Category: Intelligence

How long can you wait for your reward?

Having stronger self-control is a sign of higher intelligence, research finds.

Faced with temptation, more intelligent people stay cooler.

In the study, those with higher intelligence waited longer for a larger reward.

For the study, 103 people were given a series of tests that involved choosing between small financial rewards today or larger ones later on.

For example, let’s say I offer you $5 right now, or $10 in a month’s time.

Choosing the larger reward later on makes sense, but immediate returns are tempting.

Psychologists call this ‘delay discounting’: the longer people have to wait for a reward, the more they discount its value.

In other words, “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”.

The results showed that people with higher intelligence could wait longer for their reward, so demonstrating higher self-control.

Brain scans revealed that people with higher IQ had greater activation in an area called the anterior prefrontal cortex.

This area of the brain allows people to manage complex problems and deal with competing goals.

Dr Noah Shamosh, the study’s first author, said:

“It has been known for some time that intelligence and self-control are related, but we didn’t know why.

Our study implicates the function of a specific brain structure, the anterior prefrontal cortex, which is one of the last brain structures to fully mature.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Shamosh et al., 2008).

What is considered a high IQ and why does it matter?

What is considered a high IQ?

Well, IQ stands for ‘intelligence quotient’ and an IQ test is thought to measure intelligence.

An IQ test — which largely measures someone’s innate intellectual ability — gives an indication of a person’s potential.

People with high IQs have all kinds of advantages in life: they have better educations, better jobs, earn more and even live longer.

The test is set up in such a way that an average score is 100 and it provides a comparison against other people of your age.

What is considered a high IQ?

A score over 130 signals high IQ, with 132 being the cut-off for MENSA, the high IQ society.

Scoring over 130 puts someone in the top 2 percent, meaning that 98 percent score lower.

Over this figure is what is considered a high IQ.

The majority (68 percent) of people score between 85 and 115.

A score of over 145 puts a person in the top 0.2 percent of the population.

Over this figure is what is considered a very high IQ.

IQ scores test people’s ability to recognise patterns, to use logic to solve problems and to make quick connections between ideas.

There is no theoretical upper limit to an IQ score.

Estimates put the IQs of famous physicists Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking at around 160, although their actual scores or whether they ever took a test are not known.

Advantages of high IQ

High IQ is far from a guarantee of success and may even be a barrier to a normal life.

Evidence from various studies suggests that, in terms of attractiveness, leadership and other areas, a high-ish IQ of, say 120 is beneficial but a higher IQ can create problems.

There is some evidence that having a high IQ is linked to mental illness, although some studies have linked high IQ to better mental health.

The way IQ is conceived, it is supposed to be the same throughout life.

However, IQ can be affected by health, nutrition, access to education, environment and culture.

In other words, living well, being curious, exercising and learning can all help people reach their true potential.

People’s cognitive abilities naturally decline with age, and living healthily and keeping the mind active helps to maintain IQ levels.

Four things that indicate high intelligence in a person.

Being open to experience, cooperative, happy and having strong perceptual skills are all signs that you have a high IQ, psychological research finds.

Of these, being open to experience is a particularly strong sign…

1. Open to experience

Insatiable curiosity, an active fantasy life, a sensitivity to emotions and an appreciation of art and beauty are all linked to high IQ.

These are all aspects of the major personality trait called ‘openness to experience’.

People who are open to experience are more interested in things that are complex, new and unconventional.

Being open to experience is so powerful that it is linked to intelligence when measured almost 40 years later.

Children who scored higher on IQ tests at just 11-years-old were more open to experience when they were 50-years-old, the psychologists found.

2. Cooperative

Intelligent people are better at cooperating with others.

While personality traits like being generous and conscientious have an effect on cooperation, higher IQ is the main factor that encourages people to work well together.

People with higher intelligence use more consistent strategies and consider the consequences of their actions.

That is why people with high IQs are so essential: without them society would not work.

3. Happy

Happy people have higher intelligence.

The finding goes against the popular idea that being intelligent somehow predisposes people to unhappiness.

The study looked at happiness in the best-known sense of feeling positive emotions and being satisfied with your life.

The results showed that people with the lowest IQ (70 – 99) were the least happy in comparison to those with the highest IQs (120 – 129).

4. Stronger perceptual skills

People with high IQs have stronger basic perceptual skills, research finds.

For example, they can tell which way objects are moving more quickly.

They are also better at blocking out background information to make their judgement.

Imagine a ball thrown at high speed — a more intelligent person can pick up its trajectory faster.

A higher IQ makes the brain faster at a fundamental level.

It helps underline that high IQ is about more than just solving puzzles or making the ‘right’ decision.

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The brains of highly intelligent individuals are better at staying focused, the research suggests.

People with higher IQs have more stable interactions between regions of their brain, a study finds.

The finding contributes to the scientific debate on what makes some people more intelligent than others.

Some say that high IQ brains are more efficient, others that it is superior connections between brain regions that generate higher cognitive abilities.

This study suggests a more subtle answer: that it is stability in processing that produces the best neural results.

Higher intelligence is linked to states of high integration in the brain: when different areas are working well together.

It is as though the brains of people with higher intelligence are able to coordinate the different regions more efficiently.

Dr Kirsten Hilger, the study’s first author, said:

“The study of the temporal dynamics of human brain networks using fMRI is a relatively new field of research.

The temporally more stable network organisation in more intelligent individuals could be a protective mechanism of the brain against falling into maladaptive network states in which major networks disconnect and communication may be hampered.”

The study included 281 people who were given brain scans and IQ tests.

Researchers analysed the brain scans for how integrated they were over time.

The brain has a modular structure: one area is devoted to vision, another to the emotions, still another to making decisions and so on.

However, what this study found was that integration between the modules was linked to higher IQ.

The researchers found that this integration was most marked in regions of the brain that are important for attention.

Dr Hilger said:

“At present, we do not know whether the temporally more stable brain connections are a source or a consequence of higher intelligence.

However, our results suggest that processes of controlled attention – that is, the ability to stay focused and to concentrate on a task – may play an important role for general intelligence.”

The study was published in the journal Human Brain Mapping (Hilger et al., 2019).

Three ways to tell if you have a high IQ.

People who can predict the behaviour of others have higher personal intelligence, research finds.

Two other signs of high personal intelligence are self-motivation and being able to anticipate desires.

The idea of personal intelligence is broader than IQ.

It involves using intelligence to predict people’s behaviour.

Someone high in personal intelligence is able to analyse correctly their own and other people’s personalities.

People high in personal IQ know how best to deal with other people and how they will react.

Professor John Mayer, the expert on personality and intelligence who came up with the theory, said:

“Think of all the ways we read and interpret the people around us each day: We notice body language and facial expressions to estimate one another’s moods.

We draw initial guesses about personalities based on how people dress and present themselves, and we adjust how we interact with them accordingly.

We run through scenarios in our heads, trying to anticipate how others will react, in order to choose the best course in dealing with a boss, a coworker, or a partner.”

Reviewing decades of research on personality and intelligence, Professor Mayer has found it comes more naturally to some:

“We pick up on small pieces of feedback about ourselves from others, which we incorporate into a fuller and more accurate perception of ourselves.

And we make all kinds of decisions–about work-life balance, the neighborhood we live in, or who we spend our time with–based on what we think will be the best fit for our personalities.”

Professor Mayer concludes:

“People who are high in personal intelligence are able to anticipate their own desires and actions, predict the behavior of others, motivate themselves over the long term, and make better life decisions.”

→ Discover 22 more signs of intelligence.

The book is called Personal Intelligence: The Power of Personality and How It Shapes Our Lives and is published by Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.