesting that there are many different forms of intelligence — such as musical intelligence or interpersonal intelligence. In the 1990s, Daniel Goleman shifted attention to emotional intelligence. None of these dimensions are captured by standard tests.

Robert Sternberg defines intelligence as the ability to adapt to one’s environment. From this perspective, IQ tests do not measure intelligence in a general sense — they measure how well a person has adapted to our cultural environment: literate, industrialised, school-based.

A child in a Western school learns to predict the next number in a sequence; a child growing up in a forest learns to navigate using tracks and sounds — a crucial skill in their environment, yet invisible to standard testing.

So an IQ score tells us something — but the idea that it represents a person’s overall intelligence is, at best, highly debatable.