g Factor (psychometrics)

g Factor (psychometrics)

The g factor (short for "general factor") is a construct developed in psychometric investigations of cognitive abilities. It is a variable that summarizes the consistent finding of positive correlations among different cognitive tasks, reflecting the fact that an individual's performance at one type of cognitive task tends to be comparable to his or her performance at other kinds of cognitive tasks. The g factor typically accounts for 40 to 50 percent of the variance in IQ test performance, and IQ scores are frequently regarded as estimates of individuals' standing on the g factor. The terms IQ, general intelligence, general cognitive ability, general mental ability, or simply intelligence are often used interchangeably to refer to the common core shared by cognitive tests.

The existence of the g factor was originally proposed by the English psychologist Charles Spearman in the early years of the 20th century. He observed that children's performance ratings across seemingly unrelated school subjects were positively correlated, and reasoned that these correlations reflected the influence of an underlying general mental ability that entered into performance on all kinds of mental tests. Spearman suggested that all mental performance could be conceptualized in terms of a single general ability factor, which he labeled g, and a large number of narrow task-specific ability factors. Today's factor models of intelligence typically represent cognitive abilities as a three-level hierarchy, where there are a large number of narrow factors at the bottom of the hierarchy, a handful of broad, more general factors at the intermediate level, and at the apex a single factor, referred to as the g factor, which represents the variance common to all cognitive tasks.

Traditionally, research on g has concentrated on psychometric investigations of test data, with a special emphasis on factor analytic approaches. However, empirical research on the nature of g has also drawn upon experimental cognitive psychology and mental chronometry, brain anatomy and physiology, quantitative and molecular genetics, and primate evolution. While the existence of g as a statistical regularity is well-established and uncontroversial, there is no consensus as to what causes the positive correlations between tests.

Behavioral genetic research has established that the construct of g is highly heritable. It has a number of other biological correlates, including brain size. It is also a significant predictor of individual differences in many social outcomes, particularly in education and the world of work. The most widely accepted contemporary theories of intelligence incorporate the g factor. However, critics of g have contended that an emphasis on g is misplaced and entails a devaluation of other important abilities.