Intelligence and talent alone (sometimes) don’t pay
Is a high salary just a matter of intelligence? According to a Swedish study, no. To earn more you also need something else. All the details
Being stupid can pay more. Intelligence only leads to higher wages up to a certain point, then it's all down to luck and people who know each other. This was stated by a Swedish study published in the European Sociological Review .
I STUDY
“Are the best-paying and most prestigious jobs held by highly intelligent individuals?” The study conducted by some researchers at the Swedish University of Linköping starts from this question.
Previous research, the authors say, has found that job success increases with cognitive ability, but did not examine how, conversely, skill varies with job success. Stratification theories suggest, however, that "social background and cumulative advantage dominate cognitive ability as determinants of high job success."
THE DATA
Examining data from Swedish registries containing measures of cognitive ability and labor market success for some 59,000 men who took an intelligence test as part of compulsory military service, the researchers found that “the relationship between ability and wages is overall strong, but above 60,000 euros a year it stabilizes”. Indeed, “the top 1 percent earners score even slightly worse on cognitive ability than the next-lowest income bracket.”
“We find no evidence that those in top-tier jobs that pay extraordinary wages are more deserving than those earning half,” the research reads.
And, therefore, higher intelligence correlates with higher wages, but only up to a certain threshold. Then other factors come into play.
THE OTHER FACTORS
If it's not always about intelligence then what determines the success of some people? While the authors acknowledge some limitations in the research, such as failing to consider motivation level, superior social skills, and noting that smarter people don't always choose the highest-paying job over a more interesting or rewarding one, the study states that "extreme professional success is more likely determined by family resources or luck than by ability".
Already another Italian study of 2018, cited by the MIT Technology Review , observed that the richest people are usually not the most gifted but the luckiest: "The greatest success – we read – never coincides with the greatest talent, and vice versa ”.
THE DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES
However, according to the Swedish researchers, this is "a warning sign for the growing income inequality between the richest and the rest of society". Indeed, if Sweden has a relatively small income gap, "we can speculate that this phenomenon could be even more evident in places like Singapore or the United States."
The study reported by MIT, although earlier, still believes that the result has significant implications for society and cites the example of the European Research Council (ERC), which in 2017 invested $1.7 million in a program to study serendipity, or the role of luck in scientific discoveries, and how it can be exploited to improve funding success.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/intelligenza-e-talento-da-soli-a-volte-non-pagano/ on Sat, 25 Feb 2023 07:55:38 +0000.