If we ignore Alfred Binet, then sure I can get onboard with you :) Indeed, the pre-IQ head-measuring stage of racism was filled with white supremacist nonsense. In that sense, it is a history filled with pseudoscience and pain.
Out of curiousity, would you classify Alfred Binet as an eugenicist and white supremacist?
You seem to value honesty and accuracy. It sounds as if you’re saying that someone smart wouldn’t say they’re smart. It also sounds as if you’re saying that someone who wouldn’t be considered smart can correctly identify people who claim that they’re smart but in reality aren’t.
So I don’t know if this answers your question, but there’s my two cents for you.
It does! This is precisely the kind of stuff that I’m interested in! I agree with you, in that it’s possible to think wrong thoughts even with a higher IQ. I see IQ as the speed of thought, and you can very quickly arrive at wrong conclusions. Similarly, if there’s a thought that your skill tree hasn’t unlocked, then you’re left with thoughts that are maybe not ideal for a particular situation, thoughts that could make someone “overcomplicate things unnecessarily” or “make dumb mistakes”, as your dad or anyone on planet Earth would.
I think it’s especially hard to isolate IQ when there are many thoughts or behaviors that we don’t typically associate with high IQ. “Ah yes, the violin is a sensible instrument for a learned man” or whatever people may think. That’s partly why I asked my question. If someone leads a life not typically associated with a high IQ and yet have a high enough IQ that manifested in their life, how did that look like? Of course, I’m not looking for wild stories. I’m looking for genuine stories, and I’m glad that I got an interesting answers like yours!
Thanks for your response.
It’s interesting to see your story in relation to other stories I’ve heard or people I’ve met.
Before I describe them, it’s important to say that you don’t strike me as unkind. I wouldn’t want you to compare yourself to the people I’ll mention and conclude that you’re somehow bad. I’m taking the time to say this because I don’t know if the difficulties you’ve mentioned are a sore spot.
Alright. The people I’ve met. I’ve met people whose identity was tied to their IQ and it became painful for me to wonder what I meant to them. For sure I was not close to their IQ; they needed to take multiple tests because they were off the charts. But I always wondered if they liked me as a person, based on my values and how I did things.
I’ve also met very relaxed and kind people who went on to study at the schools that were supposed to be a goal, people who made me realize it’s possible to be wicked smart and simultaneously kind.
When you mention that it was important that you weren’t told that the test you took was an IQ test, I think about teenage me. Back then, I learned that people could judge me based on my IQ. I made the mistake of reading white supremacist bigotry, and read that they evaluated whether people were worthy of living based on things like IQ. I knew the whole white supremacy discourse was pseudoscience and bigotry, but I was scared of bigots in power evaluating my existence. I became terrified. I became very distrustful of people who I should’ve trusted, wonderful people who would’ve never had such narrow and mistaken views. That has changed, now that I have a clearer sense of self and more perspective. But I can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened if I wouldn’t have mistrusted wonderful people. I guess the discourse around IQ can really change the way you look at the world and what you do.
Is it too nosy to ask a couple of follow up questions? If not, here they are: you mentioned ADHD and the obstacle you could never get yourself past, the inability to keep your focus and control it. Is the diagnosis recent? Could medication help? Could any treatment help with the ADHD? As to difficulties understanding other people, do you know about relational frame theory, the self component of ACT, and the PEAK and AIM programs?
Genuine curiosity: I’ve seen piles of “my superior intellect” and “normies would never understand”, so I wanted to ask if your answer was sarcastic. If it isn’t, are you saying that you identify with Rick? Or something different?
I’m asking this partly because I saw someone else asking the same question but about low IQ.
Hahah! Living up to your aristocratic origins, I see.
If you believe psychology and IQ are nonsense, here’s a comment I copied over from another thread:
IQ means intelligence quotient. A bunch of people take a test and they’re compared to each other. Your result is your intelligence quotient.
