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).
This is how your musical taste reveals your IQ.
This is how your musical taste reveals your IQ.
A preference for instrumental music indicates higher intelligence, research finds.
People who like ambient music, smooth jazz, film soundtracks, classical music and similar genres without vocals tend to have higher IQs.
While vocal music might be seen as the ‘opposite’ of instrumental music, liking vocal music has no link to IQ.
In other words, many people with high IQs also like vocal music, but so do many with less impressive levels of intelligence.
The conclusions come from a survey of 1,500 people.
All were given IQ tests and asked about their preferences for eighteen musical genres.
The results showed that…
“…net of age, race, sex, education, family income, religion, current and past marital status and number of children, more intelligent Americans are more likely to prefer instrumental music such as big band, classical and easy listening than less-intelligent Americans.”
A second similar survey of thousands of 16-year-olds and their musical preferences was carried out in the UK in the 1980s.
This also found a link between high intelligence and a preference for instrumental music.
One theory about why liking instrumental music is linked to high IQ is the cognitive complexity of the music.
However, the researchers found this couldn’t be true.
Opera, for example, is seen as complex, yet the people who like it are no more intelligent than those who don’t.
The study’s authors write:
“It would be difficult to make the case that big-band music is more cognitively complex than classical music.
On the other extreme, as suspected, preference for rap music is significantly negatively correlated with intelligence.
However, preference for gospel music is even more strongly negatively correlated with it.
It would be difficult to make the case that gospel is less cognitively complex than rap.”
Instead, the reason, according to Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, the study’s co-author, is that instrumental music is more novel.
Music that is novel — in other words, developed more recently in evolutionary terms — tends to be preferred by people with higher IQs.
The study was published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making (Kanazawa & Perina, 2011).
The personality traits that suggest you have higher intelligence.
The personality traits that suggest you have higher intelligence.
The personality traits of being open to experience and having stable emotions both indicate a higher IQ, research finds.
People who are open to experience are more interested in things that are complex, new and unconventional.
Emotional stability is linked to being better at dealing with stress and minor frustrations.
People who are emotionally stable usually find it easier to control their urges and are mostly unselfconscious.
Both stable emotions and being open to experience are linked to better general knowledge, which are two aspect of intelligence.
Psychologists call general knowledge ‘crystallised intelligence’ is one of the two main types of intelligence.
Crystallised intelligence becomes more important as people get older as acquired information and skills predict their success in life.
The other type is called ‘fluid intelligence’, and refers to abstract reasoning and the speed at which the brain works.
The study included 201 university students in the UK who were given tests of personality and general knowledge questions, including:
(See the end of the article for the answers.)
The results showed that people got more answers correct if their personalities were more emotionally stable and they were more open to experience.
Openness to experience is particularly important for general knowledge because it makes people more curious and motivates them to learn new things.
Another personality trait the researchers found was linked to greater general knowledge was introversion.
Signs of introversion include preferring to be in a quiet, relaxing environment and having a rich mental life.
Having a rich mental life likely encourages people with this personality trait to pick up more information about the world.
(The answers are: Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Fleming and John Lennon, respectively.)
The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Chamorro-Premuzic et al., 2006).
This quality is very important for highly intelligent people.
This quality is very important for highly intelligent people.
Curiosity is a sign of being smart, research suggests.
Curiosity could even be as important as intelligence in how well people do in life.
People who are curious ask lots of questions, look for surprises, seek out sensations and make time to search out new ideas.
Intelligence, along with curiosity and some personality factors, predicts successful performance in many areas.
Dr Sophie von Stumm, the study’s first author, said:
“Curiosity is basically a hunger for exploration.
If you’re intellectually curious, you’ll go home, you’ll read the books.
If you’re perceptually curious, you might go traveling to foreign countries and try different foods.”
The conclusions come from an analysis of around 200 separate studies including about 50,000 students.
All the studies examined how personality and intelligence affected academic performance.
The results showed that students who are curious do better in their school work.
Along with being curious, some personality traits are linked to better performance.
