Psychology Commons^™

Like many human characteristics, intelligence is theorized to be normally distributed. However, a vocal minority of researchers and practitioners who study individuals with high intelligence have claimed that there are more people in the upper echelons of intelligence than would be expected if the normal curve accurately modeled the distribution of intelligence scores. To verify this claim we carefully searched articles form the journal Intelligence dated 1979 to 2012, completed an academic journal search and reviewed national data sets for samples that permit this claim to be tested. To be included samples must have been (a) representative of the population …