This sign is not normally linked to being smart.
Three ways to tell if you have a high IQ.
Three ways to tell if you have a high IQ.
People who can predict the behaviour of others have higher personal intelligence.
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.”
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.
Forget book smarts — this is what really sets intelligent people apart.
Forget book smarts — this is what really sets intelligent people apart.
Being nice is a sign of high IQ: highly intelligent people are better at cooperating and more generous to others.
Smart people are almost three times as generous as those with lower cognitive abilities.
The reason may be that smarter people are more patient — a quality that is critical for cooperation.
More patience allows people to step back from a situation and exert self-control.
The study involved hundreds of people given a test of a type of intelligence called ‘cognitive reflection’.
This measures people’s ability to override a quick, obvious response that turns out to be wrong, in order to get the right answer.
Here are two of cognitive reflection tests used in the study:
The answers are at the bottom of the article.
Clever people are more patient when searching out the real answer, it emerges.
Subsequently, people who did better on this test were also up to three times more generous in a game that tested people’s generosity.
The reason could be that people with intelligence have more patience, the study’s author, Dr Lohse, writes:
“Subjects with higher cognitive abilities have been shown to be more patient and to be able to exert higher levels of self-control.
Martinsson et al. (2014) demonstrate that subjects with higher self-control capabilities cooperate more.
Similarly, Fehr and Leibbrandt (2011) show that more patient subjects in the lab cooperate more in the field.”
The answers are 5 minutes for the first problem and 47 days for the second.
If you didn’t get these, remember the test is designed to make you think a little longer and harder.
The study was published in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (Lohse, 2016).
What children eat at age two may still be affecting their brains years later.
This bold and confident sign is linked to higher academic achievement.
This bold and confident sign is linked to higher academic achievement.
People who are very sure of their intellectual abilities are, in fact, smarter than others.
Intellectual arrogance was linked to higher grades in the study.
People who are intellectually arrogant tend to agree with statements such as, “I believe my own ideas are superior to others.”
People are seen as intellectually arrogant when they are extraverted, dominate the group and want to be the centre of attention.
Professor Wade C. Rowatt, study co-author, said:
“One possibility is that people who view themselves as intellectually arrogant know what they know and that translates to increases in academic performance.”
The study followed the work of 103 students over a semester.
The results showed that those who felt they were superior to others performed better in their coursework.
However, people who were more humble about their abilities were better liked by their peers.
So, intellectual arrogance may come with a social penalty.
The study’s authors were surprised by the results: they had predicted that intellectual humility would be linked to better performance.
However, this was not the case.
Dr Benjamin R. Meagher, the study’s first author, still thinks humility is a vital trait:
“What I think is important about intellectual humility is its necessity for not only science, but for just learning generally — and that applies to the classroom, a work setting, wherever.
Learning something new requires first acknowledging your own ignorance and being willing to make your ignorance known to others.
People clearly differ in terms of their willingness to do something like that, but that willingness to learn, change one’s mind and value the opinion of others is really needed if people and groups are going to develop and grow.”
The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Meagher et al., 2015).
These traits are all linked to having higher intelligence.
These traits are all linked to having higher intelligence.
Having an active fantasy life, appreciating beauty, being emotionally sensitive and wide-ranging curiosity are linked to high IQ.
All of these are components 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.
They are sensitive to their feelings, intellectually curious and seekers of variety.
Curiosity has an especially strong link to high IQ.
This may be because higher intelligence drives a ‘cognitive hunger’.
This encourages people to seek out new experiences to satisfy the hunger.
The conclusions come from a study of 17,415 people from the UK.
They were given intelligence and personality tests and followed for 40 years.
The results showed the remarkable strength of the link between openness to experience and IQ.
The study’s authors explain their results:
“…childhood intelligence is indeed positively associated with adult trait Openness, even when it was assessed almost four decades earlier when participants were at 11 years.
Intelligence may influence the development of personality in that intelligent people develop habits to satisfy their curiosity and ‘‘cognitive hunger’’ which are an essential ingredient of Openness.”
The study’s authors think that it is high IQ that drives openness to experience:
“Parents of higher socioeconomic status may foster children’s trait Openness by providing better resources such as choosing good schools and cultural environment (theaters, museums, traveling abroad, etc.); intelligent children tend to use more mental activities (such as abstract ideas, learning new vocabularies, or math formulas) than those who are less intelligent; school settings (quality of teaching, good facilities) may enhance pupils to engage more in school learning.
All these three factors may influence educational and
occupational achievement, which in turn, may increase
the scores on Openness.”
The study was published in the Journal of Individual Differences (Furnham & Cheng, 2016).
One musical skill may indicate higher intelligence.
One musical skill may indicate higher intelligence.
People who have higher IQs can keep a beat more precisely.
Participants with higher IQs find it easier to keep a regular beat on a drum pad.
One reason may be that precise timing is vital for problem-solving and overall brain efficiency.
Brain scans revealed that people with higher intelligence had more white matter in parts of the brain important for problem-solving, planning and managing time.
These factors were also linked to an improved ability to keep time.
