What is it about?
Some people believe that there are more gifted or high IQ individuals than expected. My student co-authors and I explored this possibility with real datasets and found that there is no excess of bright people in the general population.
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Why is it important?
The assumption of test creators and many psychologists has been that intelligence is normally distributed. However, some people believe that there is a surplus of people in the high ability range. My co-authors and I show that these individuals rely on nonrepresentative samples, outdated test norms, and/or confirmation bias in justifying their beliefs. The conclusion is that there are approximately the same number of high-IQ individuals that one would expect from a normal distribution.
Perspectives
This was my first article on human intelligence, and since then I've published a few more. My student co-authors were great to work with, and I like this article and its reliance on real datasets. Please also note the corrigendum which I requested (and was issued) in 2018, which corrects a slight error in a table. This is the first correction to an article in the history of the Journal of Advanced Academics.
Dr Russell T. Warne
Independent Scholar
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Are There More Gifted People Than Would Be Expected in a Normal Distribution? An Investigation of the Overabundance Hypothesis, Journal of Advanced Academics, November 2013, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1932202x13507969.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Earlier version of the article
Earlier version of the study that was presented at the National Conference on Undergraduate Education.
Reply from James Gallagher
Reply from James J. Gallagher disputing the article. I'm not conviced by the response, but the editors did not let me write a response. This was Gallagher's last article before his death.
Corrigendum
Corrigendum I submitted to the journal. Dr. Charles Murray contacted me with some questions about the article. In the process of answering his questions, I noticed a slight error in one table. This is the link to the correction, which is the first in the history of the Journal of Advanced Academics.
Contributors
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