<p>In general? Do you tend to believe the self-assessments of some people over the self-assessments of other people? And what are "warning signs" for the inaccuracy for one's self-assessment? </p>
<p>Of course, the term "intelligent" is relative, as any human is smarter than AI, or most animals. When I hang around smarter people, I usually tend to believe the self-assessments of most. But I change my assessment of one's intelligence based on gender -girls are somewhat smarter than they say they are, and boys are somewhat dumber than they say they are</p>
<p>One would think that an individual would have a greater comprehension of who they are as opposed to someone else. If someone comes off as having an inaccurate self-assessment, they are probably either lying in an effort to hide their true identity, or you don’t know that person as well as you think.</p>
<p>The problem is that each person bases his or her assessment of intelligence off of the people in his or her environment. I’m not sure why self-assessment of intelligence is important anyway, you either do well, or you drop down a level, this is true almost everywhere. We have a kid here who came from the middle-of-nowhere with the idea he was so much smarter than everyone else…he started literally grabbing test papers out of my hand as he became more frustrated that I was performing significantly better than him on everything, and he all but had an identity crisis over it.</p>
<p>Yeah, I think it is funny that so many people think that they are really smart, when they are just average. But it is different with me - I know that I’m smarter than most people, because I am smart.</p>
<p>So you guys seriously believe that “smartness”, even “intelligence”, only goes as far as “studying” or “trying hard” or “test performance” or “levels” of courses? Hmmmmm</p>
<p>I actually had no opinion of my own intelligence. I just knew that I was good at certain things and not so good at others. When I found out that I qualified for Mensa (my IQ fell in the top 2% of the world’s population), my reaction was simply, “Oh really? That’s nice.” I would’ve been indifferent if I didn’t make it in.</p>
<p>No… Given that a person isn’t too pretentious, or thinks too highly of themselves in a certain category (often driven by external praise), they tend to gravitate their ratings towards an “average” score (usually around a 6-7 on a scale of 10)</p>
<p>If you’re a big fish in a small pond, you might not know about the sharks that lie in the ocean. Some fish are pufferfish and inflate themselves to look bigger than they are.</p>
<p>Intelligence is subjective anyway. </p>
<p>^Has no clue why she just used an extended fish analogy even though she doesn’t care about marine biology at all…</p>
<p>@sprstr, I’ve never believed that intelligence was dependent on how much you study or how well you do in school; especially high school.
I consider myself intelligent because I am perceptive, grasp concepts more quickly than most, and have a firm concept of my mortality and capabilities. The fact that I often exceed high academic standards and do perform well on standardized tests is secondary.</p>
<p>Very few people are naturally brilliant (although many think they are), so the standard definition of intelligence is worthless. Most people can earn good grades if they try hard to produce quality work. Of course, it’s hard to do. In order to earn good grades you have to have good time management, good study techniques, and powerful drive. People who accomplish this can truly be deemed “intelligent”.</p>
<p>You can have the brainpower of Einstein, but if you’re a slacker who sleeps in class and earns straight C’s, chances are you’re not going to be successful.</p>
<p>No one is going to say that s/he is honestly not intelligent. You might get “I’m street smart, not book smart” or something like that, but people don’t like admitting their faults. At the same time, a lot of people don’t like to brag, so smart people will probably put themselves down a bit. When I visit one of my friends, who I think is super smart, she always says, “No,no,o, you’re so smart,” and I say just the same back. It seems more polite to be self-deprecating than self-aggrandizing. If people were going to score themselves on a scale where ten is the most intelligent and 1 is the least, scores would probably go from 3 to 9.5, possibly 10, with the scores at the very top being much rarer and dominated by the types who are used to being assertive and for whom it is socially acceptable to behave as such.</p>
<p>Also, Mensa is overrated. Their test is only for certain types of smart people (i.e. those with good spatial reasoning). Maybe I’m just bitter because I didn’t get in.</p>
<p>Haha, wow, very interesting replies. Seeing that people DO base their own intelligence on how their intelligence compares to their environment though, one could get a pretty rough approximation of their intelligence just by knowing their environment and knowing their self-assessment of their own intelligence (apart from the combined total of one’s self-reports, scores, and how hard one works, which combined, can also provide a good approximation).</p>