Human beings are mostly primed by evolution to be optimistic, but it is not always the best policy.
This valuable and dynamic ability is linked to higher intelligence.
This valuable and dynamic ability is linked to higher intelligence.
People with above average intelligence are seen as better leaders by others, research finds.
The best IQ score for leading a group is 118.
That is 18 points higher than the average of 100 — making them smarter than around 80 percent of people.
Leaders who are around this much smarter than their followers are seen as the most effective.
However, being too intelligent is linked to worse leadership, the study also found.
It may be that highly intelligent leaders struggle to understand the challenges faced by less gifted workers.
They may also be worse at simplifying jobs and using straightforward language.
In other words, a leader who is too smart may be hard to understand.
The conclusions come from a study of 379 mid level managers working at seven multinationals.
They were rated by their peers, supervisors and subordinates, along with taking IQ and personality tests.
The results revealed that women were generally seen as better leaders, as were slightly older people.
However, the authors explain that these results hold only for mid-level managers:
“Our conclusions are limited too by the fact that the sample consisted of mid level leaders rather than company CEOs who might exhibit far more task-oriented than social-emotional leadership.
We would then expect CEOs to display much higher IQ peaks than those observed here, as well more Conscientiousness and less Agreeableness!
In partial support for this conjecture, recent research suggests that leaders in the top 1% of general intelligence are disproportionately represented among Fortune 500 CEOs.”
Another kink is that the effectiveness of a leader’s intelligence depends on the people they are leading.
More intelligent groups need even more intelligent leaders.
The authors write:
“…Sheldon Cooper, the genius physicist from “The Big Bang Theory” TV series is often portrayed as being detached and distant from normal folk, particularly because of his use of complex language and arguments.
[…] Sheldon could still be a leader—if he can find a group of followers smart enough to appreciate his prose!”
The study was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (Antonakis et al., 2017).
Can intelligence help predict how long a marriage will last?
Can intelligence help predict how long a marriage will last?
A man’s verbal intelligence helps to predict a longer marriage, suggesting it is also happier, research finds.
Higher verbal IQ also predicts getting married earlier in the relationship.
Higher verbal intelligence is particularly attractive to younger women, the study found.
Perhaps in the long haul of a marriage it’s most important to have someone who can make good conversation.
In fact, all aspects of intelligence helped to predict length of marriage, it was just verbal intelligence that stood out — maybe because it is easier to spot than numerical or logical intelligence.
Another important factor in the marital equation the researchers developed was the man’s car.
Men with newer and more expensive cars were also more likely to remain married for longer.
The psychologists used the car as a signal of the man’s social status.
In other words, it is really higher social status that is linked to a longer marriage.
The study’s authors write:
“In parallel to the effect of a peacock’s mysterious tail on its mating success […] human intelligence has a direct positive impact on human mating prospects in terms of marriage.”
The authors conclude that:
“…verbal intelligence, i.e. the type of intelligence that is easier to observe, was found to especially predict the likelihood of getting married, while the harder-to-observe numerical and logical intelligence were also found to predict the likelihood to stay married, to an equal extent as verbal intelligence.”
The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Aspara et al., 2018).
Verbal IQ refers to being able to use language to achieve goals.
Verbal IQ refers to being able to use language to achieve goals.
People who are anxious have a higher verbal IQ, on average, research finds.
In particular, people with high IQs are more likely to ruminate.
Rumination is the term psychologists give to the turning over of depressing thoughts in the head.
Rumination is a common symptom of depression.
While worrying is not normally considered beneficial, it may be that people who worry tend to keep out of danger — so passing on their genes.
The benefit may be that intelligence allows people to better imagine what might go wrong.
As a result, anxiety and verbal intelligence may have evolved together.
Verbal IQ refers to being able to use language to achieve goals.
Higher levels and anxiety and IQ are also linked to superior abstract thinking, problem-solving and critical thinking.
The study involved 126 people given tests of anxiety, depression and IQ.
The results showed that people with higher verbal IQ ruminate more.
The study’s authors write:
“It is possible that more verbally intelligent individuals are able to consider past and future events in greater detail, leading to more intense rumination and worry.
Individuals with high non-verbal intelligence may be stronger at processing the non-verbal signals they interact with in the moment, leading to a decreased need to re-process past social encounters.”
The study took into account that anxious people often perform worse on tests — including intelligence tests.
The authors write:
“…symptoms of acute depression might decrease an individual’s ability to perform optimally on an intelligence test,
and that the individual may not have lower intelligence.”
Previous research has shown that people who are low in intelligence are also prone to worry — possibly because they achieve less in life.
Average intelligence show less of a link with anxiety.
The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Penney et al., 2015).
Why the heritability of educational achievement is about much more than just intelligence.
People with high IQ are generally healthier, but they have one or two bad habits.
People with high IQ are generally healthier, but they have one or two bad habits.
People with high IQs drink more alcohol, although they are unlikely to be heavy drinkers, research finds.
In other words, they drink more, on average, but spread it out, and are unlikely to be alcoholics.
The results fit with the fact that highly intelligent people are also more likely to use drugs.
It could be because the intelligent tend to be easily bored.
The conclusions come from a large study of the links between IQ and health habits.
Higher IQs are generally linked to healthier habits.
People with higher IQs are likely to be fitter, as they do more exercise and strength training.
Higher intelligence was also linked to better oral hygiene, consuming fewer sugary drinks and reading the nutritional information on food labels.
The study included 5,347 American men and women.
They were first surveyed in their early 20s and followed up in middle-age.
The results provide an interesting picture of the way healthy and unhealthy habits are linked to intelligence.
The intelligent were found to be more likely to skip meals and snack in between.
Drinking and smoking both have an unusual relationship because both high intelligence and low intelligence are linked to drinking more and smoking fewer cigarettes.
