Or they see value where others don't?
I can be, but isn't.
Tanstaalf post made me found another approach to explain it.
IQ tests are an attempt to sum up a given number of cognitive abilities, based on the, not totally wrong, premise that the higher the sum of those abilities is, the higher is your raw potential. But, identifying a sound, associating it to a mechanical interaction, and being able to interpolate those sounds in order to know when the sum of the mechanical interactions are correct, or when a given interaction isn't happening correctly, is only one cognitive ability, and mostly rely on something not measured by an IQ test.
Therefore, someone able to do this can perfectly be average in all the other cognitive abilities, an so have an average IQ, or even one below the average. This while someone with a high IQ will not necessarily be able to do it, if he lack the cognitive ability needed for this.
There is 0 chance that in human history this was the first person to observe a horse colliding.
But what are the chances that someone with the cognitive ability to associate individual sounds, and to dissociate them in order to identify which part do not do its usual sound, and to know why due to its own sound, is working in a field where this ability is useful?
You are assuming that person did not also study within a field.
No, but you're assuming something about me
(not said with bad intent) and perhaps that if you drop that assumption you'll understand better what I'm saying.
If they studied Law and were running around as an engineer, then yes, this may be true. but like I said earlier, plenty of high IQ people can discipline themselves to learn through a process.
Discipline that do not guaranty that you'll interpret correctly what you learned, doesn't prevent you to doubt about what you learned, and absolutely don't prevent Imposter Syndrome.
When you're talking with students who share your highschool/college curriculum, and you hear them say that they stayed up until 2AM to understand the previous class, while you already understood it when living the room, it raise a lot of questions in your mind.
They all say the same, it was a hard lessons so, if you find that it was easy, the only reasonable possibility is that you misunderstood it. You think the opposite, but it's so easy to lure yourself, to be overconfident... Like that guy that was a classmate when I was around 15yo, who was convinced that he aced a history test, then when talking about it was told by everyone else that he totally confused WWI and WWII.
Side note: It's one of the main reasons why so many students with high IQ fail in school, they unconsciously match their results with the amount of efforts they have to do. If working his ass out worth him 16/20, then my total lack of effort probably worth around 5/20; and unconsciously you'll answer every test to that level.
It's something that will follow you all your life, because you don't seem to fit here. You do the same than everybody else in your work field, but they struggle, talk about how it was time consuming to do this, how hard they had it to solve that, and so. This while you experience none of this.
There's only two possible outcome from this. Either you become an arrogant prick, because you acknowledge that you're better than those peasants, or you pass your life waiting for the moment they'll discover that you don't belong among them, and were just lucky to have it right for so long.
Side note: It's also why Mensa is filled by so many arrogant pricks. Any adult, that isn't an arrogant prick, that pass an IQ test and qualify for Mensa will be half convinced that it was just luck and that he don't belong there.
This is where personality & behavioral traits come into it. [...] Imposter syndrome [...] It can occur in many, many different types of people.
But it's a common trait in people who have a high IQ and aren't total arrogant pricks.
Personality play a role, but really you'll never find someone, that isn't an arrogant prick, with a >130 IQ that will tell you that he never feel like an imposter. With a strong personality you can learn to discard that feeling, but you'll never get rid of it; and it's good since it's what prevent you to be an arrogant prick
at full time.
What I was mean to be saying was that a trained athlete also has knowledge & intelligence. The actions and training to perfect techniques are stored in the brain to allow those coordinated actions, which is a form of intelligence. This was supposed to be example of why IQ isn't the only form of intelligence.
See the opening.
It's measure of some cognitive abilities, not of all of them. Therefore it measure some form of intelligence, not all of them. And it also give inaccurate result, since someone with, by example, high spatial representation abilities, is intelligent, but can be seen as having an average potential because it's his only cognitive ability that is above the average.
It's like with a strong lateralization (using your hand, foot and eye from the same side of your body, like the vast majority). It's the sign of a correctly working brain, and therefore enforced during one's education. But in the same time for a child at the right age, not having a strong lateralization can be a sign ambidexterity, that should be helped instead of being stopped as it is.
It's exactly what IQ tests are doing. They artificially enforce the importance of some cognitive abilities and, de facto, present the others as useless, what they aren't at all.