Category: Intelligence

The drop comes about because of subtle social signals sent between people about their place in the hierarchy.

Being in a group can make some people lose around 15 percent of their IQ.

People who tried to solve problems in a group behaved as though they were significantly less smart than their IQ scores suggested.

The drop comes about because of subtle social signals sent between people about their place in the hierarchy.

In other words, some people start to feel inferior in a group and this affects their ability to think clearly.

Professor Read Montague, who led the research, explained how it worked:

“We started with individuals who were matched for their IQ.

Yet when we placed them in small groups, ranked their performance on cognitive tasks against their peers, and broadcast those rankings to them, we saw dramatic drops in the ability of some study subjects to solve problems.

The social feedback had a significant effect.”

In the real world, social signals can be sent in more subtle ways than announcing everyone’s performance.

It could be a social hierarchy known to everyone, how people speak or even their gender.

Women are particularly vulnerable to an IQ drop from being in a group, the researchers found.

Dr Kenneth Kishida, the study’s first author, said:

“Our study highlights the unexpected and dramatic consequences even subtle social signals in group settings may have on individual cognitive functioning.

And, through neuroimaging, we were able to document the very strong neural responses that those social cues can elicit.”

Professor Montague concluded:

“You may joke about how committee meetings make you feel brain dead, but our findings suggest that they may make you act brain dead as well.”

The study was published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (Kishida et al., 2012).

The bacteria has also been linked to reduced anxiety and higher serotonin levels.

Exposure to a common bacteria present in the soil boosts learning behaviour.

The bacteria — mycobacterium vaccae — may also act as an antidepressant and lower anxiety.

We can probably get sufficient exposure to the bacteria by simply working in the garden, walking through the woods or digging in the dirt.

For thousands of years human beings have lived close to nature.

It is only recently, with the advent of industrialisation, that we have begun leading such antiseptic lives.

Being closer to nature probably has considerable benefits to both health and cognition.

The conclusions come from a study in which mice were fed the bacteria.

The results showed they navigated a maze at twice the speed.

Dr Dorothy Matthews, the study’s lead author, explained:

“Mycobacterium vaccae is a natural soil bacterium which people likely ingest or breath in when they spend time in nature.”

For the study, mice were fed a diet with the M. vaccae bacteria added to it.

The idea was inspired by previous research that involved injecting the deactivated bacteria into mice.

The bacteria spurred on growth of neurons, boosted serotonin levels and decreased anxiety.

Dr Matthews said:

“Since serotonin plays a role in learning we wondered if live M. vaccae could improve learning in mice.

We found that mice that were fed live M. vaccae navigated the maze twice as fast and with less demonstrated anxiety behaviors as control mice.”

Once taken off the diet, though, the mice slowed down somewhat, although they were still faster than the control mice.

Dr Matthews said:

“This research suggests that M. vaccae may play a role in anxiety and learning in mammals.

It is interesting to speculate that creating learning environments in schools that include time in the outdoors where M. vaccae is present may decrease anxiety and improve the ability to learn new tasks.”

The study was published in the journal Behavioural Processes (Matthews & Jenks, 2013).

People with high intelligence tend to share this quality.

Intelligent people tend to be better behaved and less aggressive.

Both boys and girls with higher IQs are less likely to be antisocial than those with lower IQs.

Boys who are not antisocial generally have IQs around 10 points higher.

Non-antisocial girls have IQs around 5 points higher than their antisocial peers.

High IQ is also linked to lower levels of aggression and drug abuse.

The results come from a group of over 1,000 children in England and Wales.

They were given tests of their IQ and externalising behaviour (aggression, antisocial behaviour etc.).

The study revealed that more intelligent children were less likely to exhibit antisocial behaviour.

The study’s authors write:

“Low IQ is a consistent risk factor for emergence and continuity of antisocial behavior across the life course in both prospective and cross-sectional studies, even when other relevant risk factors are statistically controlled.”

Genetic factors are likely important in the link, as well as situational factors, the authors write:

“…cognitive deficits might promote antisocial behavior if children with low IQs misunderstand rules, find it too difficult to negotiate conflict with words, find school frustrating, or become tracked with antisocial peers.”

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The study was published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology (Koenen et al., 2008).