Category: Intelligence

Higher intelligence is associated with this personality type.

People whose personalities can accept vagueness and confusion tend to have a higher IQ, research finds.

Those who accept ambiguity tend to be open-minded, creative and relaxed about problems that do not have a definitive answer.

Given that the world is filled with grey areas, this allows those who can accept ambiguity to make better decisions.

Other personality traits linked to high IQ are taking risks, being conscientious and being competitive.

Conscientiousness is a sign of higher fluid intelligence, which is the speed at which the brain works.

People with higher IQs are also more likely to have ‘Type A’ personalities, which are characterised by a competitive nature.

The conclusions come from a study of 820 people in the UK who completed assessments of their personality and intelligence.

The personality traits are part of the High Potential Traits Inventory, which is, the authors write a:

“…measure of personality traits directly relevant to workplace behaviours, thoughts and perceptions of the self and others at work.”

Four personality factors were linked to intelligence.

Being able to cope with vagueness is a strong sign of high IQ, the authors write:

“This study found that multiple intelligence measures were predictive of higher tolerance of uncertainty.

Previous researchers have found that more intelligent
individuals are able to adequately adapt to and evaluate
changing work tasks, leading to greater accuracy in decision-making.”

People who are curious also had higher IQs the study found:

“Curiosity – marked by high openness, creativity, imagination, and cognitive complexity – was hypothesised to associate with higher levels of intelligence.

individuals high on curiosity exhibited higher levels of WM ability.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Furnham & Treglown, 2018).

Smart people are not that much more wealthy, but people with high IQs do have higher incomes.

Being smart has almost no relationship to wealth, research reveals.

People with high IQs are no more wealthy than those who are considerably less smart, on average, a study has found.

Perversely, very clever people are actually at a slightly higher risk of financial problems.

Dr Jay Zagorsky, the study’s author, said:

“People don’t become rich just because they are smart.

Your IQ has really no relationship to your wealth.

And being very smart does not protect you from getting into financial difficulty.”

This may explain why there are so many rich people with low IQ and poor people who are highly intelligent.

High IQ = higher income

The slight wrinkle is that people with higher IQs do tend to have a higher income.

As Dr Zagorsky explains, though, that income is different from wealth:

“Financial success for most people means more than just income.

You need to build up wealth to help buffer life’s storms and to prepare for retirement.

You also shouldn’t have to worry about being close to or beyond your financial limits.”

Research on IQ and income and wealth

The conclusions come from 7,403 people in the US who were tracked for almost 40 years in a nationally representative survey.

It found that the income difference between someone of average intelligence and someone in the top 2 percent is only around $12,000 a year.

However, people of average intelligence had similar amounts of wealth as the more intelligent.

So, how come intelligent people earn more, but are not more wealthy?

This study can’t tell us, but it might be that high-IQ people are not saving as much.

Dr Zagorsky said:

“Just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you don’t get into trouble.

Among the smartest people, those with IQ scores above 125, even 6 percent of them have maxed out their credit cards and 11 percent occasionally miss payments.

Professors tend to be very smart people, but if you look at university parking lots, you don’t see a lot of Rolls Royces, Porsches or other very expensive cars.

Instead you see a lot of old, low-value vehicles.”

This might also suggest that professors — and other intelligent people — have different values and aspirations in life.

Dr Zagorsky concluded:

“Intelligence is not a factor for explaining wealth.

Those with low intelligence should not believe they are handicapped, and those with high intelligence should not believe they have an advantage.”

The study was published in the journal Intelligence (Zagorsky, 2007).

Smart people’s brains are not just bigger, they are also different. Here’s how.

People with bigger heads are, on average, more intelligent, research confirms.

Bigger heads contain bigger brains, which have more neurons (brain cells), which make people smarter.

However, the latest neuroscience research suggests there’s a twist.

When you ‘listen’ electrically to the brain running, the more intelligent ones make less ‘noise’.

It’s like a larger, more powerful engine somehow running quieter.

Smart people’s brain are different

It turns out that on top of having larger brains, more intelligent people have fewer connections between neurons in the cerebral cortex, research finds.

The reason is that the brains of intelligent people are more efficient — this is known to psychologists as the ‘neural efficiency hypothesis of intelligence’.

The conclusion comes from a neuroimaging study that looked at the brain’s microstructure.

Analysis of the brains of 259 people measured the number of dendrites in their brains.

Dendrites are extensions of brain cells that reach out towards other brain cells, enabling them to communicate with each other.

IQ tests showed that people with fewer dendrites were more intelligent.

Smart people’s brain are more efficient

It is more than just size that matters, it is how efficiently your brain cells communicate.

With fewer dendritic connections there is less ‘noise’ in the brain and the signal is purer.

Fewer dendrites also consume less energy — hence, a more efficient brain.

Here is the author’s schematic depiction (from Genç et al., 2018):

Dr Erhan Genç, who led the study, said:

“The assumption has been that larger brains contain more neurons and, consequently, possess more computational power.

However, other studies had shown that — despite their comparatively high number of neurons — the brains of intelligent people demonstrated less neuronal activity during an IQ test than the brains of less intelligent individuals.

Intelligent brains possess lean, yet efficient neuronal connections.

Thus, they boast high mental performance at low neuronal activity.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (Genç et al., 2018).

The results come from a genetic genetic analysis of over half-a-million people.

Enjoying good mental health is a sign of higher intelligence, a recent genetic analysis of over half-a-million people finds.

People who are intelligent are 30 percent less likely to suffer from depression.

The findings come from a study probing the connection between intelligence and genetics.

The researchers also found that smarter people are likely to live longer and are at a lower risk of cancer.

Indeed, higher intelligence and health go together.

