Can You Increase Your IQ?
Two different questions people mean
"Can I increase my IQ?" hides two separate questions. Can I score higher on the test? Absolutely: retaking a matrix test typically adds 5–7 points of practice effect; being rested and calm instead of tired and anxious is worth several more. That is movement in the measurement, not in you — which is exactly why our methodology page tells you to trust your first calm attempt.
Can I become durably better at novel reasoning? Here the honest adult answer is: not by any method that has survived replication. Fluid ability rises through childhood and adolescence, peaks in the twenties, and no training program has been shown to push it above its trajectory in adults.
Brain training: the industry the evidence killed
The modern boom began with a 2008 study (Jaeggi et al.) claiming that "dual n-back" memory training raised fluid intelligence. It launched a billion-dollar app industry — and then failed to replicate. The definitive review (Simons et al., 2016, Psychological Science in the Public Interest) examined every cited study and concluded the evidence shows improvement on the trained tasks, weak evidence of transfer to similar tasks, and no convincing evidence of transfer to real cognitive ability. In the same year, Lumosity paid a $2 million FTC settlement over its advertising. Games are fine entertainment; they are not an IQ intervention.
Education: the intervention that actually works
The strongest causal evidence for raising measured intelligence is boring: school. A meta-analysis of natural experiments (Ritchie & Tucker-Drob, 2018, Psychological Science) — compulsory-schooling law changes, enrollment cutoffs — found each additional year of education adds roughly 1 to 5 IQ points, with effects that persist into old age. This also explains the Flynn effect: as schooling and childhood health expanded across the 20th century, whole populations gained about 3 points per decade. Environment moves scores at scale — slowly, through development, not through an app.
Protecting the hardware
For adults, the realistic play is not raising the peak but defending it. The factors with real evidence are unglamorous: aerobic exercise (modest but reliable cognitive benefits, especially with age), sleep (deprivation measurably cripples fluid reasoning), treating hypertension and hearing loss (both on the Lancet Commission's list of modifiable dementia risks), and not drinking heavily. None of these adds points; all of them prevent losing performance you already have.
The reframe that actually pays
Fluid ability is the engine's horsepower; expertise is everything built on top. Horsepower is hard to change — but performance in any real domain is mostly built, not endowed: vocabulary, mental models, practiced skills, judgment. Those compound for decades (it is why crystallized ability peaks around 65), and they are fully under your control. If your score is around 100, nothing about the research says your ceiling in a chosen field is average; it says get compounding.
Get your honest baseline first
One calm attempt, real norms, no inflation — the number the research says to trust.
Start the Free IQ TestIncreasing IQ — common questions
Can adults actually raise their IQ?
The measured score, yes — by a handful of points through test familiarity, better sleep, lower anxiety and genuine effort. The underlying fluid ability, essentially no: no intervention has reliably raised adult fluid intelligence in replicated studies. What adults can raise without limit is domain skill and knowledge, which is what drives most real-world performance anyway.
Do brain-training apps work?
They make you better at the brain-training games. A major expert review (Simons et al., 2016) examined the entire literature and found no convincing evidence that gains transfer to general cognitive ability or everyday functioning. Regulators agreed: Lumosity paid a $2 million FTC settlement in 2016 for unsupported "train your brain" claims.
How much can my score change between two attempts?
Retaking a similar test typically adds 5–7 points through practice effects alone, and day-to-day conditions (sleep, stress, motivation) swing results by several points in either direction. This is why we tell users to treat their first calm attempt as the meaningful estimate — and why a single-session score always carries roughly ±5 points of noise.
Does learning chess, music or a new language raise IQ?
These are genuinely good for you, but meta-analyses of far transfer (notably Sala & Gobet's work) find little to no effect on general intelligence once study quality is controlled. You get better at chess, music and the language — valuable in itself — without the improvement leaking into unrelated reasoning.
What is the single most evidence-backed way to score higher?
Show up rested, unstressed, familiar with the format, and actually try. Those four factors together are worth more measured points than any commercial program — which says something important about what the remaining gap between people reflects.