Understanding intelligence should help us use it better.
How Intelligence Works exists to understand what allows people to make effective use of their intelligence in the circumstances in which they actually live.
HIW is building the public knowledge and research infrastructure needed to study those interactions — and, ultimately, to develop and evaluate tools and forms of support that people can use in everyday life, work, education, health and public systems.
Understand it.
Build a rigorous public resource explaining intelligence, measurement, cognitive abilities, cognitive profiles and states, tasks, environments and real-world functioning.
Study it.
Build the Human Task Atlas, Environmental Registry, Intelligence Observatory and Performance Lab to study intelligence in use systematically.
Make it useful.
Use that evidence to develop and evaluate scientific methods, practical tools, strategies, supports and technologies that can help people and organisations navigate cognitive demands more effectively.
The research pathway
From understanding to practical support.
The purpose is not to produce another score. It is to discover what could help — and to turn that evidence into knowledge and tools people can actually use.
Where we are now
A research programme being built in stages.
Initial substantive research undertaken.
Research developed into a manuscript and submitted for academic publication.
Independent research initiative and public platform established.
Building a permanent evidence-based resource on intelligence, measurement, cognitive abilities, state, context and functioning.
Develop the Task Atlas and Environmental Registry; design and pilot the Observatory and Performance Lab.
Test relationships and interventions; develop and evaluate scientific methods and practical supports.
Help people, organisations and institutions create better matches between cognitive variation, tasks, conditions and support.
The question