To prove this point, he discusses a type of mental activity called a "divergence test," which emphasizes multi-faceted imagination instead of rote problem solving. The minority students were above the minimum aptitude threshold that they would need to pass to be professionally successful.Īs Gladwell argues, traditional measures of genius (such as IQ) underplay the role of imagination. However, this disparity in grading standards did not translate into any difference in real-world success.
This study focused on the law school's minority students, who generally faced relaxed admissions standards and earned lower grades than their non-minority peers. Gladwell also considers a study conducted by the University of Michigan Law School. Not all of these winners came from the absolutely best-ranked colleges, but all of them came from very good schools that provided firm grounds for academic success. Gladwell supports this claim by listing recent Nobel Prize Winners in Medicine and Chemistry. He warns readers not to confuse the talent required to solve problems with true measures of success after all, while some IQ increases determine levels of success, additional IQ points beyond 120 do not translate to any meaningful real-world advantage. To give readers a sense of IQ testing standards, Gladwell reproduces examples from a visually-based IQ test called the Raven's Progressive Metrics. However, Gladwell expresses strong skepticism about whether Terman's focus on IQ directed Terman towards true outliers. He transformed his monitoring of these students (who came to be known as the "Termites") into a meticulously conducted long-term project. Terman identified a group of gifted students by combing through elementary school and high school data. In the years after World War I, psychology professor Lewis Terman became preoccupied with identifying individuals with remarkable intellectual gifts, as indicated by specific academic or artistic aptitudes, and by IQ. Next, Gladwell explains a famous study involving IQ. 100, Langan decided to end the competition after he had reached $250,000, and was awarded the money. Outliers establishes that Chris Langan displayed high reading, language, and mathematical aptitude from a very young age.
This particular episode featured Chris Langan, a man with an IQ of 195, who would match his knowledge against the knowledge of the 100 "mob" members of the game show's title. Gladwell opens Chapter 3, "The Trouble with Geniuses, Part 1," by describing an episode of the televised game show 1 vs.
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