Its origins were noble, because it was designed to identify students who needed extra help in school. The creator of the test knew that people could change their results with good instruction.
However, that noble origin story was besmirched by what happened later. Eventually, IQ tests were used as a way to classify people in more brutal and rigid ways. The USA military used it as a cutoff for aspiring cadets. USA colleges use tests that effectively are IQ tests to let people in or not. The worst part is that bigots around the world injected pseudoscience into IQ and used it to decide who they think are worthy of life and who aren’t. It’s as awful as it sounds.
You may notice that helping struggling students sounds wonderful, and you may think that we should go back to that.
However, some people are deeply marked by the dark history of IQ. They have developed beliefs that protect them from the dangers of bigotry and IQ reductionism. They believe that tests aren’t useful at all to tell us something about anything. They believe IQ tests should be banished and never used.
Other people believe IQ tests are a snapshot of how a person answered the questions to a test in a given day. Take the same test days, months, or years after a great education, and the result will be higher. Additionally, these people notice that, in research, IQ scores are robustly associated with other things, such as quality of relationships, happiness, income, and other measures. They contend that learning about the world, about ourselves, and how to think critically and solve problems has massive domino effects in peoples’ lives. Once again, these people believe that a test result one day doesn’t doom you for life and doesn’t define you. A bad test result shows the gap that a good education would fill. These people know that a good education makes the mind curious, nimble, and open.
Intelligence quotient. A bunch of people take a test and they’re compared to each other. Your result is your intelligence quotient.
Its origins were noble, because it was designed to identify students who needed extra help in school. The creator of the test knew that people could change their results with good instruction. However, that noble origin story was besmirched by what happened later. Eventually, IQ tests were used as a way to classify people in more brutal and rigid ways. The USA military used it as a cutoff for aspiring cadets. USA colleges use tests that effectively are IQ tests to let people in or not. The worst part is that bigots around the world injected pseudoscience into IQ and used it to decide who they think are worthy of life and who aren’t. It’s as awful as it sounds.
You may notice that helping struggling students sounds wonderful, and you may think that we should go back to that.
However, some people believe that tests aren’t useful at all to tell us something about anything. They believe IQ tests should be banished and never used.
Others people believe IQ tests are a snapshot of how a person answered the questions to a test in a given day. Additionally, these people notice that, in research, IQ scores are robustly associated with other things, such as quality of relationships, happiness, income, and other measures. These results suggest that learning to solve problems helps humans solve problems!
If the noble origins of the test are a guide, poor performers would receive help. More people would get the benefits of a higher IQ, not because of the fear of being classified in a brutal and rigid way, but because a good education makes the mind curious, nimble, and open.
How to learn better? How to organize teams better? How to write text or make presentations so that it aligns with how the brain best receives information? How to evaluate candidates for a role while minimizing the halo effect and the bandwagon effect? How to nudge people into leaving public spaces cleaner? How to make spaces more attractive for people to spend time in? How to increase adherence to lifestyle changes such as diet and exercise after cancer treatment? How to increase the odds of achieving a task you want to do? How to make computer interfaces easier to use for people, including people with disabilities? You’re saying that psychology has not studied these nor contributed to them?
Yes, there are a lot of problems in the field. But there are also brilliant people cutting through the bullshit and using their findings to improve the world. I’d be more than happy to show you robust findings that the field has gifted the world.
You seem to value fairness and justice. I worked at a shelter and it’s often not as simple. Often, the dependency that children have with their abusive parents (or partners with their abusive partners) is something that needs to be worked on first, before any attempt to leave is made.
If I didn’t notice anything while looking for something, you’re good 🤷♂️
Not me, but a friend believed Obama was not American. Conversations over time (couple of months) changed them.
Not a proper conspiracy theory, but I used to be a dualist, thinking that souls exist and they’re separate from bodies. All of this changed with a long conversation with a materialist. He helped me see how my beliefs were historically determined, socially programmed, and not based on atemporal scientific principles. Overnight change to materialism.
