Category: Intelligence

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:

• maintaining eye contact while listening,
• and standing upright.

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:

• speaking for longer,
• having a self-assured expression,
• and being responsive.

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.”

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The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Murphy, 2007).

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 type of music that signals a high IQ..

People who like instrumental music tend to have higher IQs.

Instrumental music includes everything that does not have lyrics, such as ambient, classical, smooth jazz, big band and some film soundtracks.

Almost everyone, whatever their IQ, though, likes vocal music.

A preference for vocal music does not provide a signal about intelligence.

The reason that higher IQ is linked to the preference for instrumental music has nothing to do with the cognitive complexity of the music.

Opera, for example, is often seen as complex, but it says nothing about people’s intelligence.

The study’s authors write:

“It would be difficult to make the case that big-band music is more cognitively complex than classical music.

On the other extreme, as suspected, preference for rap music is significantly negatively correlated with intelligence.

However, preference for gospel music is even more strongly negatively correlated with it.

It would be difficult to make the case that gospel is less cognitively complex than rap.”

The conclusions come from two surveys of thousands of people who were asked about their musical preferences and given IQ tests.

Both found a link between higher intelligence and preference for instrumental music.

The results showed that…

“…net of age, race, sex, education, family income, religion, current and past marital status and number of children, more intelligent Americans are more likely to prefer instrumental music such as big band, classical and easy listening than less-intelligent Americans.”

An evolutionary explanation

The explanation for this link between IQ and musical preferences may go back into our evolutionary past.

Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, the study’s co-author, thinks that instrumental musical is more ‘evolutionary novel’ and therefore linked to a higher IQ.

This explanation is highly debatable (see Dutton, 2013), but the link is still fascinating.

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The study was published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making (Kanazawa & Perina, 2011).

Genetic study finds that, beyond looks, this is the most important quality in a potential partner.

People are more likely to marry those with a similar level of intelligence to themselves.

It shows that when looking for a partner, people generally want someone similar to themselves.

Intelligence, like many other traits, is partly controlled by our genetic makeup.

So, effectively, people tend to pick others who have similar genetic traits.

The study’s authors write:

“Humans generally do not choose their mates randomly.

In the search for a suitable mate, among the highest-ranking qualities people look for in a potential partner are intelligence and educational attainment.”

And when you look at any random couple, there is a surprisingly high correlation between the two different individuals’ intelligence and their education.

The conclusions come from a UK DNA study of 1,600 married or cohabiting couples.

Dr David Hugh-Jones, the study’s first author, said:

 “Our findings show strong evidence for the presence of genetic assortative mating for education in the UK.

The consequences of assortative mating on education and cognitive abilities are relevant for society, and for the genetic make-up and therefore the evolutionary development of subsequent generations.”

Dr Hugh-Jones pointed out that over time the forces of evolution can increase social inequality:

“Assortative mating on inheritable traits that are indicative of socio-economic status, such as educational achievement, increases the genetic variance of characteristics in the population.

This may increase social inequality, for example with respect to education or income.

When growing social inequality is, partly, driven by a growing biological inequality, inequalities in society may be harder to overcome and the effects of assortative mating may accumulate with each generation.”

In other words, if intelligent people continue to marry other intelligent people, then the genes for intelligence may become increasingly concentrated with certain groups.

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The study was published in the journal Intelligence (Hugh-Jones et al., 2016).

This upbeat emotion is linked to having higher intelligence.

People who feel happier tend to have a higher IQ.

In fact, experiencing positive emotions, feeling lively and wide awake all predict higher intelligence.

The idea that more intelligent people tend to be grumpy or unhappy is probably not true, on average.

Part of this link between intelligence and happiness may be down to life circumstances.

More intelligent people tend to be better off, have higher levels of education and consequently have better jobs.

The findings come from a survey of 6,870 people who were given tests of happiness and IQ.

The results showed that people with higher IQs (120-129) were happier than those with lower IQs (70-99).

The average IQ across the whole population is 100.

The study’s authors write:

“In this large nationally representative study, we found that IQ is associated with self-reported happiness, which provides support for our hypothesis.

Levels of happiness were lowest in the lower IQ groups and highest in the higher IQ groups.”

People with higher IQs tend to have better health, the study also found.

Poor health may be linked to low IQ due to lower learning abilities, the study’s authors write:

“One study suggests that people with lower IQ are more
likely to experience health problems because of a reduced
propensity to learn, reason and problem-solve, and because of difficulties in adhering to complex treatments, which often require following detailed instructions, and self-monitoring.”

Another study has shown that stable happiness is also a sign of higher IQ.

People with higher IQs are just as happy at 31-years-old as they are at 51.

More intelligent people experience fewer drops in their happiness over the years.

In contrast, the happiness of people with lower IQs is not just lower overall, but also goes up and down more over the years.

