Poll: Do you think you're more intelligent than the average person? (Be honest)

[Anthony Wells]

i say im above average because i dont know what the average is but from what i hear through the grape vine and through other sources the averge person doesnt have commen sense about thinks or knowledge of other things or think for themselves...whatever i i voted above average due to what i have heard through the grape vine..hell i might only be average in intelligence...i may be below..i have no idea.

 

[Olas]

Why is there no option for 'average'?

Technically if you were to line up all 7+ billion people in the world and arrange them from highest IQ to lowest IQ, only one of them could be perfectly in the middle and therefore average. Everyone else is either above or below, even if only slightly.

Besides, declaring oneself average is essentially just a way to avoid the question. If I made it an option most people would choose it just to avoid seeming either stupid or self-rightous.

 

[Cpu46]

I tend to know more than the average person about a bunch of random things but I wouldn't say I am more intelligent. Definitely have a lot more ingenuity than a lot of people though. So I might not have the largest tank of gas but I get more miles per gallon.

Story time: I was working on my car with my good friend who is almost at genius level knowledge if the standardized testing is anything to go by and my father who is more or less average. We had a socket wrench but couldn't loosen a bolt. My dad fiddles around with it and attempts to loosen it with WD40, my friend grabs a rubber mallet and smacks the wrench handle, I grab a hollow metal tube that used to be the shaft for a broom and slide it over the wrench handle and apply light force. Off pops the bolt (which hadn't even budged at the first two, the mallet actually caused the wrench handle to bend worryingly far, causing us to replace the set after we were finished with the car). Both of them looked at me like I was freaking Jesus.

 

[scyther250]

You can't expect this poll to come out 50/50, though, since the Escapist readership isn't representative of the entire population. If you wanted to honestly check whether people overestimate themselves to such a degree, you'd have to have specified whether we considered ourselves above or below the average Escapist reader.

 

[loc978]

Why is there no option for 'average'?

Technically if you were to line up all 7+ billion people in the world and arrange them from highest IQ to lowest IQ, only one of them could be perfectly in the middle and therefore average. Everyone else is either above or below, even if only slightly.

Besides, declaring oneself average is essentially just a way to avoid the question. If I made it an option most people would choose it just to avoid seeming either stupid or self-rightous.

In terms of pure mathematics, you're correct. However, when one is speaking of antiquated measures of "intelligence", an average is generally defined as an estimation of or approximation to an arithmetic mean. In layman's terms, that would be a range of IQ measures that a majority of people fall into... not that intellectual quotient is truly a relevant measure of "intelligence" at this point.

As for me, I don't much care where I fall on the scale.

 

[BanicRhys]

ITT: people mistaking their inability to fully understand the thought processes of those around them (and vice versa) for intelligence.

I didn't vote for this very reason. I do understand things the people I interact with don't and this makes me feel more intelligent than them, but I've met very few people that I can confirm are definitely smarter/stupider than me.

 

[Kae]

I used to think that I was well above average because I always had good grades without studying, and the I took an IQ test and got below average, I was so confused, I thought it was a mistake but upon further inspection, I am not really good at anything I am about average in every single subject, maybe slightly above average in math but other than that I am not really too smart, I never notice anything that happens around me and am not able to do more than one thing at once, so after all that I'm pretty sure that my intelligence is below average BUT I use the little intelligence I have better than most people with higher intelligence, it actually makes me feel rather superior to know that I can do certain things better than people with higher intelligence, but I won't lie I do work really slowly, it does seem to take me more time to do one thing than most people.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I wouldn't think so: I didn't know what a pirogi was until about a year ago, I don't know what jobs are available outside of the service industry (food, repair, sales, etc), I don't know the process behind making things like plastic clear or, sand into glass. I also suck at building things that aren't lego but that could be more of a dexterity thing than an intelligence thing. Also like other posters I absolutely suck at math and struggle when it comes to spelling and grammar.

 

[Grabbin Keelz]

I consider myself smarter than the average Facebook user.

 

[The Preened Mr. Fust]

Spending time working in retail gave me a bit of a lead on the insight that I just may be more intelligent than the average.

 

[itsausernamewhatofit]

I believe I'm above average however I'm pretty bad at admitting fault. Also I'm an American teenager so the average for people like me is very, very low.

 

[Zhandarr]

saw a post similar to this but, more intelligent than the all round average? I dont know, maybe. average in my school? *yes*. that's not me being cocky, my school has a very low standard of pupil x] it's kinda tragic

 

[Alduin Silas]

Modesty aside? Above average- but only just.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Just a little experiment I thought up. Obviously only 50% of people can be above average in anything.

Ok, I've seen and heard this a hundred times and it's pissing me off that no one ever corrects it. That's not average, that's median. Only 50% of people can be above the median. If you have a hypothetical group of 90 people of nearly equal intelligence, then add 10 really stupid ones then 90% of the group will be above average. If you want to split them into the top 50% and the bottom 50% then you'd compare them to the median (which would be in between the 50th and 51st smartest).

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

I doubt it. I'm more reasonable and mature than most people, and I'm not as self-entitled or selfish, but all things considered, I'm quite foolish regardless.

For me, I'd love to modest and say I'm average but I go to a highly respected UK university which at the moment hangs around the 9th to 15th top in the country (within top 200 in the world), so even without bias I must be above average.

I do believe the original post said knowledge does not beget intelligence. If we don't go by that, I test better than most of the world, if the scores are any indication, but knowledge retention only has so much practical application.

 

[marurder]

Why doesn't this poll have an "I'm average" option?

 

[madster11]

Above average, but only by a small amount.

Mainly just being nerd enough and remembering more things than the average.

 

[Yopaz]

Well, I'm no genius and I know stuff because I am studying. However I can go out of my field and discuss subjects like politics, literature, history and religion at a below average level. I am able to draw conclusions about things I hear based on prior knowledge on the subject and I have drawn the same conclusions as experts in the field several times. I am skilled at some areas in math, I speak 2 languages almost fluently and I can understand German to some degree and speak enough to be understood.

I am above average, but I wouldn't say I am far above it. This might be because it's hard to estimate the average when media often present a lot of stupidity and some politicians have the most retarded debates filled with ignorance and knowing those actually get between 20-30% votes (that's quite a lot for a single party here).

You might say that it's stupid that most of those who have voted on this thread claim to be above average, but you also left out the option for average. There's also a lot of this community who are studying, have degrees and those kind of things. Compare the average Youtube discussion to the average discussion on The Escapist. The intellectual level is clearly different. Youtube comments are often void of intelligence and Youtube is a far bigger community than The Escapist. Because of that it's reasonable to believe that more than half of us have more than average intelligence.
When we are asked this kind of questions we never really get a definition of average intelligence which makes it hard to compare ourselves to the average. I might believe I am above average because I underestimate the average. We usually think about people we consider stupid. Then we start counting how many stupid people we know. We compare ourselves to those below average and think ourselves above average because it's easy to spot someone very stupid rather than someone who's extremely average.

 

[pwned123456]

to be completly honest?

NO..not at all....however I also know that we tend to overestimate ourselfs..alot

but no.....and how would you measure that?...

years ago I took all kinds of IQ tests onlne..ranging from 99 to 120 so theres really no way of knowing

most online iq tests dont work ive tried 3 first one was 60 second was 150 third 130