1. Philippe Aghion, Ufuk Akcigit, Ari Hyytinen, and Otto Toivanen, “The Social Origins of Inventors,” Centre for Economic Performance discussion paper 1522, December 2017.
2. Relying on data from Finland may make these results less relevant elsewhere. For instance, in the relatively egalitarian Finnish society, environment is perhaps less likely to shape outcomes, and that will raise the influence of IQ on outcomes in a manner that might not hold for the United States, where variations in childhood environment are much greater and thus might carry greater explanatory power.
3. Miriam Gensowski, “Personality, IQ, and Lifetime Earnings,” Labour Economics 51 (2018): 170–183.
4. See Erik Lindqvist and Roine Vestman, “The Labor Market Returns to Cognitive and Noncognitive Ability: Evidence from the Swedish Enlistment,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 3 (January 2011): 101–128.
5. Sagar Shah, “The Life Story of Vladimir Akopian (2/2),” Chessbase.com, November 28, 2019, https://en.chessbase.com/post/so-near-yet-so-far-the-life-story-of-vladimir-akopian-2–2. On chess and intelligence, see Alexander P. Burgoyne, Giovanni Sala, Fernand Gobet, Brooke N. Macnamara, Guillermo Campitelli, and David Z. Hambrick, “The Relationship Between Cognitive Ability and Chess Skill: A Comprehensive Meta-analysis,” Intelligence 59 (2016): 72–83. For an alternative perspective, and for evidence on the import of short-term visual memory, see Yu-Hsuan A. Chang and David M. Lane, “It Takes More than Practice and Experience to Become a Chess Master: Evidence from a Child Prodigy and Adult Chess Players,” Journal of Expertise 1, no. 1 (2018): 6–34.
6. Note, by the way, that data-based studies typically do not cover enough of these very high achievers to measure their potency in a systematic way. On this point, see Harrison J. Kell and Jonathan Wai, “Right-Tail Range Restriction: A Lurking Threat to Detecting Associations Between Traits and Skill Among Experts,” Journal of Expertise 2, no. 4 (2019): 224–242.
7. See Dunstan Prial, The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), Benson quotation from 255.
8. Garett Jones, Hive Mind: How Your Nation’s IQ Matters So Much More than Your Own (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016). For a meta-analysis on the value of cooperation across talented teams, see Dennis J. Devine and Jennifer L. Phillips, “Do Smarter Teams Do Better: A Meta-Analysis of Cognitive Ability and Team Performance,” Small Group Research 32, no. 5 (2001): 507–532. See also an idea in economics called “O-ring theory”—for instance, Michael Kremer, “The O-Ring Theory of Development,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 108, no. 3 (August 1993): 551–575.
9. It is interesting to explore why higher-IQ individuals tend to cooperate more in these games. One reason is that they are more likely to open (some) games with a unilateral act of cooperation—an act of faith, you might call it, or perhaps boldness—perhaps reflecting a greater understanding of just how beneficial cooperation can be. The second reason is that the higher-IQ individuals have a greater consistency of strategy implementation. This makes it easier and quicker for them to get into, and stay in, self-sustaining loops of greater cooperation. And that is what you likely want for your organization—namely, people who can cooperate more because of their greater capacity for strategic thinking. That said, the higher-IQ individuals are not unconditionally greater cooperators. For instance, when cooperation is not in their self-interest, they may be quicker to defect or behave in another manner. So this risk of opportunism may remain ever present, even if they are greater cooperators on average. Another interesting feature of this research is that agreeable individuals, as would be defined by personality theory in psychology, do not cooperate much more, not as much as you might think. They are more likely to cooperate in the early stages of the game, as you might expect from their agreeable natures, and they do offer more unconditional cooperation up front. But as the games unfold, these individuals do not match the cooperative performance of the higher-IQ individuals.
10. Marc Andreessen, “How to Hire the Best People You’ve Ever Worked With,” June 6, 2007, https://pmarchive.com/how_to_hire_the_best_people.html.
11. See Jeffrey S. Zax and Daniel I. Rees, “IQ, Academic Performance, and Earnings,” Review of Economics and Statistics 84, no. 4 (November 2002): 600–616. You will find broadly similar results in Jay L. Zagorsky, “Do You Have to Be Smart to Be Rich? The Impact of IQ on Wealth, Income and Financial Distress,” Intelligence 35 (2007): 489–501. When it comes to accumulated wealth rather than income, his study cannot even find a general positive correlation between wealth and IQ.
12. See John Cawley, James Heckman, and Edward Vytlacil, “Three Observations on Wages and Measured Cognitive Ability,” Labour Economics 8 (2001): 419–442. For an overview on this issue, see Garett Jones and W. Joel Schneider, “IQ in the Production Function: Evidence from Immigrant Earnings,” Economic Inquiry 48, no. 3 (July 2010): 743–755, this work being co-authored by an economist and psychologist who work in this area. For a more popular treatment of the same material, see also James Pethokoukis, “Is America Smart Enough? A Long-Read Q&A with Garett Jones on IQ and the ‘Hive Mind,’” American Enterprise Institute, January 12, 2016, http://www.aei.org/publication/is-america-smart-enough-a-qa-with-garett-jones-on-iq-and-the-hive-mind/.
13. See Dawson McLean, Mohsen Bouaissa, Bruno Rainville, and Ludovic Auger, “Non-Cognitive Skills: How Much Do They Matter for Earnings in Canada?,” American Journal of Management 19, no. 4 (2019): 104–124, esp. 115.
14. See Renée Adams, Matti Keloharju, and Samuli Knüpfer, “Are CEOs Born Leaders? Lessons from Traits of a Million Individuals,” Journal of Financial Economics 30, no. 2 (November 2018): 392–408.
15. See Ken Richardson and Sarah H. Norgate, “Does IQ Really Predict Job Performance?,” Applied Developmental Science 19, no. 3 (2015): 153–169. As for intelligence and complexity of job tasks, one well-known piece on that topic is Linda S. Gottfredson, “Where and Why g Matters: Not a Mystery,” Human Performance 15, no. 2 (2002): 25–46. Working through this and other pieces, however, leads to the conclusion that many of the commonly repeated claims in this literature are not verified. A useful survey and interpretation of some major pieces is Eliza Byington and Will Felps, “Why Do IQ Scores Predict Job Performance? An Alternative, Sociological Examination,” Research in Organizational Behavior 30 (2010): 175–202.
16. “The Top Attributes Employers Want to See on Resumes,” National Association of Colleges and Employers, https://www.naceweb.org/about-us/press/2020/the-top-attributes-employers-want-to-see-on-resumes/, accessed June 2, 2020. See https://www.naceweb.org/talent-acquisition/candidate-selection/key-attributes-employers-want-to-see-on-students-resumes/.