The study was published in the journal Psychological Medicine (Ali et al., 2013).

People with more of this in their blood did better on intelligence tests.

Eating leafy greens helps preserve intelligence over the lifetime.

Leafy greens and other foods contain lutein, a plant pigment that protects the brain from aging.

People with more lutein in their blood did better on intelligence tests, the study found.

Lutein collects in the cell membranes of the brain, playing a ‘neuroprotective’ role.

Foods that contain high levels of lutein include leafy green vegetables like kale and spinach, as well as broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage.

Dr Marta Zamroziewicz, the study’s first author, said:

“Previous studies have found that a person’s lutein status is linked to cognitive performance across the lifespan.

Research also shows that lutein accumulates in the gray matter of brain regions known to underlie the preservation of cognitive function in healthy brain aging.”

For the study, 122 people aged 65 to 75 took tests of crystallised intelligence.

Crystallised intelligence is akin to general knowledge.

Blood tests revealed that people with higher levels of lutein did better on these tests.

Scans also revealed that lutein helped preserve critical areas of the brain.

Professor Aron Barbey, study co-author, said:

“Our analyses revealed that gray-matter volume of the parahippocampal cortex on the right side of the brain accounts for the relationship between lutein and crystallized intelligence.

This offers the first clue as to which brain regions specifically play a role in the preservation of crystallized intelligence, and how factors such as diet may contribute to that relationship.”

Dr Zamroziewicz said:

“Our findings do not demonstrate causality.

We did find that lutein is linked to crystallized intelligence through the parahippocampal cortex.”

Professor Barbey said:

“We can only hypothesize at this point how lutein in the diet affects brain structure.

It may be that it plays an anti-inflammatory role or aids in cell-to-cell signaling.

But our finding adds to the evidence suggesting that particular nutrients slow age-related declines in cognition by influencing specific features of brain aging.”

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The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience (Zamroziewicz et al., 2016).

These qualities are not usually associated with intelligence.

Highly intelligent people are more likely to be trusting and generous.

Trusting people tend to believe that others are honest and will not harm them.

Intelligent people are able to override the perfectly natural worry that other people will betray them.

While being trusting is not something people usually associate with intelligence, this research clearly shows a link.

The reason for the link may be that human intelligence has evolved to be trusting, as it helps society function.

For the study, 80 people played an economic game that tested how trusting they were.

They were also given a test of their ‘cognitive reflection’.

Cognitive reflection 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 the tests of cognitive reflection used in the study:

• If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long will it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
• In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?

The answers are at the bottom of the article.

More trusting

The research also showed that smarter people behaved in a more trusting way towards others.

The study’s authors write:

“It is not hard to imagine that the ability to trust is largely beneficial in a society where survival and prosperity crucially hinge upon the capacity to exchange with counterparts with various degrees of familiarity.

All such transaction […] require an important element of trust.”

In other words, society gets on better if people trust each other.

The study’s authors write:

“…trust has been shown to impact economic variables such as growth and financial development as well as entrepreneurship and trade.

In sum, trust is seen as the lubricant that facilitates exchange in society so its relevance cannot be overstated.”

The answers are…

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.

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The study was published in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (Corgnet et al., 2015).

People with higher intelligence tend to have this musical ability.

People who can learn a tune more easily have higher intelligence, research suggests.

People with higher IQs were able to learn to play “Happy Birthday” on the piano more accurately in the study.

Whether or not people believed they could improve did not seem to matter.

Instead, pure intelligence predicted how well they did, not a ‘growth mindset’.

A growth mindset is a belief that basic abilities can be improved through hard work.

Musical aptitude was the only other factor that mattered, said Mr Alexander Burgoyne, the study’s first author:

“The strongest predictor of skill acquisition was intelligence, followed by music aptitude.

By contrast, the correlation between growth mindset and piano performance was about as close to zero as possible.”

The study included 171 people who had little or no experience playing the piano.

All were given tests of their mindset and their intelligence.

They followed a video guide that taught them to play “Happy Birthday”, which contained 25 notes.

Afterwards they were rated on their performance of the simple song.

The results showed that IQ mattered most in predicting who did well.

When IQ was taken into account, even musical aptitude paled into insignificance.

Mr Burgoyne said:

“The results were surprising, because people have claimed that mindset plays an important role when students are confronted with challenges, like trying to learn a new musical instrument.

And yet, it didn’t predict skill acquisition.”

There were also some interesting patterns in the results:

• Some learned quickly within six minutes.
• Some were poor at first, but soon improved.
• Some faded away as they lost motivation.
• The rest could not work it out at all.

Mr Burgoyne said:

“Our study examined one of the earliest stages of skill acquisition.

Early experiences can be formative, but I would caution against drawing conclusions about skilled musicians based on our study of beginners.”

The study was published in the journal Intelligence (Burgoyne et al., 2019).