More intelligent people even have faster reaction times.

The results come from a study utilising a genetic analysis of 630,555 people of all ages.

The results showed that cognitive ability was linked to 148 different locations along the genome.

Dr Gail Davies, the study’s first author, said:

“This study, the largest genetic study of cognitive function, has identified many genetic differences that contribute to the heritability of thinking skills.

The discovery of shared genetic effects on health outcomes and brain structure provides a foundation for exploring the mechanisms by which these differences influence thinking skills throughout a lifetime.”

One disadvantage of intelligence, though, is that people with high IQs are 30 percent more likely to be short-sighted.

Pinning down the connections between intelligence and genes has been difficult, explained Professor Ian Deary, who led the study:

“Less than a decade ago we were searching for genes related to intelligence with about 3,000 participants, and we found almost nothing.

Now with 100 times that number of participants, and with more than 200 scientists working together, we have discovered almost 150 genetic regions that are related to how clever people are.

One thing we know from these results is that good thinking skills are a part of good health overall.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (Davies et al., 2018).

Highly intelligent people are attracted to one type of comedy.

Liking dark humour is a sign of higher intelligence, research finds.

Surprisingly, though, people who like dark humour feel the least aggressive towards others.

In other words, it is not aggressive people who like sick jokes.

People who like dark humour tend to better educated and with higher verbal and nonverbal intelligence.

The study also found that people who prefer more twisted jokes are also likely to be higher in emotional stability,

Dark humour, the study’s authors write, is

“…a kind of humour that treats sinister subjects like death, disease, deformity, handicap or warfare with bitter amusement and presents such tragic, distressing or morbid topics in humorous terms.

Black humour, often called grotesque, morbid, gallows or sick humour, is used to express the absurdity, insensitivity, paradox and cruelty of the modern world.

Characters or situations are usually exaggerated far beyond the limits of normal satire or irony, potentially requiring increased cognitive efforts to get the joke.”

For the study, people were asked to rate cartoons by a German humorist called Uli Stein.

For example, one cartoon has a confused man holding a telephone with the voice on the other end of the line saying:

“Here is the answering machine of the self-help association for Alzheimer patients.

If you still remember your topic, please speak after the tone.”

The study’s results revealed that people with higher intelligence were more likely to appreciate jokes like this.

Dark humour, it seems, is more difficult to enjoy without higher intelligence.

“These results support the hypothesis that humour processing involves cognitive as well as affective components and suggest that these variables influence the execution of frame-shifting and conceptual blending in the course of humour processing.”

The study was published in the journal Cognitive Processing (Willinger et al., 2017).

Both men and women are more attracted to a person with this quality.

Being funny is a sign of a higher IQ, research finds.

Funny people have higher levels of general and verbal intelligence.

Not only that, but being funny is also linked to having more dating success.

Both men and women are more attracted to a person who is funnier.

However, women are more discerning about humour and react to it more strongly.

Men, meanwhile, tend to be focused on producing jokes (often to impress women).

The study’s authors write:

“Humor is not just a reliable intelligence-indicator; it may be one of the most important traits for humans seeking mates.

Of course, mate attraction is not the only function of humor.

Humor can also be used in competing for status with same-sex rivals, reducing social tensions, and other adaptive functions.”

The study involved 400 young people who were given intelligence tests and asked about their dating history.

They were then handed New Yorker cartoons with the caption deleted and asked to come up with their own.

The results showed that, unsurprisingly, verbal intelligence was strongly related to being funny.

However, people found it hard to come up with anything really good, with most captions rated as not funny at all.

This shows how difficult jokes are — especially in the medium of New Yorker captions.

Other studies, though, have also found links between intelligence and humour.

In this study, men were especially focused on trying to write funny captions and theirs were rated more highly, the authors write:

“Men were funnier than women on average and produced a larger number of captions, consistent with the sexual signaling hypothesis in which men try (unconsciously) to signal their mate quality through their humor ability, and women are more responsive to and discriminating about humor.”

The study was published in the journal Intelligence (Greengross & Miller, 2011).

Certain hairstyles made people look more sexy, others more good-natured or even more narrow-minded.

Medium-length casual-looking styles are judged as making women look more intelligent, a survey finds.

These styles are also linked to being good-natured.

Shorter, highlighted hairstyles on a woman make them look more outgoing and confident.

However, in one of those inevitable and irritating trade-offs, shorter hair is seen as less sexy on women.

The hairstyle that gives an intelligent sheen to a man was medium-length side-parted hair.

The bad news for men with these haircuts is that they were also seen as narrow-minded.

The sexiest hairstyle for a man was rated as short hair with a ‘front-flip’.

Actors Matt LeBlanc and Ben Affleck both often sport the front-flip.

The front-flip, however, was linked to being self-centred.

Some other findings from the survey:

• Long straight blond hair on women made them look sexier and richer, but also more narrow-minded.
• Men with shorter, highlighted hair were seen as confident and sexy, but also self-centred.
• Long hair on men is linked to lower intelligence but being good-natured.

As you can see, there was no one perfect hairstyle.

Many had a balance of positive and negative effects on people’s perceptions.

However, there were a couple of neutral hairstyles that did not seem to affect personality perceptions:

• Long, dark curly hair on women.
• Medium-length, centre-parted hair on men.

The results come from a survey in which people were shown pictures of the same man and women with varying haircuts — everything from long hair to bald.

Participants rated each photo on a number of different scales.

The survey was carried out by Professor Marianne LaFrance, who said:

“We wanted to learn whether the frame around the face — the hairstyle — can significantly alter how a person is seen.

We found that different hairstyles quickly lead others to ‘see’ different kinds of people.”

The survey was commissioned by a hair care brand.