Peoples’ experiences with this are majorly confounded, and your experiment risks also being confounded, by the Conservation of Virtue effect. While it’s true that mental attributes, health, height, wealth, and so on all positively correlate, within any filtered social group, those things tend to *negatively* correlate instead, because someone whose composite-trait-score is too low or high for a group will tend to end up in a different one. So, estimating IQ based on a conversation will tend to work well when the person whose IQ you’re estimating comes from an unfiltered population, and poorly when it comes from a filtered one.
Wow this is just another instance of talking past each other without even noticing. I’ll try to keep this in mind the next time I argue with someone whether IQ and social skills are negatively correlated.
Peoples’ experiences with this are majorly confounded, and your experiment risks also being confounded, by the Conservation of Virtue effect. While it’s true that mental attributes, health, height, wealth, and so on all positively correlate, within any filtered social group, those things tend to *negatively* correlate instead, because someone whose composite-trait-score is too low or high for a group will tend to end up in a different one. So, estimating IQ based on a conversation will tend to work well when the person whose IQ you’re estimating comes from an unfiltered population, and poorly when it comes from a filtered one.
“Conservation of Virtue effect” ← aka Berkson’s paradox.
Good connection to make. Thanks a lot for providing the more formal reference.
Wow this is just another instance of talking past each other without even noticing. I’ll try to keep this in mind the next time I argue with someone whether IQ and social skills are negatively correlated.