People of average intelligence tend to drink less or possibly be teetotal — however, they are likely to smoke more cigarettes.
The study’s authors conclude that they have…
“…found evidence of links between higher IQ and a number of more favourable health related habits (i.e. engaging in physical activity, nutritional literacy, and oral hygiene habits, as well as not smoking, binge dinking, or consuming sugary drinks),
[…]These findings, support the notion that certain health behaviours may lie on a pathway that links intelligence in early life with various health outcomes in adulthood.”
The study was published in the journal Intelligence (Wraw et al., 2018).
IQ was unexpectedly boosted by a training programme designed for a different purpose.
The brain is very sensitive in early childhood.
The brain is very sensitive in early childhood.
Exposure to maltreatment or trauma early in life is linked to lower IQ, research finds.
Being abused, physically or emotionally, neglected or witnessing domestic violence, was linked to an IQ score 7 points lower, on average.
Abuse that occurs before the age of two-years-old is particularly damaging to intellectual development.
The brain is very sensitive in this early period, neuroscience has revealed.
Trauma and adversity early in life has repeatedly been linked to changes in the structure and circuitry of the brain.
The conclusions come from a study of 206 US children enrolled in the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.
The study started in 1975 and tracked the children from birth.
Children and mothers were assessed and interviewed at regular intervals and the children were given IQ tests.
The study revealed that one in three children had been maltreated and/or seen their mothers subject to violence.
This happened in infancy to 5 percent of children, in the pre-school period to 13 percent and in both periods to 19 percent.
Maltreatment — including witnessing violence and being neglected — was linked to lower intelligence scores every time it was measured.
The study’s authors write:
“The results suggest that [maltreatment and witnessing domestic violence] in early childhood, particularly during the first two years, has significant and enduring effects on cognitive development, even after adjusting for [other risk factors].
Because early brain organisation frames later neurological development, changes in early development may have lifelong consequences.”
The study was published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health (Enlow et al., 2012).
High intelligence is linked to holding certain attitudes, psychological research finds.
High intelligence is linked to holding certain attitudes, psychological research finds.
More intelligent people are less likely to be prejudiced against same-sex couples, research finds.
People of lower intelligence, though, are more likely to hold homophobic attitudes.
The conclusions come from an Australian study of 11,654 people who were given intelligence tests.
All were asked if they agreed with this statement:
“Homosexual couples should have the same rights as heterosexual couples do.”
Less intelligent people were more likely to be prejudiced on LGBT issues, the results showed.
People with low scores on the verbal ability test were particularly likely to be prejudiced.
Higher levels of education were, however, consistently linked to being less prejudiced.
Dr Francisco Perales, the study’s author, writes:
“Altogether, the findings provide clear evidence that cognitive ability is an important precursor of prejudice against same-sex couples.”
Dr Perales explained that studies have generally found that prejudice is more prevalent among people of low intelligence:
“Research conducted chiefly in the US, Canada and Western Europe reports correlations between low cognitive ability and support of prejudicial or non-egalitarian attitudes towards certain social groups (including ethnic minorities, migrants, women and people with AIDS), as well as related constructs, such as conservatism, ethnocentrism, authoritarianism,
and dogmatism.”
Some psychologists, though, think this is not the whole story about the link between intelligence and prejudice.
A survey of 5,914 people in the US has tested prejudice against 24 different groups.
It found that both people of high and low intelligence are prejudiced — just against different groups.
People of higher intelligence showed prejudice towards groups perceived as conservative and conventional.
These included the military, Christians and big business.
Dr Mark Brandt, the study’s first author, explained:
“Whereas prior work by others found that people with low cognitive ability express more prejudice, we found that this is limited to only some target groups.
For other target groups the relationship was in the opposite direction.
For these groups, people with high levels of cognitive ability expressed more prejudice.
So, cognitive ability also does not seem to make people immune to expressing prejudice.”
The rather depressing conclusion is that most people are prejudiced against those they don’t agree with.
The studies were was published in the journals Intelligence and Social Psychological and Personality Science (Brandt & Crawford, 2016; Perales, 2018).
Thousands of people were asked how smart they wanted to be.
Thousands of people were asked how smart they wanted to be.
When asked, people choose an average IQ of around 130, research shows,
This level makes a person smart, mildly gifted even, but certainly not a genius.
In fact, people are surprisingly modest across a wide range of personal traits, when asked their ideal level.
When asked how long they’d like to live, the average is 90 years, which is only a little higher than normal life expectancy.
Even when given the option of taking a magic pill that gives eternal youth, they still only go for 120 years, on average.
Professor Matthew J. Hornsey, who led the research, said:
“Our research shows that people’s sense of perfection is surprisingly modest.
People wanted to have positive qualities, such as health and happiness, but not to the exclusion of other darker experiences — they wanted about 75% of a good thing.”
People who live in more holistic cultures — like Japan and China — were even more modest in the ideal levels they chose.
This reflects the fact that Eastern philosophies often emphasise the coexistence of good and bad.
Professor Hornsey explained:
“Interestingly, the ratings of perfection were more modest in countries that had traditions of Buddhism and Confucianism.
This makes sense — these Eastern philosophies and religions tend to place more emphasis on the notion that seemingly contradictory forces coexist in a complementary, interrelated state, such that one cannot exist without the other.”
The study’s conclusions come from 2,392 people in Australia, Chile, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Peru, Russia, and the United States.
The results showed that people were much more interested in being perfectly healthy than perfectly happy.
Professor Hornsey said:
“This principle of maximization is threaded through many prominent philosophical and economic theories.
But our data suggest that people have much more complex, blended notions of perfection, ones that embrace both light and dark.”
The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Hornsey et al., 2018).
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