Are gamers smarter?

[2d6]

What about the gaming community would make one think that its members are in someway more intelligent than the average person? For that matter, what is it about being a gamer that would make a gamer somehow different than an average person? I serious here, I wanna know.

 

[fusangite]

What about the gaming community would make one think that its members are in someway more intelligent than the average person? For that matter, what is it about being a gamer that would make a gamer somehow different than an average person? I serious here, I wanna know.

Almost every self-selected community is different in some way from the larger group from which it selects itself. How the group is different is, in part, determined by its selection criteria. Thus, paraplegics will be under-represented amongst amateur rugby players because they are deficient in skills required for engagement in the hobby. Therefore, innumerate and illiterate people will also be under-represented amongst gamers.

If you take a randomly selected group of people and measure the average intelligence of the group and then remove the illiterate and innumerate people and measure again, your second measure of average intelligence will be higher than your first.

Clear?

 

[2d6]

Almost every self-selected community is different in some way from the larger group from which it selects itself. How the group is different is, in part, determined by its selection criteria. Thus, paraplegics will be under-represented amongst amateur rugby players because they are deficient in skills required for engagement in the hobby. Therefore, innumerate and illiterate people will also be under-represented amongst gamers.

If you take a randomly selected group of people and measure the average intelligence of the group and then remove the illiterate and innumerate people and measure again, your second measure of average intelligence will be higher than your first.

Clear?

that is humourous within the context of this discussion.

 

[fusangite]

that is humourous within the context of this discussion.

Indeed. Irony is the singularly most effective attack on my reasoning here. If I did not understand gamers being of above average intelligence to be statistically true, it would be a hard thing to ascertain just from anecdotal experience.

And, as you can see from my model, I'm taking a pretty literalist position; I'm not arguing for the vast intellectual superiority of gamers. I'm simply doing the math and noting the absence of Special Olympians from our ranks.

 

[EricNoah]

Haven't read every last post in this thread, but has anyone heard of of mentioned the concept of multiple intelligences? The idea that most people are "smart" in at least one way, and maybe smart in several ways, while not necessarily being on the high end in all ways? I think someone who sticks with a reading-heavy, math-heavy, memorization-heavy, visualization-heavy, communication-heavy hobby is probably either good at those tasks or doesn't mind being bad at them (still somehow gets enjoyment out of it). This also explains, to some degree, why people might prefer different styles of gaming -- some people like the number-crunching aspect; some might like minis & a grid to pure visualization, etc. And maybe even explains why some people don't make good DMs. So I guess a definition of "intelligence" very much matters to this sort of discussion, because without it we're probably not talking about the same thing.

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Here are the "kinds of smart" that are theorized under multiple intelligences:

Linguistic intelligence ("word smart")
Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
Musical intelligence ("music smart")
Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")

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Interestingly, I might consider Linguistic, Logical/Mathematical, and Spatial to be tied to D&D "intelligence," while Intrapersonal and maybe Naturalist might be part of Wisdom, and Interpersonal could be something related to Charisma? Interesting to consider.

 

[Desdichado]

Without saying anything negative about how stupid the world is these days, I think my experience tends to show that gamers are just like any other slice of the population. Are gamers more intelligent than dachtsund breeders? Nope, we just both have unusual hobbies. Chances are a lot of people do. Chances are, I bet, that a model could be built to show that any self-selected group, like aficionados of a somewhat non-mainstream hobby are similar. Is any one non-mainstream hobby likely to attract more intelligent people than another? Possibly, if it's a hobby that you have to be intensely intelligent to even indulge in. Gaming is not that hobby, however. I doubt the average gamer is any more intelligent than your average dachtsund breeder, and I think with a little effort I could whip up a logical base on which to built a predictive model that would show why that is so. If I thought it was worth the effort, which I don't.

We've had this discussion before not that long ago, I think. I think it's a common conceit amongst gamers that we're more intelligent, and that may even date back to the "dark years" when gamers were fairly set-upon because gaming was supposed to be at best very nerdy and at worst Satanic and evil. I think the perception of gamers as smarter than average was a compensating factor, but it's psychological and reactionary in nature rather than empirical or even logical or certainly true.

Anyway, that's obviously wild speculation, but that's my personal belief anyhow.

 

[fusangite]

Thanks for this Eric. I'd organize it this way, based on my review of the PHB. In areas where things fall into multiple categories, I've italicized comments about them. Because this is a D20 forum, I've restricted my comments in the discussion, up until now, to those types of intelligence our rules system labels "intelligence."

Charisma
Linguistic intelligence ("word smart") spoken words
Musical intelligence ("music smart") playing music
Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")

Intelligence
Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
Linguistic intelligence ("word smart") written words

Wisdom
Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
Musical intelligence ("music smart") hearing music
Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")

Dexterity
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")

 

[jgbrowning]

I didn't mention my observation that gamers tend to have an inflated (and dubious) sense of their own intellectual superiority. Check out any 'write yourself in D&D stats' thread.

I think I had an 8 int in the last test that rolled through here. Actually, I think I turned out to be a hopeless character...

joe b.

 

[Teflon Billy]

Linguistic intelligence ("word smart")
Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
Musical intelligence ("music smart")
Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")

I've had this explained to me once before, but it sounded an awful lot like a hippy "everybody gets to be smart" kind of argument ("Yay! Everybody wins!" to quote The Simpsons)

 

[barsoomcore]

*Starts looking for a big suitcase full of $20.00's*

You never know. The other day, I was looking for a campaign full of stewardesses...