Traditional IQ tests aren’t as helpful in predicting how well a person will do a job as employers might hope, especially when the people being tested are older, a researcher has found.
Practical knowledge gained through experience and observation is a far better predictor of who will do well on the job than the academic knowledge gauged in traditional tests, Regina Colonia-Willner told the annual meeting in Chicago of the American Psychological Association.
Colonia-Willner described her study of 43 expert managers in a bank and 157 other managers. The managers who earned the most money scored higher on tests of practical knowledge adopted by Colonia-Willner from researchers at Yale University.
“The study was triggered by a major paradox in applied aging research,” said Colonia-Willner. “I wanted to understand why older managers and professionals continue to be highly successful in the workplace while studies indicate that these same older adults have the intellectual capability that’s only 40 percent that of the average 25-year-old.”
