Conceived and designed the experiments: DH MR LZ AI. Performed the experiments: DH LZ AC. Analyzed the data: DH AAR-R. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: DH LZ AI. Wrote the paper: DH MR NS AC-J FM AI.
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
While fluid intelligence has proved to be central to executive functioning, logical reasoning and other frontal functions, the role of this ability in psychosocial adaptation has not been well characterized.
A random-probabilistic sample of 2370 secondary school students completed measures of fluid intelligence (Raven's Progressive Matrices, RPM) and several measures of psychological adaptation: bullying (Delaware Bullying Questionnaire), domestic abuse of adolescents (Conflict Tactic Scale), drug intake (ONUDD), self-esteem (Rosenberg's Self Esteem Scale) and the Perceived Mental Health Scale (Spanish adaptation).
Lower fluid intelligence scores were associated with physical violence, both in the role of victim and victimizer. Drug intake, especially cannabis, cocaine and inhalants and lower self-esteem were also associated with lower fluid intelligence. Finally, scores on the perceived mental health assessment were better when fluid intelligence scores were higher.
Our results show evidence of a strong association between psychosocial adaptation and fluid intelligence, suggesting that the latter is not only central to executive functioning but also forms part of a more general capacity for adaptation to social contexts.
Fluid intelligence has been defined as the ability to think logically and solve problems in novel situations, independent of acquired knowledge
Neuroanatomically, fluid intelligence has been related to frontal functioning
Alongside the view that the frontal lobe constitutes the neural basis of fluid intelligence, frontal lobe functioning has also been linked to executive functioning and complex social behavior. Support for this comes from several lesion studies, which show that frontal lobe damage can alter behavior and social adaptation
The relationship between fluid intelligence, novel problem solving and executive dysfunction has been extensively studied
The term “psychosocial adaptation” refers to the quality of life in terms of social activities and relationships, sense of control and self-image. It includes multiple dimensions, such as social behavior, emotional regulation and the development of habits
Five social domains are particularly important for psychosocial adaptation: abuse of children and adolescents
Psychosocial adaptation is diagnostically and prognostically connected to neurological diseases
To our knowledge, no study with a large sample size, i.e., a random-probabilistic sample, has previously assessed the relationship between fluid intelligence and multiple measures of psychosocial adaptation. In the present study, we aimed to analyze this relationship by recruiting 2370 participants (controlled for educational level) who were tested on fluid intelligence using Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM) and psychosocial outcomes, including measures of child abuse antecedents, bullying, self-esteem, mental health and drug use. In brief, we found that the lower the RPM scores were, the lower the level of psychosocial adaptation. Our results provide evidence of a strong association between fluid intelligence and psychosocial adaptation, suggesting that fluid intelligence is not only related to executive functions but is also a central component of the ability to adapt to social contexts.
This study was part of a Chilean regional county survey conducted during 2010 and designed to evaluate the psychosocial factors associated with academic achievement in scholars from socially vulnerable contexts. Only students belonging to public schools of Santiago de Chile were evaluated and all of the county's 21 public schools were included. Participants were recruited from primary schools, in the UK system, preparatory school covering the ages of 11–14 years old. From a total of 21 schools, 2370 students (age = 11.9 years,
Academic Grade | |||||
5th | 6th | 7th | 8th | Total | |
|
924 | 975 | 871 | 940 | 3829 |
|
573 | 657 | 565 | 575 | 2370 |
The Standard Progressive Matrices version of the RPM was used as a measure of general intelligence, or
To assess bullying behavior, the Delaware Bullying Questionnaire
Domestic abuse of adolescents was assessed using the Conflict Tactic Scale (CTS)
To assess drug intake, we used an international standardized scale
Self-esteem was assessed using the Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale (
Mental health problems were assessed using a Spanish adaptation of the Perceived Mental Health Scale
The assessments were performed by a team of trained social psychologists (
The data were analyzed using SPSS software (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, version 17.0). To assess the association between RPM scores and each measure of violence, correspondence analysis (CA) was used
Five levels of scoring for the RPM were constructed in order to relate fluid intelligence to psychosocial adaptation. The total RPM index for each of the percentiles 5, 10, 25, 50, 75, 90 and 95 for each age group were obtained. Based on those indexes five scores were obtained (
Score | Level of intelligence | Percentile |
1 | High superior | ≥95 |
2 | Moderate superior | ≥75 and <95 |
3 | Average | >25 and <75 |
4 | Moderate inferior | >5 and ≤25 |
5 | Low inferior | ≤5 |
The scoring was based on previous standardized studies reported in Chile in a sample of 4258 students (Ivanovic et al.