This suggests that better timing may be built into the brains of more intelligent people at a fundamental level.
Professor Fredrik Ullén, a pianist and neuroscientist who led the study, said:
“It’s interesting as the task didn’t involve any kind of problem solving.
Irregularity of timing probably arises at a more fundamental biological level owing to a kind of noise in brain activity.”
The study included 34 people who tried to copy the clicking of a metronome by hitting a drum pad.
They were given 20 beats to warm up, then they had to keep the same rhythm going for a further 45 beats.
The results showed that the more intelligent people were, the better they could keep time when the metronome stopped.
Professor Ullén said:
“All in all, this suggests that a factor of what we call intelligence has a biological basis in the number of nerve fibres in the prefrontal lobe and the stability of neuronal activity that this provides.”
Faster brains make quicker perceptual judgements and are also better at solving puzzles or analysing decisions.
For example, people with higher IQs find it easier to tell which way an object is moving.
The study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience (Ullén et al., 2008).
Research suggests simple ways to use your eyes and voice to appear more intelligent.
Research suggests simple ways to use your eyes and voice to appear more intelligent.
Maintaining eye contact while talking is one of the easiest ways to appear smarter.
Other common ways to give a more intelligent impression include speaking pleasantly, clearly and quickly.
The finding comes from a study in which participants were recorded while trying to appear intelligent when discussing an assigned topic.
This condition was compared to people who were given no instruction about how to act.
Judges viewed the video and rated the person’s apparent intelligence.
Maintaining eye contact while speaking was rated as giving the smartest appearance.
Indeed, intelligence tests revealed that people who maintained eye contact were actually smarter.
Judges also associated two other behaviours with high IQ:
However, neither of these was linked to people’s measured intelligence.
Still, you could use them, as they create the right impression.
Other ways to look more intelligent were:
People did not use these methods spontaneously, though.
The study’s authors conclude:
“Looking while speaking was a key behavior: It significantly correlated with IQ, was successfully manipulated by impression-managing targets, and contributed to higher perceived intelligence ratings.”
The authors also identify other behaviours linked to higher perceived intelligence:
“…pleasant speech style, clear or easy-to-understand communication, and faster speech rate all have been associated with higher perceived intelligence ratings.”
The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Murphy, 2007).
Some video games can act like an IQ test.
Some video games can act like an IQ test.
Certain strategy games can act like an IQ test: people who perform well at the two games also do better at standard paper-and-pencil intelligence tests.
One of the games is called ‘League of Legends’, a popular game that has millions of players around the world.
The second game is called Defence of the Ancients 2 (DOTA 2).
Professor Alex Wade, who led the study, said:
“Games such as League of Legends and DOTA 2 are complex, socially-interactive and intellectually demanding.
Our research would suggest that your performance in these games can be a measure of intelligence.
Research in the past has pointed to the fact that people who are good at strategy games such as chess tend to score highly at IQ tests.
Our research has extended this to games that millions of people across the planet play every day.”
Along with these two strategy games, the research also looked at people playing ‘first-person shooters’, which mostly rely on reaction times rather than strategy.
The study found that people’s ability to play first-person shooters simply declined after their teenage years.
However, people got better at playing strategy games like League of Legends and Defence of the Ancients 2 as they got older.
Mr Athanasios Kokkinakis, the study’s first author, said:
“Unlike First Person Shooter (FPS) games where speed and target accuracy are a priority, Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas [such as League of Legends] rely more on memory and the ability to make strategic decisions taking into account multiple factors.
It is perhaps for these reasons that we found a strong correlation between skill and intelligence in MOBAs.”
The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Kokkinakis et al., 2017).
The personality traits that suggest you have higher intelligence.
The personality traits that suggest you have higher intelligence.
The personality traits of being open to experience and having stable emotions both indicate a higher IQ, research finds.
People who are open to experience are more interested in things that are complex, new and unconventional.
Emotional stability is linked to being better at dealing with stress and minor frustrations.
People who are emotionally stable usually find it easier to control their urges and are mostly unselfconscious.
Both stable emotions and being open to experience are linked to better general knowledge, which are two aspect of intelligence.
Psychologists call general knowledge ‘crystallised intelligence’ is one of the two main types of intelligence.
Crystallised intelligence becomes more important as people get older as acquired information and skills predict their success in life.
The other type is called ‘fluid intelligence’, and refers to abstract reasoning and the speed at which the brain works.
The study included 201 university students in the UK who were given tests of personality and general knowledge questions, including:
(See the end of the article for the answers.)
The results showed that people got more answers correct if their personalities were more emotionally stable and they were more open to experience.
Openness to experience is particularly important for general knowledge because it makes people more curious and motivates them to learn new things.
Another personality trait the researchers found was linked to greater general knowledge was introversion.
Signs of introversion include preferring to be in a quiet, relaxing environment and having a rich mental life.
Having a rich mental life likely encourages people with this personality trait to pick up more information about the world.
(The answers are: Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Fleming and John Lennon, respectively.)
The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Chamorro-Premuzic et al., 2006).
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