Why an IQ score is not your potential

An IQ score describes how you performed on specific tasks, on a specific day, compared with a reference group. It doesn't measure a ceiling. Measured intelligence rises with education, average scores rose across populations during the twentieth century, and both genes and environment contribute to differences without determining any individual's outcome. Treating a number as a limit is unsupported and can become self-fulfilling.

Potential would have to be measured against everything a person might achieve under all possible conditions: different teaching, health, motivation, opportunity and time. No test samples that. What a test samples is performance now, under these conditions, on these items. A low score tells you about that performance, not about what's possible with different circumstances and effort.

Beliefs about fixed ability shape behavior: people avoid challenges that might confirm a limit, which removes the practice that would build skill. The result can look like confirmation of the original belief. This is one reason careful assessors avoid framing results as statements about potential, and focus instead on strengths, difficulties and what support would help.