I was told this in context of "cultural psychology" how many tests or psychological observations and metrics poorly translate over culture. (especially when you try to pin it on some success metric)
My belief was reinforced when companies switched to remote work, and management at many companies complained that it was difficult to tell who was and wasn't working, when the managers didn't get to watch the workers. Abstracting the social relationship from the results of work will make it easier to judge the work itself, but more difficult to enforce the social relationship. When the abstraction occurred, those who were basing the status of their employees on the social relationship, and not the work output, were especially disadvantaged.
A moment from the show "Good Times" in 1974. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DhbsDdMoHC0 at 1:25
Also, I forgot how annoying comic relief characters were in sitcoms. They are the opposite of relieving.
also, cultures don't have iq's, there is no known link to culture.
I have no doubt that IQ tests reproducibly measure the test takers ability to pass tests, as well as to perform in a society that the tests are based on.
I think it's disingenuous to attribute IQ to intelligence as a whole though, and it is better understood as an indicator of cultural intelligence.
I would expect that, for cultures who's members score below average on IQ tests from the US, an equivalent IQ test created within that culture would show average members of that culture scoring higher than average members of US culture.