[gwern]

> other papers I've read indicate that IQ correlates with life outcomes until an IQ of about 140, and then appears completely uncorrelated.

Cites? The papers I've read, from the Terman study and the SMPY kids, don't show that.

[nostrademons]

The citation I was thinking of was from Daniel Goleman's Working with Emotional Intelligence, where one of the findings presented was that a moderately high IQ (usually in the 120-130 range) is often a prerequisite for entering a demanding profession like doctor, lawyer, or computer programmer, but continued success in the field depends more upon emotional skills like confidence, perseverance, resilience, social skills, and leadership.

With a bit of Googling, I've found some other support for this, including the Terman study:

http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/grady/emptypromise.html

"Our conclusion is that for subjects brought up under present-day educational regimes, excess in IQ above 140 or 150 adds little to one's achievement in the early adult years." - Louis Terman, 39th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education Part I, pp. 83-84

[gwern]

> ut continued success in the field depends more upon emotional skills like confidence, perseverance, resilience, social skills, and leadership.

Eh. That simply sounds like the correlation weakens a bit, but is far from the claims people make like 'IQ is irrelevant'.

> "Our conclusion is that for subjects brought up under present-day educational regimes, excess in IQ above 140 or 150 adds little to one's achievement in the early adult years." - Louis Terman, 39th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education Part I, pp. 83-84

Terman may have thought so, but with the full dataset this is clearly not so. Check out http://www.iza.org/conference_files/CoNoCoSk2011/gensowski_m... 'The Effects of Education, Personality, and IQ on Earnings of High-Ability Men', Gensowski et al 2011; IQ never stops mattering, even if personality factors start to matter more.

(Always funny how people can look at a study which goes something like 'X correlates .4 and Y correlates .3, but in the top 1% by X, the correlations are .3 and .4 respectively' and go 'X doesn't matter!' Says something about what they want to believe about X, I think.)