The Best Mix Of Foods For Mental Clarity, Happiness & High IQ (M)
Scientists identify four eating patterns that impact your mental state.
Category: Intelligence
This Age Group Has A Higher IQ Than Ever Before (M)
How people’s cognitive abilities are changing across the generations.
This Parenting Method Is Linked To Higher IQ
This parenting strategy leads to children with IQs 6 points higher.
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).
How COVID Affects Your IQ Long-Term (M)
COVID’s impact on cognition varies based on factors like illness duration and virus variant, scientists find.
The Confident Sign That Your IQ Is High
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, research finds.
Intellectual arrogance was linked to achieving higher grades in the study.
People who are intellectually arrogant tend to agree with statements like, “I believe my own ideas are superior to others.”
People are seen as intellectually arrogant by others when they are extraverted and dominate the group, wanting 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.”
For the study, the work of 103 students was followed 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 liked better by their peers.
So, intellectual arrogance may come with a penalty to social relationships.
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).
A Surprising Sign Of High Intelligence (M)
The link to intelligence is especially strong in women.
A Major Personality Trait That Indicates High IQ
People with this personality type have higher crystallised intelligence.
People with this personality type have higher crystallised intelligence.
Being open to experience is a sign of high intelligence, research reveals.
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 and an appreciation of beauty are particularly strong signs of crystallised intelligence, the study found.
Crystallised intelligence roughly equates to general knowledge: knowing many things about the world.
It is natural that people who are curious and interested in new things tend to pick up more general information.
The conclusions come from a study of around 500 people who were given tests of intelligence and personality.
Openness to experience is one of the five major aspects of personality.
Openness also has a number of facets of its own, the study authors explain:
“The Openness to Experience construct involves the tendency to fantasize (Fantasy), aesthetic sensitivity (Aesthetics), awareness of one’s emotions (Feelings), preference for novelty (Actions), intellectual curiosity (Ideas), and preference for non-traditional values (Values).”
The results revealed that more intelligent people were particularly appreciative of beauty: they had a strong aesthetic sense.
They were also likely to be intellectually curious and to have an interest in ideas for their own sake.
These two facets of openness were most strongly linked to higher crystallised intelligence.
The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Ashton et al., 2000).
This Simple Diet Linked To Higher IQ
The reason people with a higher IQ also tend to be healthier could be down to their diet.
The reason people with a higher IQ also tend to be healthier could be down to their diet.
People with a higher IQ are more likely to be vegetarian, psychological research finds.
In fact, vegetarians could be up to 10% more intelligent than red meat eaters, according to some studies.
A higher IQ is also seen among those who describe themselves as vegetarian, but also eat chicken and fish.
The conclusion comes from a survey of 8,170 men and women whose IQ was tested when they were 10-years-old.
By age 30, 4.5% had become vegetarian, of these 2.5% were vegan and 33.6% said they were vegetarian, but still ate chicken and/or fish.
People with higher IQs at age 10, the analysis showed, were more likely to be vegetarians at age 30.
There was no difference between stricter vegetarians (ovo-lacto vegetarians) and those who ate some chicken and/or fish as well.
The findings could help to explain why more intelligent people are also healthier, since a vegetarian diet is better for the heart and for maintaining a healthy body mass.
Does money and class explain it?
Part of the link between IQ and vegetarianism was explained by social status and education.
In other words, people of higher social class are more likely to be intelligent and more likely to be vegetarian anyway.
Still, even when these two factors were accounted for statistically, the relationship between vegetarianism and IQ remained.
The study’s authors write:
“Might the nature of the vegetarians’ diet in this cohort have enhanced their apparently superior brain power?
Was this the mechanism that helped them to achieve the disproportionate number of higher degrees?
Benjamin Franklin and George Bernard Shaw, both ardent vegetarians, would have us believe so.
According to Shaw in an article published in The Star in 1890, “A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows.”
The study was published in the British Medical Journal (Gale et al., 2007).
This Sign Of High IQ Is A Unique And Rebellious Trait (M)
This behaviour is a sign of higher intelligence.
How Your Childhood Personality Predicts Your Future — High IQ Included (M)
A child’s humble nature may reveal more about their adult self than you might think.