The Delaware Bullying Questionnaire showed that 1 out of 3 (30.3%) students reported having exhibited violent behavior in the last year; 18.2% of the participants reported more than two episodes of violent behavior against other students and 51.5% reported that they had never performed a physical assault on another student. When the relationship between these results and the RPM scores was analyzed, the CA revealed a significant effect (χ2 (8,
Score 1 | Score 2 | Score 3 | Score 4 | Score 5 | |
Never | 5.25 | 8.58 | 1.72 | −18.98 | −9.60 |
Once in a year | −3.47 | −1.16 | −0.27 | 4.80 | 1.35 |
Twice or more during the year | −2.22 | −12.96 | −2.45 | 21.09 | 14.31 |
Positive and higher values of χ2 distances are indicative of and strong association. Negative score are indicative of a lack of association.
Reduced or absent bullying behavior was associated with higher RPM scores. On the contrary, repetitive bullying behavior was related to lower RPM scores. The bi-space diagram shows the association between RPM scores and bullying behavior (
Circles display groups of categories close together.
Regarding victimization, similarly to the victimizer scales, 1 out of 3 (30.1%) students reported having been exposed to violent behavior in the last year; 16% of the participants were exposed to more than two episodes of violent behavior against them; 52% reported to have never been exposed to physical assault from other students. When the relationship between victimization and RPM scores was analyzed, the CA revealed a significant effect (χ2 (8,
Score 1 | Score 2 | Score 3 | Score 4 | Score 5 | |
Never | 2.02 | 4.11 | 0.43 | −3.72 | −9.85 |
Once in a year | −0.00 | −1.03 | 0.01 | 0.03 | 1.39 |
Twice or more during the year | −6.36 | −5.27 | −1.85 | 10.93 | 16.89 |
Positive and higher values of χ2 distances are indicative of and strong association. Negative score are indicative of a lack of association.
Similar to the results of the victimizer scale, a high correspondence was observed between reports of being a victim of violence more than once a year and lower RPM scores. At the same time, higher RPM scores seemed to be a protective factor against other's aggression.
Cannabis consumption showed an annual prevalence of 3%, followed by coca paste (2.2%) and cocaine (2%). The annual prevalence of use of all cocaine-related drugs, i.e., cocaine, coca paste and crack, was 3.3%; followed by inhalants (2.7%) and non-prescribed stimulants (2.2%). The composite score of drug intake presented an annual prevalence of 5.5%. This composite measure of drug consumption showed a significant association with RPM scores (χ2 (4,
(a) RPM scores and annual prevalence of drug intake (%). (b) RPM scores and annual prevalence's percentages of moderate (MPV) and intense physical violence (IPV). (C) RPM scores and self-esteem (Means and
The adolescent abuse scale showed a high annual prevalence of within-family psychological violence: 52.5%, 1 out of 2 participants had been a victim of family violence. The annual prevalence of moderate physical violence was 40.2% and the prevalence of intense physical violence was 21.4%. RPM scores were highly associated with the annual prevalence of moderate physical violence (χ2 (4,
The self-esteem scale yielded an average score of 21.25 (
The average total score for mental health-related problems reported was 6.88 (
As noted above, we controlled for two possible effects that could weaken or even cancel out our results: socioeconomic status and parental educational level. The first was fixed within the design because all of the population came from the same socioeconomic group and had a socioeconomic status of middle-low and lower. Despite this, the intelligence scores varied and showed a normal distribution, independent of socioeconomic status, which in this study was a constant. Therefore, the effects can be seen as being independent of this condition. Parental educational level was measured in terms of years of study (0 to 8 points) and was covaried with each of the relationships that were tested above. For the association between the RPM score and the measurement of bullying as the perpetrator, “Bully”, a logistic regression was used, with the following predictors: RPM score, father's educational level and mother's educational level. ‘Bully’ was coded as a dependent variable as 0 = Never, with a prevalence of 48.5% and 1 = Once a year or twice or more during the year, with a prevalence of 51.5%).RPM had an important effect in the expected direction (low RPM score –lower IQ– greater chance to trigger bullying,
RPM | Father's education level | Mother's education level | |||||||
Regressand |
|
Wald | OR CI95% |
|
Wald | OR CI95% |
|
Wald | OR CI95% |
Bully | .33 |
76.37 | 1.29–1.50 | .030 |
4.47 | 1.00–1.06 | −.014 | .91 | .96–1.01 |
Bullied | .22 |
36.76 | 1.16–1.34 | .015 | 1.12 | .99–1.04 | −.018 | 1.62 | .96–1.01 |
Use of illicit drugs | .43 |
28.52 | 1.31–1.79 | −.006 | .04 | .94–1.06 | −.009 | .09 | .93–1.05 |
Intense physical violence | .25 |
31.98 | 1.18–1.40 | −.013 | .60 | .95–1.02 | .014 | .64 | .98–1.05 |
Moderate physical violence | .09 |
6.10 | 1.02–1.18 | −.031 |
4.59 | .94–.99 | .044 |
9.40 | 1.02–1.08 |
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This is the first large sample study to assess the relationship between fluid intelligence and psychosocial adaptation. The overall results of our study suggest that fluid intelligence has a strong association with psychosocial measures. We found a linear relationship between RPM and measures of physical violence as the victimizer: the lower the RPM, the higher the violence score. We found a similar relationship between RPM and measures of violence pertaining to the victim role. No relation between RPM and psychological violence was found. Drug intake (especially for cannabis, cocaine and inhalants) was higher when RPM was lower. Self-esteem reports were modulated by 5 levels of RPM (from lower to higher) in a simple way: the lower the RPM, the lower the self-esteem. Finally, similar results were found for the mental health measurement: higher rates of health were observed when RPM was higher. All effects remained even when covaried with parental educational level.
