Category: Intelligence

The personality traits that are signs of high intelligence.

People whose personalities are happy, energetic and lively have higher IQs, research finds.

Higher IQ is linked to experiencing more positive emotions, enjoying complex problems, having a larger vocabulary and understanding things more quickly.

The researchers found that smarter people were less stressed when given a taxing task to do.

They were also more engaged with it.

People with higher IQs were more likely to agree with statements like:

• I am quick to understand things.
• I have a large vocabulary and enjoy being intellectually engaged.
• I enjoy tackling difficult problems.

The more people agreed with statements like these, the higher their IQ was, researchers found.

The study included 440 people who completed surveys of their happiness and IQ.

The results showed that energetic lively people had higher fluid intelligence.

The study’s authors conclude:

“The results indicated that Intellect was generally associated with lower stress (low distress and worry and high task engagement) before and after intelligence tests.”

Fluid intelligence refers to the speed at which the brain works.

It is like the raw power of an engine or the speed at which a computer can process information.

Fluid intelligence is contrasted with crystallised intelligence.

Crystallised intelligence is something like general knowledge: the information that people have learnt about the world over the years.

The reason that IQ and happiness are linked could be down to how much importance is placed on being smart in Western cultures.

The authors write:

“It is striking that Intellect was correlated with affect even in Study 1, in which there was no requirement to perform an intellectual task.

At least in Western cultures, intellect may be of sufficient importance to the self-schema that it influences general emotional functioning.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Zajenkowskia & Matthews, 2019).

The surprising traits that indicate high intelligence.

Being genuine, cooperative and sincere are all linked to having a high IQ, research finds.

Although being ‘nice’ is not linked in the popular imagination with being intelligent, this study found that it was.

The study also found that half of the connection between high IQ and being ‘nice’ was down to genetics.

Other personality features that are linked to high IQ include being a seeker of variety, intellectually curious, imaginative and sensitive to emotions.

All of these are aspects of ‘openness to experience’, which is one of the five major aspects of personality.

Openness to experience is frequently strongly linked to high IQ by studies.

The study included 2,488 people who were given tests of personality and intelligence at 12 and 18-years-old.

Genetic modelling was used to examine the links between intelligence, personality and genes.

The results were explained by the study’s authors:

“Intelligence as measured by IQ was positively associated with
openness to experience and agreeableness.

Moderate phenotypic correlations [genetic associations] between agreeableness and IQ were also of interest.

Earlier studies reported small correlations between intelligence and agreeableness.

There have been a few studies on altruistic behavior in young children that found a positive relation with IQ.”

In fact, people with high IQs are better at working well with other people, other studies have found.

That is why those with high IQs are so essential: without them society would not work.

Being cooperative, in particular, may have strong links to higher IQ, the authors write:

“…unique aspects of human cognition are driven by social cooperation.

The cooperative attitudes of the subjects scoring high on agreeableness could therefore be the shared underlying factor in the relationship with IQ.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Bartels et al., 2012).

Two signs of a knowledgeable personality.

Introverts who have more stable personalities have higher levels of general knowledge, research finds.

These two personality factors, along with being open to experience, predict people’s general knowledge.

General knowledge — or as psychologists call it, crystallised intelligence — is one of two broad aspects of intelligence.

General knowledge is often linked to success in life because innate talent is not enough — application matters.

The other type is called ‘fluid intelligence’, and refers to abstract reasoning and the speed at which the brain works.

The conclusions come from a survey of 201 university students in the UK.

All were given tests of the five major aspects of personality: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness.

They were also asked general knowledge questions such as:

• Who discovered penicillin?
• Who wrote Anna Karenina?
• Which Beatle was shot in New York?

(The answers are: Alexander Fleming, Leo Tolstoy and John Lennon, respectively.)

The strongest predictor of people’s general knowledge was their cognitive ability.

In other words, people whose brains work faster absorb more knowledge over the years.

However, personality was also important in how much general knowledge people had picked up.

Having a stable personality (being non-neurotic) and being more introverted, were both linked to greater general knowledge.

Other studies have also consistently linked the personality trait of openness to experience to general knowledge.

People who are open to experience are more likely to be imaginative, sensitive to their feelings, intellectually curious and seekers of variety.

With increasing age, general knowledge becomes more important, the study’s authors write:

“…at more advanced stages of life, performance and achievement are best predicted by crystallized intelligence (gc), rather than the biologically-based, content-free, and so-called ‘‘culture-free’’ tests of fluid abilities (gf) (traditionally
regarded as the best measures of g).

It thus seems that the predictive power of gf tends to decline as individuals progress through the educational system, and as acquired information and learned skills play a greater role in determining job performance.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Chamorro-Premuzic et al., 2006).

One more benefit of being above average in intelligence.

People with higher IQs are likely to live longer, according to research.

Those with high intelligence in childhood are less likely to get heart disease, strokes, respiratory diseases and dementia later on.

Higher intelligence may allow people to learn better health behaviours and cope more effectively with problems over the years.

Some of the lowered risk is down to the fact that more intelligent people are less likely to smoke.

The conclusions come from a Scottish study that included 938 people who were followed for over 25 years.

The results showed that for every 15 points of higher IQ, people’s risk of dying was reduced by 17 percent.

This study found the link between IQ and longevity was strongest in children brought up in poorer neighbourhoods.

Higher intelligence, then, is particularly beneficial to the longevity of poorer people, said Dr Carole L. Hart, the study’s first author:

“The significant interaction found between IQ and deprivation suggests that IQ in childhood is less important in terms of mortality for people who live in more affluent areas in adulthood than for people who live in deprived areas.”

It is not yet clear how IQ is related to longevity, said Dr Hart:

“It is possible that low childhood IQ leads to adult deprivation, which in turn leads to earlier death.”

Some studies have suggested that IQ and longevity are linked to the same sets of genes.

Another possibility is that adverse circumstances, which are often linked to being poor, can lower IQ.

Worse nutrition, educational opportunities and deprived areas may all take their toll on mental development.

Other studies have also suggested that higher IQ leads to a longer life.

The study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine (Hart et al., 2003).

One common sign of high IQ is obvious in childhood.

Learning to read at an earlier stage is a sign of higher IQ, a study finds.

The better a person’s reading skills at age 7, the higher their intelligence in later life.

It may be that reading from an earlier age helps to improve IQ.

If this is true, then helping children to read sooner may boost their intelligence.

Dr Stuart J. Ritchie, the study’s first author, said:

“Since reading is an ability that can be improved, our findings have implications for reading instruction.

Early remediation of reading problems might aid not only the growth of literacy, but also more general cognitive abilities that are of critical importance across the lifespan.”

The conclusions come from a study of 1,890 twins whose IQ and reading levels were tested between the ages of 7 and 16.

Twins were included because the researchers wanted to rule out the effect of the environment and genes.

It emerged from the results that among each pair of twins, the one that began to read earlier had a higher IQ later on.

Dr Ritchie said:

“If, as our results imply, reading causally influences intelligence, the implications for educators are clear.

Children who don’t receive enough assistance in learning to read may also be missing out on the important, intelligence-boosting properties of literacy.”

Dyslexia

Dyslexia — a type of learning difficulty causing problems with reading and writing — is not a sign of low IQ.

Professor John D. E. Gabrieli, who has published research on dyslexia and IQ, said:

“We found that children who are poor readers have the same brain difficulty in processing the sounds of language whether they have a high or low IQ.

Reading difficulty is independent of other cognitive abilities.”

The study was published in the journal Child Development (Ritchie et al., 2015).