Category: Intelligence

In most Western countries, the top 1 percent of earners make 20 percent of the national income — but are they smarter?

The top 1 percent of earners are a little less intelligent than those earning slightly less than them, research finds.

The finding is an interesting twist on the usual fact that smarter people earn more — which they do at ‘normal’ wage levels.

This study finds, though, that the association plateaus at around one standard deviation above the average.

In other words, when you are in the top 16 percent of people for IQ, you are smart enough to be in the top 1 percent of earners.

Indeed, you probably do not need to be that smart.

Extremely high IQ

The results may come as a surprise as people automatically associate wealth and power with greater ability.

Rich people are paid more for a reason (or so they tell us): because they are smart.

To explore this issue, the researchers used data from 59,000 Swedish army conscripts.

The key was to capture people with very high incomes, explained Dr Marc Keuschnigg, the study’s first author:

“This data trove permits us to test, for the first time, whether extremely high wages are indicative of extreme intelligence.

To do so, we needed reliable income data that covers the entire wage spectrum.

Survey data typically miss top incomes, but the registers offer full income data on all citizens.”

Power and influence

What the results revealed is that for most people, salaries do reflect cognitive abilities.

At ‘normal’ wage levels, smarter people get paid more, on average.

The relationship only broke down at higher levels — in this case, it was an annual wage of €60,000.

Above this level, people paid more were no smarter, indeed they were less smart than those earning a little less than them.

Top earners claim that their wages are justified by their greater talent.

This study begs to differ — at least in so far as intelligence is a useful trait in the highest earning jobs.

Wealth vs income

Compare this study with another finding that being smart has almost no relationship to wealth.

(Remember that wealth is different to income: people can be wealthy through inheritance without ever having had a job.)

That study found that people with high IQs are no more wealthy than those who are considerably less smart, on average.

This paints an even more pessimistic picture about the relationship between IQ and money.

Critics of IQ tests may see this as damning the test; those with more faith in the test might see it as damning any society espousing meritocratic values.

The study was published in the journal European Sociological Review (Keuschnigg et al., 2023).

Two-thirds of children report eating this food weekly.

Young people who eat fast food do 20 percent worse on standard tests of math, science and reading, research finds.

Those who eat more fast food at around 10-years-old get worse test scores three years later, the study found.

Two-thirds of young people eat at least some fast food each week.

Dr Kelly Purtell, the study’s first author, said:

“There’s a lot of evidence that fast-food consumption is linked to childhood obesity, but the problems don’t end there.

Relying too much on fast food could hurt how well children do in the classroom.”

The conclusions come from a study of 11,740 adolescents in the US.

More than 50 percent of children reported eating fast food 1-3 times a week.

About 10 percent said they ate it every day and 10 percent ate it every other day.

Less than one-third never ate any fast food.

The researchers controlled for many other factors, including how much TV they watched, the socio-demographic natures of their schools and neighbourhoods and the other foods they ate.

Dr Purtell said:

“We went as far as we could to control for and take into account all the known factors that could be involved in how well children did on these tests.”

This study does not make it clear why fast food consumption is linked to a lower score on standard tests.

However, a lack of essential nutrients such as iron is linked to poorer cognitive development.

High-sugar and high-fat diets are also repeatedly shown to be bad for learning and memory processes.

Dr Purtell said:

“We’re not saying that parents should never feed their children fast food, but these results suggest fast-food consumption should be limited as much as possible.”

The study was published in the journal Clinical Pediatrics (Purtell & Gershoff, 2014).

Peak emotional intelligence (EQ) means that people are better at dealing with their emotions at this age.

It is not until their 60s that people reach their peak levels of emotional intelligence (EQ), research finds.

At this age, people are generally better at seeing the positive side of stressful situations and empathising with the less fortunate.

Professor Robert Levenson, study co-author, said:

“Increasingly, it appears that the meaning of late life centers on social relationships and caring for and being cared for by others.

Evolution seems to have tuned our nervous systems in ways that are optimal for these kinds of interpersonal and compassionate activities as we age.”

Emotional intelligence study

In one study people of different ages were shown video clips with different emotional content — some were sad and disgusting.

