Maybe we shouldnt get too close to science, after all, much of it pondering.
Better to go the Holy Bible way and love the different peoples and not worry about whos got a big IQ.
At the end of everything... is death and the Judgment.
The Word tells us this and its clear...even you wonder about it.
A good strong focus on God and our relationship with His Saviour Jesus Christ would go far better for each of us in the end... than many a pondering.

I would have thought it self-evident that our self-confidence and expectations affected the results of any particular testing situation. It is not necessary to be told that your particular ethnic/gender group performs above average in preparation for an exam. Some people believe their lucky rabbit's foot or St. Christopher medal will affect an outcome. Dumbo believed it was a feather! All such amulets can be effective.

I would have thought that any educator - and most parents - could have predicted the outcomes of such social experiments as the article mentioned.

Good points Romany.

Steven I remember being a participant in a Psychology experiment at uni involving cognitive testing after a period of sleep deprivation. After being one of the unlucky ones to draw the short straw to go without sleep for the entire 24 hour+ period, I was determined to prove that my skills were not affected by lack of sleep.

I did well on the tests due to that determination - mind you I made an assumption about the tester's expectations and I may have been totally off track. Perhaps they were testing for pigheadedness or for the very factors that your post was demonstrating. :)

Isn't this just a variation of the Hawthorne effect?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

I tried to put this knowledge to practical use. Before she went shopping I told my wife I had discovered she was of Scottish descent. My hope was that this would cause her to be more thrifty.

Alas she actually spent more. She came home with a bottle of Glenlivet.

Obviously some fine tuning is needed

Most IQ tests I have seen cover only one part of human intelligence (mainly academic).

To assess an overall intelligence you will need to look at emotional and social intelligence. In most cases you cant get proper results without involving communities or 360 feedback.

Peace,