The answer is contextual, just like people are contextual. Sometimes, my circles are all busy or stressed out and we can’t really be there for each other. Other times, strangers have saved me, like the couple that took me in when lockdowns started and I was far from home.
Have you heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment? Or the Princeton Seminarian experiment? Or the Milgram Experiment? All of them confirm that people are contextual. That’s lesson 1 in psychology, but we humans easily forget it. We focus on the person and forget the context. That folly of ours even has a name: Fundamental Attribution Error.
Sounds like you haven’t been on the same corners of the internet as I have, because reading about co-washing is not strange to me. Have you been to hair care communities?
Huh. Mid 20th century? But that’s when America transitioned to relatively high and progressive income taxes instead of relying on tariffs. It’s also when massive state spending on education lead to a large chunk of Americans being able to care about something other than themselves, a precursor to progressivism in America and the civil rights movement.
If anything, I think Americans appear to want to go back to the Gilded Age, known for its massive inequality, corruption, and excessive-wealth-flaunting.
I’m sorry about the soul-sucking coworkers and the outright rejection. It sounds painful and frustrating. Anyone in your position would be frustrated; it only makes sense!
We can look at your situation from two points of views, and each point of view will reveal things that can help you better deal with this situation.
The first point of view is the external one, the observable behavior, the one you’d notice if someone followed you and your coworkers/managers around with cameras. Looking at your situation from this point of view, it sounds like there could be a broad problem with your company’s management. If so, there might be very little that you can do directly. Depending on whether you want to take upon you a massive, perhaps Sisyphean task (pushing a massive boulder up an infinite mountain, with no end in sight), you could check out the management or Agile literature.
By learning what good management looks like, you could be in a better position to accept rough situations, in the same way that understanding how a cold develops could help us accept feeling drained of energy, coughing constantly, and having to self-isolate to avoid spreading the virus. It’s not a solution, but it gives perspective. Beyond acceptance, in the unlikely scenario that your company empowers you, you could propose effective changes or implement them. However, I would not count on this.
If you cannot change your company’s management, there are alternatives. Let’s go from the external point of view to the internal one, your point of view, the point of view that notices emotions, feelings, memories, action impulses, bodily sensations, interpretations, predictions, etc. From this point of view, we can see your frustration, your fear of being thin-skinned, your interpretation of potential rumination. In this other, internal, world of thoughts and emotions, we can’t do the same things that we do in the external world. We can’t get rid of thoughts. We can’t magically transform them.
Others have recommended simply brushing these experiences off, as if they don’t affect you. However, humans hurt where they care. Things that hurt you reveal where your values lie. If you hurt when you see injustice, then justice is a value you hold. If you hurt when you see brutal rejection, then inclusion and kindness are values you hold. It’s inevitable to feel pain when you value something. It’s human. And it explains why you’re hurt; something in you that you value was violated by this experience. A good question to discover what you value is “What would I have to not care about for this not to hurt?” Finding out your values helps you get motivated and gives you purpose, even when the going gets tough.
Still others have talked about changing the way you interpret the situation, including doing it by exposure therapy. This can be effective, as it fundamentally is changing the way that you relate to your thoughts and sensations. However, it’s important to do it with the right motivation. Otherwise, the exposure itself can backfire and reinforce the wrong schemas. What is the right motivation? Well, why would you find it valuable to continue in this job, despite its painful experiences? Maybe it brings stability to your life. Maybe it finances other projects of yours that you find valuable. It’s up to you to decide. If you do find it valuable, then you will be better equipped to push forward even when the going gets tough. I’m not saying this is the only path; again, it’s up to you.
Now, as to pragmatic things that you can do in this internal world, I’d argue that the single easiest, low-risk thing that you can do with the most positive impact is doing the Healthy Minds program or something like it. It will teach you to relate to your thoughts in a healthy way, as well as develop better ways of relating with other people and with your everyday actions, including your work. This will help you regardless of the path that you choose. If you’re willing to invest more to reap more rewards, you could consider therapy such as Acceptance or Commitment Therapy or Process-Based Therapy.
