Tonal Genius Study Exposes Listener's True Intelligence

A Grand Rapids, Mich. based radio station did a show Oct. 15, 2007 where the hosts played a five-second tone they said was created by Harvard researchers and would only be audible to those with a genius-level IQ.

The catch? They made the whole thing up.

The hosts of the show, who go by the radio names Free Beer and Hot Wings, respectively, along with another co-host, Eric Zane, made up the bit as a prank on their listeners. There was no Harvard study, and there was no tone.

"We just played silence," said Hot Wings, who during the segment pretended like he could hear the tone to make the stunt more believable to listeners.

Before it was announced the following morning that the Harvard Tonal IQ Test had been a hoax, many callers from the listening audience responded saying they could hear the tone. One male caller said the tone sounded like a high pitched wail.

Another was tested on air by the hosts over the phone, who asked him to say when the tone started playing to prove he could actually hear it. When the man said he heard it, the hosts pretended he heard it at the right time even though they were simply sitting in the studio in silence.

A female caller said the tone sounded like a series of high-pitched clicks.

"I was so smart in school they moved me up grades," she said.

Many listeners e-mailed the show after the segment ran, the hosts said. One listener said he had played the recorded tone for his whole family and all of them had heard it. Others said that while they could not hear the tone themselves, their dogs and cats responded vehemently, sometimes violently, when the tone was played over the radio.

Call it a testament to the power of suggestion, an experiment in crowd mentality, a modern day version of the emperor who wore no clothes story. Call it what you will. It seems people only hear what they want to.

*This article appeared in a slightly different form as "'Geniuses' get duped" on October 17, 2007 in the Western Herald campus newspaper at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Mich. The hoax was set up by the Free Beer and Hot Wings morning radio show on 97.9 WGRD out of Grand Rapids.