Podcast “The Boss – Power is Female”
Intelligence researcher: “It’s a perversion that half of the students should go to high school”
For more than 30 years, scientist Elsbeth Stern has been researching what constitutes intelligence. How does intelligence work? And what’s with the strong thesis that men are more intelligent than women? An interview that makes you smart.
This issue comes from the stern archive and was first published in May 2024.
Cleverness, common sense or perspicacity – there are many ways to describe the ability to think. One type of intelligence can be measured scientifically: cognitive intelligence. Elsbeth Stern has been a professor of teaching and learning research at ETH Zurich since 2006. She is considered a luminary in her field.
In the stern podcast “Die Boss”, multi-supervisory board member and host Simone Menne talks to Elsbeth Stern about the definition of intelligence and why social or emotional competence doesn’t play a role in her research: “I don’t like it when people talk about social or emotional Intelligence speaks quite simply because the measuring instruments in this area do not have the same quality as the measuring instruments that we use for intelligence, i.e. the intelligence tests. We cannot measure emotional and social skills with the same statistical measures. how we can do that with cognitive ability,” says the scientist.
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Almost 70 percent of people had fairly similar intelligence and represented the average. Of the remaining 30 percent, 15 percent are above average and 15 percent below, explains the researcher. If you now look at the distribution of intelligence between the genders, there are no differences on average. However, research shows: “You still find differences in the extremes. There are more men in the lower areas and there are also clearly more men at the top. So among the highly gifted the distribution is no longer 50/50, but it is increasing But it should be emphasized that there are still women in the highest levels.”
When asked about the claim of many parents to classify their child as having above-average intelligence and to absolutely want to enable them to receive a high school education, Elsbeth Stern says:
“So if you think about the fact that intelligence is normally distributed, then of course it’s actually a perversion to say that half of the students should go to high school, because of course you make the cut where the bump is is the largest.”
You can hear what the scientist derives from this for universities, what role teachers and parents play and what happens when your boss is less intelligent than you in the new episode of star-Podcasts “The boss – power is female”.
At “The Boss – Power is Female” top women talk among themselves: host and multi-supervisory board member Simone Menne (including BMW, Deutsche Post DHL, Henkel) meets bosses from all areas of society to talk to them about their lives and careers. “Die Boss” is published fortnightly on Wednesdays as well as onand all common podcast platforms.
Editor’s note: Stern belongs to RTL .
Source: Stern
