Intelligence - Page 10 of 22

What Is Considered A High IQ And Why Does It Matter?

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.

A Brilliant Sign That You Have A High Fluid IQ (M)

People with high fluid intelligence are likely to have this ability.

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This 10-Minute Conversation Makes You Smarter

These conversations boost our ability to ignore distractions, remember important things, make decisions and monitor ourselves more efficiently.

Ten minutes having a regular conversation is enough to boost brain power, research finds.

The boost from ten minutes getting to know someone was equivalent to that from solving crossword puzzles.

The research suggests that having a friendly chat with someone could be a great way of preparing yourself for a mentally challenging task.

Professor Oscar Ybarra, who led the study, said:

“This study shows that simply talking to other people, the way you do when you’re making friends, can provide mental benefits.”

The research looked at what psychologists call executive function.

This is the ability we all use in everyday life to ignore distractions, remember important things, make decisions and monitor ourselves.

The study compared different types of social interactions to see which provided the greatest benefit.

Fascinatingly, competitive conversations provided little cognitive benefit.

When people are competitive with other, they tend to withdraw within themselves.

Friendly conversations, meanwhile encourage empathy and trying to work out what the other person is thinking.

Professor Ybarra said:

“We believe that performance boosts come about because some social interactions induce people to try to read others’ minds and take their perspectives on things.

And we also find that when we structure even competitive interactions to have an element of taking the other person’s perspective, or trying to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, there is a boost in executive functioning as a result.”

Professor Ybarra continued:

“Taken together with earlier research, these findings highlight the connection between social intelligence and general intelligence.

This fits with evolutionary perspectives that examine social pressures on the emergence of intelligence, and research showing a neural overlap between social-cognitive and executive brain functions.”

The study was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science (Ybarra et al., 2016).

4 Wonderful Signs You Have A High IQ

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.

The Best Mix Of Foods For Mental Clarity, Happiness & High IQ (M)

Scientists identify four eating patterns that impact your mental state.

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This Age Group Has A Higher IQ Than Ever Before (M)

How people’s cognitive abilities are changing across the generations.

How people's cognitive abilities are changing across the generations.

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This Parenting Method Is Linked To Higher IQ

This parenting strategy leads to children with IQs 6 points higher.

Children raised by nurturing parents develop higher IQs, research finds.

Many of the children in the study, who were raised in Brazil and South Africa, had faced considerable adversity, such as poverty and low birth weight.

But when they experienced responsive caregiving and the opportunity to learn, it was possible for them to reach their full potential.

Responsive caregiving involves being sensitive to the needs of the child and knowing how to respond to them.

Typical nurturing activities include reading to the child, playing games with letters and numbers as well as singing songs together.

Professor Maureen Black, study co-author, said:

“We found that adolescents who were raised in nurturing environments had IQ scores that were on average 6 points higher than those who were not.

This is a striking difference that has profound implications by increasing the intelligence of entire communities.

A nurturing environment also led to better growth and fewer psycho-social difficulties in adolescence, but it did not mitigate the effects of early adversities on growth and psycho-social difficulties.”

The research included over 1,600 children who were tracked from birth to their teenage years.

Both prenatal and early life adversity tends to lower IQ and is linked to problems adjusting psychologically.

However, a nurturing environment created by caregivers counteracts the disadvantages of early adversity.

Professor Black said:

“I think our findings could apply to communities here in the U.S. where children are hungry, living in poverty or lacking in access to medical care.”

Getting involved with children is the key, said Professor Black:

“Get children involved in friendly activities as much as possible rather than parking them in front of a screen.

Children love to learn and in a nurturing environment they can grow into adolescents and adults with the abilities to care for themselves, their families, and their communities.”

The study was published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health (Trude et al., 2020).

3 Signs Of High IQ & Ability To Read Other People’s Personalities

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.

A Simple Musical Sign Of High IQ

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).