Tags
Barack Obama, Daniel Seligman, George W. Bush, Harvard, JFK, Linda Gottfredson, politics, Richard Nixon, success
According to the book A Question of Intelligence by Daniel Seligman, the IQ’s of Richard Nixon and JFK were both tested in school at 143 and 119, respectively. The IQ of George W. Bush is not known, but he scored 1206 on his SAT back in the days when the test was much harder. Since the reading and math skills measured by the SAT relate closely to intelligence, psychologist Linda Gottfredson converted his SAT score into an IQ equivalent of 125. There’s some speculative information about Obama’s intelligence, but the IQ’s of Nixon, JFK, and GWB are the best established. Based on this very small sample, U.S. presidents have an average IQ of about 130 with a standard deviation of about 12, compared to the general U.S. population that has an average IQ of about 100 with a standard deviation of about 15. So although presidents tend to be much smarter than Americans as a whole, their IQ’s are less variable. In fact extrapolating from these statistics, one might expect that the smartest president in American history had an IQ of around 154 and the dullest had an IQ of around 106.
An average IQ of 130 is extremely high, putting one above nearly 98% of Americans. To put this number in perspective, Harvard, the most prestigious university in the entire world, also has an average IQ of 130. Even the dullest president in U.S. history was likely smarter than two thirds of Americans of his era. The high IQ’s of U.S. presidents demonstrates that America is meritocracy and that smart people get to the top.
Pingback: The 16 most influential people on the planet | Pumpkin Person
Pingback: IQ and income | Brain Size
Pingback: Height, reaction time & Victorian intelligence | Brain Size
Pingback: Revising the Wai method of estimating group IQ | Brain Size
Pingback: The IQ’s of Fortune 500 CEOs | Brain Size
Philip Neal said:
I distinctly remember a news report many years ago that President Carter had released his IQ score. I am not referring to the Lovenstein hoax of 2001, it was long before that, though after Carter left office. An academic estimated presidential IQ scores from historical data, Carter made his actual IQ score public and it was only a few points off the estimate. Do you know anything about it?
pumpkinperson said:
I know of no actual IQ score for Carter but Charles Murray said the following:
The last thing we need are more pointy-headed intellectuals running the government. Probably the smartest president we’ve had in terms of I.Q. in the last 50 years was Jimmy Carter, and I think he is the worst president of the last 50 years.
A lot of people would disagree with Murray about Carter being a bad president.
Ray Maddon said:
Based on how badly he lost in ’80 i question how much you mean by “a lot”
Adam said:
the only people that would disagree about Carter being a bad president were born after 1980 – none of them lived through his presidency
Pingback: The dark side of success | Pumpkin Person
Pingback: High IQ Bill Gates towers as the richest American, 21 years in a row! | Pumpkin Person