Those in their 60s did better than those in their 40s and 20s at focusing on the positive aspects of the clip — they were better at using what psychologists call ‘positive reappraisal’.

This suggests their emotional intelligence is higher.

Younger people, though, were better at distracting themselves from the clips.

In another study, psychologists tested how physiologically sensitive people of different ages were to the clips.

The results showed that older people reacted more strongly to sadness.

Dr Benjamin Seider, the study’s first author, said:

“In late life, individuals often adopt different perspectives and goals that focus more on close interpersonal relationships.

By doing so, they become increasingly sensitized to sadness because the shared experience of sadness leads to greater intimacy in interpersonal relationships.”

Age and emotional intelligence

Being sensitive to sadness is actually a good thing, Professor Levenson explained:

“Sadness can be a particularly meaningful and helpful emotion in late life, as we are inevitably confronted with and need to deal with the losses we experience in our own life and with the need to give comfort to others.”

The study’s authors conclude:

“…older adults may be better served by staying socially engaged and using positive reappraisal to deal with stressful challenging situations rather than disconnecting from situations that offer opportunities to enhance quality of life.”

The study was published in the journal Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (Seider et al., 2011).

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).

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.

How feeling like an expert, googling it and more could be lowering your intelligence.

1. Saturated fat reduces cognitive flexibility

A high-fat, high-sugar diet causes significant damage to cognitive flexibility, a study finds.

Cognitive flexibility is the ability to adjust and adapt to changing situations.

The research was carried out on laboratory mice.

They were given either a normal diet, a high-fat diet or a high-sugar diet.

After four weeks the mental and physical performance of mice on the high-fat or high-sugar diet began to suffer.

2. Multimedia multitasking shrinks the brain

Using laptops, phones and other media devices at the same time could shrink important structures in the brain, a study indicates.

Neuroscientists have found that people who use multiple devices simultaneously have lower gray-matter density in an area of the brain associated with cognitive and emotional control.

Multitasking might include listening to music while playing a video game or watching TV while making a phone call or even reading the newspaper with the TV on.

3. Googling it makes you feel cleverer than you are

Searching the internet makes people feel they know more than they really do, a study finds.

And it doesn’t seem to matter much that people don’t actually find the information for which they were searching.

Matthew Fisher, who led the research, said:

“The Internet is such a powerful environment, where you can enter any question, and you basically have access to the world’s knowledge at your fingertips.

It becomes easier to confuse your own knowledge with this external source.

When people are truly on their own, they may be wildly inaccurate about how much they know and how dependent they are on the Internet.”

4. Too much sugar damages memory

Otherwise healthy people with high blood sugar levels are more likely to have memory problems, according to a study published in the journal Neurology.

One of the study’s authors, Dr. Agnes Flöel, said:

“…even for people within the normal range of blood sugar, lowering their blood sugar levels could be a promising strategy for preventing memory problems and cognitive decline as they age.

5. Experts know less than they think

‘Know-it-alls’ don’t know as much as they think, research finds.

The more people think they know about a topic, the more likely they are to claim that totally made-up facts are true, psychologists have found.

Ms Stav Atir, the study’s first author, explained:

“The more people believed they knew about finances in general, the more likely they were to overclaim knowledge of the fictitious financial terms.

The same pattern emerged for other domains, including biology, literature, philosophy, and geography.

For instance, people’s assessment of how much they know about a particular biological term will depend in part on how much they think they know about biology in general.”

6. Poor sleep ruins thinking skills

The damage that poor sleep does to your thinking skills is mammoth.

Sleepy brains have to work harder while short-term and long-term memory is worse.

Attention and planning are worse and it’s easier to follow habits and difficult to create new strategies.

Sleep deprivation even damages the ability to read other people’s facial emotions.

Read on: Sleep Deprivation Symptoms: 10 Psychological Effects

7. Physical exhaustion hits mental performance

Both mental and physical stress can interact to cause fatigue, a study finds.

The brain’s resources in the prefrontal cortex — an area used for planning and control — are divided during physical and mental activity, the research found.

The research is one of the first to show how mental and physical tasks can interact to fatigue the brain.

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