The Intellectual Paradigm

Progressive understanding is leading us away from identifying intelligence as a fixed and inflexible unit of comparison, towards a more expansive model of a growing and essentially elastic measure of development. Therefore, if intelligence is now more commonly becoming understood as a measure of potential, we cannot keep establishing our tests in the same way. Tests that are meant to measure intelligence should not rely solely on testing comparative stores of fact based knowledge, but should also consider individual problem solving and reasoning capabilities outside of the academic classroom. They should assess resourcefulness and the strategic capacity of the individual to make something out of nothing and link various concepts together that were once understood to be so different. Isn’t that what intelligence is? The ability to find and understand connections where there were none before? Isn’t this how the world progresses?

This is also at the base of psychological measurement. When we create tests, we are breaking one idea down into the connections that make it possible. We define a construct based on multiple sub constructs and various possible indicators that are representative of the principal characteristic. In order to do so, we have to understand the connections, know how they connect and why, and finally meld them all together to create a cohesive image of a once foreign concept.

The only issue we seem to run into, is that we no longer spend time looking at the big picture; we no longer take the time to step back and marvel at the miraculous and complex interconnections that make each concept so intricately interesting to us. Instead, we now overanalyze the little details, trying to make them as perfect as possible, and thus departing from our mission of greater understanding. We spend our time obsessing over the little details, trying to get everything just right. While this will lead to more detailed work, it may not in the end lead to less error or greater internal validity. If we become too over involved in the little details, we may be lead astray and lose focus of where we were to begin with. So we have to be careful and take time to remind ourselves that while we can be great, nothing is ever perfect in psychological measurement.

In the words of Albert Einstein, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

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