![]() That said, some scientists have spent time trying to record IQ test scores from around the world, the most notable being the work of controversial English psychologist Richard Lynn. IQ testing alone is a source of controversy as people constantly debate how to measure all the various facets that make up a person’s intelligence. This, as you might imagine, is a very controversial topic. The Wechsler tests have a standard deviation of 15 while the Stanford-Binet tests have a standard deviation of 16, meaning what constitutes an average IQ score on each is slightly different, and also it makes for a slightly wider distribution if you were to graph the Stanford-Binet’s IQ bell curve compared to that of the Wechsler test. Why are the scales slightly different for these two popular IQ tests? The answer is that they have different standard deviations. In general, IQ scores are categorized as follows for the two most popular IQ tests, the Stanford-Binet and Wechsler Tests. Roughly 50% of the population falls into this category. Typically, an individual who completes an intelligence test with a cumulative score between 90 to 109 would be classified as having an average IQ. The next level of scores above or below these levels is extremely rare, as people with IQs below 55 are intellectually impaired, while people with IQs above 145 are exceptionally gifted and often considered geniuses. The further out you go you will find fewer and fewer people, as only 4.2% of IQ scores fall between 55-70 and 130-145. Expanding the curve out a little further to two standard deviations, you’ll find that over 95% of people will fall between 70-130 on the IQ scale. Roughly 68% of humans will have IQ scores that fall between 85 and 115, or one standard deviation above or below the average human IQ. If you look at the graph above, you can see that there are equal parts above and below the mean of 100. The IQ bell curve helps categorize where people fall along the scale of intelligence and does so in a neatly compartmentalized way. This distribution of scores is known as a standard distribution, seen in the graph below of the score distribution for the Wechsler intelligence tests. The distribution of the scores on these tests fall uniformly from each side of the mean and form what is known as the IQ bell curve. Scores are evaluated periodically, and the tests adjusted, so that the average score on most intelligence tests such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale’s mean score is 100 and maintains the standard IQ distribution known as the IQ bell curve. With this increase in IQ it means that the “average human IQ” we see today is significantly higher than it was a hundred years ago. It’s been discovered that over the course of time human beings have gotten smarter, a discovery known as the Flynn Effect. When people talk about “average” human intelligence, statistically they’re talking about the mean of scores made available from scientifically accepted IQ tests.
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