ASK a physicist what g means and the answer is short and sweet. On Earth, the acceleration due to gravity is about 9.8 metres per second per second, though it varies depending on how far you are from the planet’s centre of mass. Ask a pyschologist the same question and the likely answer is: “how long have you got?”
For a psychologist, g stands for general intelligence, a mysterious measure of human behaviour. Whatever IQ tests measure-spatial or verbal ability, memory or information processing speed-people who are good at one type of test tend to be good at the others…
