psychology
If you can answer these 3 questions correctly, you are considered intelligent
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When is a person intelligent? A Yale professor wants to get to the bottom of this topic with a simple test consisting of three questions. But can three questions actually determine how smart we are?
There are various very complex methods to determine a person’s intelligence – such as tests that calculate IQ, i.e. the intelligence quotient. But the whole thing is said to be much easier with a very short quiz developed by Yale professor Shane Frederick. According to this, only three questions should be asked “Cognitive Reflection Test” define how smart a person is. Can you answer the questions correctly the first time?
Yale professor develops intelligence test with 3 questions: “Cognitive Reflection Test”
- A bat and a ball cost a total of $1.10. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
- If five machines take five minutes for five products. Then how long does it take 100 machines to create 100 products?
- Water lilies grow in a lake. Every day the number of water lilies doubles. The water lilies take 48 days to cover the entire lake. How long would it take for the water lilies to cover half of the lake?
It seems like the answers to these questions are obvious. Many people quickly think of these solutions: ten cents, 100 minutes and 24 days. In fact, the answers are wrong, the correct solutions are: five cents, five minutes and 47 days.
How do you come up with the correct solutions?
- If the bat cost one dollar and the ball cost ten cents, the price difference between them would only be 90 cents – but it should be one dollar. Therefore, the bat can cost as little as $1.05 and the ball five cents to meet this requirement.
- If five machines take five minutes for five products, one machine takes five minutes for one product. Accordingly, 100 machines for 100 products also need five minutes.
- If the number of water lilies doubles each day and the entire lake is covered on day 48, the lake must be half covered one day before that 48th day. Because on day 48 the amount doubles again – therefore the correct answer is 47 days.
How meaningful is the intelligence test really?
Professor Shane Frederick originally developed these questions as a psychological test. Several thousand test subjects took part in 35 different studies. Only 17 percent of participants answered all three questions correctly, and 33 percent gave the wrong answer to all questions. According to Shane Frederick, the group of people who quickly gave seemingly obvious but ultimately wrong answers tended to act on gut instinct. According to the professor, those who come up with the correct answers are more likely to act carefully.
Over time, however, the professor discovered that people with a higher IQ were more likely to answer the questions correctly than those with a lower one. Ultimately, answering the questions correctly requires that you are cognitively able to understand them correctly and come up with the correct answer through logical thinking. If you are a more thoughtful type but do not have these analytical skills, thinking intensively about the problem will not help.
Which brings us to the next problem with the test: The mathematical-logical component is only part of intelligence. There are many other types of intelligence, such as linguistic, spatial, emotional or musical intelligence. So anyone who can’t excel at analytical tasks like these three questions is not automatically stupid – but his or her intelligence probably just lies somewhere else.
Sources used: businessinsider.de, sjdm.org