I hear how much this diagnosis weighs on you. You’re carrying around this knowledge that you have NPD, feeling caught between wanting genuine connections and worrying that being open about this could push people away. It’s a really difficult position to be in: wanting to be authentic with someone you love while facing all this stigma and misconceptions about personality disorders.
You’re not just asking about a diagnosis; you’re asking about how to navigate relationships, how to be genuine with people you care about, and how to handle vulnerability. These are deeply human concerns that go way beyond any diagnostic label.
I’ve know many people who initially saw their diagnoses as permanent labels that defined who they were. I get why: that’s how mental health has been presented to us for decades. We’re told these are distinct categories, clear boxes that people fit into. But here’s something fascinating that recent research has shown: When researchers studied over 3,700 people who shared the same diagnosis of major depression, they found over 1,000 different symptom patterns. More than half of the people had patterns so unique they appeared in less than 0.1% of the group.
This isn’t just true for depression; it applies to most mental health diagnoses. The whole idea of these being clear, distinct categories is breaking down as we look more closely at the science. In fact, despite decades of searching, researchers haven’t found reliable biomarkers for these diagnoses. The DSM workgroup themselves concluded this (page 8 of the pdf here as well as page 18 of the pdf here).
What does this mean for you? Well, it suggests that thinking of NPD as a fixed thing that defines you might not be the most helpful way to look at it. Instead of asking “Will people reject me because I have NPD?”, we might ask different questions: What patterns do you notice in your relationships? What kind of connections do you want to build? What helps you move toward those connections, and what gets in the way?
You mentioned being worried about your current relationship, about whether your boyfriend would still want to be with you if he knew about the diagnosis. That’s a really understandable fear, especially given how personality disorders are often portrayed. But I wonder if we could look at this differently. Instead of thinking about “revealing NPD” as a single big disclosure, what if we thought about building authentic connections in a way that aligns with what matters to you?
The real strength I see in your post isn’t related to any diagnosis, it’s that you care deeply about being genuine in your relationships. You’re wrestling with these questions because connection matters to you. That’s not a symptom; that’s a value. And it’s something you can move toward, step by step, in ways that feel right to you.
I know I often reference ACT and process-based approaches, and some might see that as my go-to solution for everything. But this situation perfectly illustrates why these approaches can be so helpful. Rather than letting a diagnostic label define your path, you can focus on understanding your own patterns, knowing what matters to you, and building psychological flexibility to move toward the life you want.
When you ask “How will NPD affect your social life?”, you’re asking a question that assumes the diagnosis drives everything. But what if we turned it around? What if instead we asked: What kind of social life do you want to build? What patterns help you move toward that? What patterns get in the way? These questions put you in the driver’s seat, not the diagnosis.
This isn’t about denying challenges or pretending patterns don’t exist. It’s about seeing them as processes you can work with rather than permanent labels that define you. The science is increasingly showing us that this is not only more accurate, but more useful for creating change.
You’re not your diagnosis. You’re a person trying to build meaningful connections while dealing with certain patterns of thinking and behaving. Those patterns can change. They might be stubborn sometimes, but they’re not set in stone. What matters is moving toward what’s important to you, one step at a time.
I agree that there is plenty of nonsense out there. There are many interventions veiled as “scientific”, and most people don’t have the ability to lift the veil and recognize the pseudoscience beneath.
Unfortunately, the answer to your question is, partly, no. Psychology has not inoculated the world from pseudoscience. However, the answer to your question is also, partly, yes. There are people who have learned from the most robust evidence in psychology.
To the extent that organization and management adapt to robust findings in psychology, there are many contributions that psychology has made to organization and management.
More broadly, you could look for good resources for Evidence-Based Management.