IQ, EQ and CQ: three kinds of intelligence in plain words, and which one a journal can train

In 1987 James Flynn, a political scientist in New Zealand, compared IQ test results from fourteen countries across several decades and found something odd. Each generation solved the old tests better than the one before, by roughly three points per decade on average. Taken literally, the scale would make our great-grandparents borderline impaired, which is plainly not true. Flynn drew the conclusion that now carries his name: an IQ test measures something real, but that something shifts with the era, with schooling, and with how used you are to abstract puzzles.

I start there because the three "intelligences" in the title come with a lot of confident numbers and few honest caveats. Below, each one briefly: what it is, how it is measured, which measures are free and legal to use, and at the end the question you may have come here for.

IQ: a number that stands for an exam with a psychologist

IQ is the result of a standardised test, normed so that the population average is 100 and two thirds of people land between 85 and 115. The real tests, the Wechsler scales for instance, are given one-on-one by a specialist, by the book, with a stopwatch, and their items are under licence. They predict school and work outcomes better than any other single measure, which is the main case for them. The main case against: see Flynn above. The score depends on culture, education and how many similar puzzles you have seen before.

Now, "IQ test online". There is exactly one open item bank worth respecting: ICAR, the International Cognitive Ability Resource, built by David Condon and William Revelle in 2014. It is public, validated on tens of thousands of people. And the project site says it outright: non-commercial research only, no individual IQ testing. Everything else in the search results for "IQ test" is either items of unknown origin with norms of unknown origin, or a funnel towards a paid "certificate".

Across 14 countries, IQ test results rose from one generation to the next; the size of the gain varied, the direction did not.

So there is no test in this article. A number you get in ten minutes on a site with ads is comparable to nothing except another number from the same site.

EQ: an ability or a bundle of traits

Emotional intelligence, in Salovey and Mayer's original 1990 definition, is four abilities: to perceive emotions, to use them in thinking, to understand their causes, to manage them. Since then a second meaning has lived under the same letters: a bundle of traits like optimism and sociability, which Goleman's book made popular.

The difference is practical. An ability test looks like an exam with right answers (the main one, the MSCEIT, is paid and administered by specialists). A self-report questionnaire asks how much you agree with "I understand my feelings well", and free versions of that kind do exist. But you are the one answering, and a person who is bad at noticing their own emotions does not know it. I put the full breakdown of the scales and what they measure in a separate article.

The short version here: a free EQ test is a mirror of your self-image, not a measurement. Useful, if that is how you treat it.

CQ: intelligence for someone else's culture

Cultural intelligence, CQ, was proposed by Christopher Earley and Soon Ang in 2003 to answer a simple question: why does one person cope when dropped into a foreign culture while another, with the same IQ and EQ, does not. The model has four parts. Metacognitive: noticing that your assumptions may not hold, and checking them as the conversation goes. Cognitive: knowledge of norms, language, economy, religion. Motivational: wanting to be in such situations, and feeling able to. Behavioural: adjusting your speech and gestures to the other person.

It is measured with the CQS, a twenty-item scale that Ang and co-authors validated in 2007. And here is the caveat that matters for us: the scale is free for academic research only. Any other use, including a website like this one, requires written permission from the Cultural Intelligence Center. So a "free cultural intelligence test" online is either a licence violation or something made up under a borrowed name. I am not publishing one here.

What you can do without a test: take the four parts and answer honestly about your last conversation with someone from a different world. Not necessarily a different country. A different generation, profession, city. Did I notice the moment my norm stopped working? What did I know about their rules beforehand? Did I even want to be in that conversation? What did I change in myself as it went?

Which of the three grows with a journal

The honest answer, in order.

IQ: no. I know of no study where keeping a journal raised a score on a cognitive test, and I see no mechanism by which it could. The Flynn effect is a story about whole generations, not personal practice.

EQ: partly, and exactly one branch of four. Noticing and naming your own emotions. That is trained by the words you choose for your states, and an emotion diary is built for precisely that. Your questionnaire score is under no obligation to rise; what you notice will.

CQ: probably, and this is the interesting one. The metacognitive part, by Ang's definition, is awareness during the interaction: spotting an assumption, checking it, correcting it. An entry about a conversation that went wrong, with the question "which of my rules did not work here", is the same operation done in the evening, in calm. I found no studies on journaling and CQ either, which is why this says "probably" rather than "proven".

A four-week exercise instead of three tests

One entry a week, after any conversation that was awkward or confusing. Four lines.

What happened, in facts. What I felt, in one word. Which assumption of mine did not hold. What I would do differently if I had seen it sooner.

After four weeks, read them in a row. The third line will repeat, and that is your map: where your norms most often collide with someone else's. It is not a measurement of cultural intelligence. It is its metacognitive part, done by hand.

What to keep from this

Three letters, three different things. One is measured by an exam with a specialist and barely responds to training. The second has split into an ability and a self-rating, and only the self-rating is free. The third is measured by a scale that is not freely available, yet its key part is what any honest entry about a hard conversation already does.

If you want a number badly, take ICAR in a study that invites you, or the MSCEIT with a specialist. If you want to notice how you change, you will not need the numbers.