Sep 10, 2025·Advanced Topics & Research

Increasing Your IQ

Learn the difference between IQ and intelligence, how practice and schooling affect scores, the limits of “hollow gains,” and tips to prepare for an IQ test.

Dr. Russell T. WarneChief Scientist

It is natural to want to be smarter. High intelligence is associated with many favorable life outcomes. Being smarter can make it easier to succeed in school, the workplace, and in other areas. So, it is natural that people want to raise their IQ and be more intelligent.

IQ ≠ Intelligence

One important (but often neglected) part of the conversation about raising IQ is that there is a difference between “IQ” and “intelligence.” Many people treat these concepts as being synonymous, but they are not. According to one group of experts, “Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.” Intelligence is measured with intelligence tests (also called “IQ tests”), which produce an IQ score that can be used to rank order test takers from smartest to least intelligent. This means that intelligence is the ability to reason and solve problems, and IQ is the number or metric used to measure intelligence.

This is an important distinction because the number is not the same thing as the quality it measures. This makes sense. Just as a thermometer measures heat and expresses the amount of heat with a number that is called “temperature,” an IQ test measures intelligence and expresses the amount of intelligence with a number called “IQ.” This is important because raising IQ (the number) is not the same thing as raising intelligence (the actual ability to solve problems and reason).

Raising IQ

Raising an IQ score is easy, and there are several ways to do it. The most effective method is to cheat. That raises the number almost every time. This usually isn’t what people mean when they say they want to raise their IQ, though.

One effective method of raising IQ is through retaking a test. This is called a “practice effect,” and it occurs because people become familiar with the subtests or tasks. That familiarity gives them an advantage when they take the test the second (or third, or fourth) time. Even if a person doesn’t study between tests, practice effects will raise IQ scores. The size of the practice effect is about 5 IQ points for the second testing and about 3 IQ points for the third testing. That’s quite a bit.

Another method of raising IQ is to learn strategies that can be used to solve the problems that appear on many IQ tests. For many subtests, the questions on an IQ test are created through a set of rules that are then used to develop questions. Learning a few rules can help examinees answer many more questions correctly. In one study, a 15-minute video about the rules of a matrix reasoning test raised IQ by 15 points. The drawback with this method is that it can be difficult to find all of the rules for a test in advance -- especially if the test has many different item types on it, like the Reasoning and Intelligence Online Test (RIOT). Additionally, learning the rules or strategies for one question type does not help with raising the score for a different question type.

Raising Intelligence

Raising IQ improves the score someone obtains on an IQ test, but it does not actually raise intelligence. Intelligence researchers call this score increase “hollow gains.” Yes, the score has gone up, but no one actually gets when IQ has increased due to hollow gains.

Compared to raising IQ, raising intelligence is much harder. That should not be surprising, though. Creating permanent, lasting gains in general mental functioning should be harder than obtaining a higher score on a test.

The most effective known way to raise intelligence is through schooling. According to the best estimate available, an additional year of schooling raises IQ by about 1-2 points. Notice that this raises IQ; it is not clear how much of this gain is actual intelligence. A major challenge to interpreting this research is that it measures the gain in IQ from an additional year of schooling--that is, the last year of schooling someone has. It does not measure how effective early schooling is or the cumulative effect of a given number of years of schooling. Despite the uncertainties, psychologists agree that schooling is beneficial for students’ cognition and that it does increase problem solving ability.

Adoption studies also demonstrate that IQ can be raised in a permanent fashion. The best evidence for the impact of the environment on IQ comes from adoption studies which show an increase of about 3 IQ points, compared to what would be expected if the adopted child had grown up with their birth family in a wealthy country. Just like with schooling, it is not known how much of this increase is due to an increase in intelligence and how much is merely the hollow gains of an IQ increase. Another issue is that it is not clear what the adoptive parents are doing that raises their children’s IQ. As one expert explained,

“These families differ from low-income families in many ways . . . and it is impossible to isolate these differences and to examine them individually to determine why adopted children experience an IQ increase. Perhaps having access to high-quality services (e.g., health care, preschool, K-12 education) increases IQ. Maybe it is the nicer, safer neighborhoods that these families live in. Perhaps the greater stability of the homes . . . makes adopted children smarter.”

As a result, it is difficult to tell people how to raise intelligence (or at least IQ) permanently. The best advice on what to do can be summed up as “Go to school and live in a home that would be good enough to adopt a child into.”

Another line of research on permanent increases in intelligence or IQ can be found in the research on lead poisoning, head trauma, and prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol. All of these lower IQ and perhaps intelligence, too. However, avoiding these experiences doesn’t raise IQ; rather it prevents IQ from being lowered. That is not the same thing as making someone smarter. Still, it is good advice to avoid environmental influences that lower IQ.

Preparing for an Intelligence Test

Even if scientists know little about specific ways to increase intelligence, it is still a valuable experience to obtain the best score possible on an IQ test -- without achieving hollow gains. Here are some tips for preparing for an IQ test:

Be well rested. Get plenty of sleep. If you need a break, ask for one. Psychologists administering a test are very accommodating. The RIOT allows examinees to take a breaks between subtests for as long as they need. (Examinees can even take their subtests on different days.)

Make sure you understand the instructions and what you are expected to do for a task. Some tasks that appear on IQ tests seem very strange. If you have some familiarity with the task (without cheating or studying the rules in advance), then the test will produce a more accurate IQ score. To help examinees with this, the RIOT has its instruction videos posted publicly to YouTube so that test takers can be ready for every subtest.

Be conscious of your time. Rushing and running out of time are both bad for test performance. Individually administered tests and the RIOT have a time limit for each question. That means that answering one question quickly will not allow you to use the extra time on a later question. But making sure that you don’t run out of time is still important, especially for difficult questions. For a test that sets time limits for an entire subtest (as happens in many group-administered tests), time management can help a test taker

Try your best. Although effort does not increase IQ much, low effort and careless responding can lower a score.

Relax. Test anxiety is a real phenomenon that can lower people’s scores, and examinees should try to avoid it. The test administrator is your ally in this. The professionals administering the test want an examinee to do their best, and the administrator will do their part to help the test taker to feel at ease. Remember that the administrator is your ally. The RIOT doesn’t have test administrators, but the experience has been designed to be as comfortable and pleasing as possible.

Try to have fun. Some of the tasks on intelligence tests are game-like. This is especially true for IQ tests designed for children. If you find a subtest or a task that is entertaining, enjoy it!