Deficits in fluid intelligence, executive functioning and social adaptation have been described after frontal lobe lesions
Complex modern societies demand a strong capacity for social adaptation. Bullying and violence, addictive behavior, perceived mental health and self-esteem are strongly linked with quality of life
Even though the aforementioned studies suggest a link between IQ and behavioral outcomes, no previous study has directly assessed the association between fluid intelligence and psychosocial adaptation. Ours is the first study to look for this association using a larger cohort and several measures of psychological adaptation. In addition, our sample is random and probabilistic, which is an uncommon design in studies of its type, they are usually carried out using convenience sample or intentional samples and provides greater generalizability of results and greater statistical power.
Our results need to be extended and replicated along several dimensions. First, our sample represents a socially vulnerable population and further studies should asses the relationship between fluid intelligence and psychosocial adaptation in other socioeconomic groups. In addition, further studies should include not only measures of fluid intelligence but also measures of crystallized intelligence to compare the effects of educational and cultural experience in interaction with fluid intelligence. Also, the inclusion of more objective and quantitative measures of psychosocial adaptation, such as experimental designs or brain studies, would provide an interesting, if challenging, approach to study the relationship between social adaptation and fluid intelligence.
Does low fluid intelligence itself make a person more vulnerable to social adaptation problems? Or is it that fluid intelligence is correlated with the situation in which a person lives? For example, certainly lower intelligence is correlated with lower family income, so are we seeing the effects of poverty? Unfortunately, this is impossible to answer these questions with our data and further research is needed to address this topic. Nevertheless, at least some data suggest that the range of fluid intelligence is to some extent independent of socioeconomic and educational levels. Because we found that the effects of fluid intelligence on all measures of psychosocial adaptation remain once both socioeconomic and educational levels are covaried, we speculate that fluid intelligence is not completely dependent on socio-education. The association between fluid intelligence and psychosocial adaptation is very consistent in our data, the higher the first, the higher the second, independent of socioeconomic status and socio-educational level, which was tested with statistical techniques for covariance.
A second issue concerning our results is the possible relationship between high fluid intelligence and social desirability. Specifically, could it be that fluid intelligence affects the tendency to answer questions in a socially desirable way? Unfortunately, we don't have any direct way to address this point and the possibility that social desirability could act as a moderator effect in children with high RPM scores cannot be discarded. However, the relationship between a high RPM score and better psychosocial adaptation could be interpreted, from our point of view, as suggesting that children with higher fluid intelligence exhibit more adaptive behaviors than those who show low scores. Fundamentally, this can be sustained in students who report being less frequent victims of bullying at school, which in turn also correlates with a lower prevalence of domestic violence. Precisely, greater fluid intelligence implies that subjects will use the most effective strategies to deal with becoming a victim of aggression, both in school and at home. Therefore, the fact that children show higher fluid intelligence shouldn't necessarily mean they avoid giving a sincere response about their situation. Future studies assessing implicit, not only explicit, measures of psychosocial adaptation will help to clarify the possible role of the moderator effect.
Finally, the relationship between executive function (EF), psychosocial adaptation and fluid intelligence calls for research. It is known that EFs are comprised of self-monitoring abilities. These functions are essential to goal-directed behavior, allowing us to maintain, update and integrate information to adapt and move within our environment
This is the first report suggesting a clear relationship between fluid intelligence and psychosocial adaptation evaluated in several domains. These results call for a new branch of research that combines a neurocognitive approach to fluid intelligence with study of psychosocial adaptation.
We wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful criticism in earlier versions of the manuscript.