Conscientious students, in particular, perform better.
People who are conscientious are more careful, efficient and self-disciplined — and they aim for achievement.
Dr von Stumm said:
“It’s not a huge surprise if you think of it, that hard work would be a predictor of academic performance.”
Taken together, conscientiousness and curiosity were just as important as intelligence in students’ performance.
Curiosity is a very important quality for employers to look for, said Dr von Stumm:
“It’s easy to hire someone who has the done the job before and hence, knows how to work the role.
But it’s far more interesting to identify those people who have the greatest potential for development, i.e. the curious ones.”
The study was published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science (von Stumm et al., 2011).
This bright quality is linked to higher intelligence.
This bright quality is linked to higher intelligence.
Feeling more happiness is a sign of a higher IQ, research finds.
Indeed, stable happiness is also a sign of higher IQ.
More intelligent people experience fewer drops in their happiness over the years.
People with higher IQs are just as happy at 31-years-old as they are at 51.
In contrast, the happiness of people with lower IQs is not just lower overall, but also goes up and down more over the years.
The conclusions come from a national survey of all 17,419 babies born in Britain during one week in 1958.
Those that stayed in the study were asked about their levels of happiness from ages 31 to 51.
The results are explained by Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, the study’s author:
“…childhood general intelligence emerged as the strongest predictor of the life-course variability of happiness.
More intelligent children on average tended to grow up to be more stable in their subjective well-being throughout adulthood.”
However, the reason that more intelligent people enjoy stable happiness was not clear from the study.
Dr Kanazawa writes:
“More intelligent individuals were significantly more stable in their happiness, and it was not entirely because: (1) they were more educated and wealthier (even though they were); (2) they were healthier (even though they were); (3) they were more stable in their marital status (even though they were); (4) they were happier (even though they were)…”
Higher satisfaction with life is also a sign of high intelligence, a previous study has found.
People who are more satisfied with their life and their job score higher on tests of general mental ability.
Satisfaction with life is one of the two major aspects of happiness, along with the feeling of positive emotions in the moment.
The study was published in the British Journal of Psychology (Kanazawa et al., 2014).
Certain common aspects of personality are often linked to higher levels of intelligence by psychologists.
Certain common aspects of personality are often linked to higher levels of intelligence by psychologists.
Dutiful, competent and self-disciplined people have a higher IQ, research finds.
This means that higher IQ is linked to people who have a strong sense of responsibility, who are self-disciplined and confident in themselves and what they can do.
On top of these three factors, psychologists have found that both being open to experience and having stable emotions tends to indicate a higher IQ.
People who are open to experience are more interested in things that are complex, new and unconventional.
Emotional stability is linked to being better at dealing with stress and minor frustrations.
People who are emotionally stable usually find it easier to control their urges and are mostly unselfconscious.
The conclusions come from two studies: in the first many thousands of people in 86 different countries were given personality and IQ tests.
The results showed that people who were seen by others as more competent, dutiful and self-disciplined also had higher IQs.
All three are facets of the major personality trait of conscientiousness.
The general link between being conscientious and intelligence makes sense, the study’s authors write, since…
“…conscientiousness and cognitive ability are positive
correlates of several real life outcomes.It was proved that both variables are especially important predictors of job performance, school achievements, and health-related behavior.
Interestingly, in most studies the effects of conscientiousness and intelligence on life outcomes appear to be independent.”
The second study included 201 university students in the UK who were given tests of personality and general knowledge questions, including:
(See the end of the article for the answers.)
The results showed that people got more answers correct if their personalities were more emotionally stable and they were more open to experience.
Openness to experience is particularly important for general knowledge because it makes people more curious and motivates them to learn new things.
(The answers are: Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Fleming and John Lennon, respectively.)
The studies were published in the journals Personality and Individual Differences and Learning and Individual Differences (Chamorro-Premuzic et al., 2006; Zajenkowski & Stolarski,, 2015).
It has been linked to wise reasoning, dealing more effectively with stressful situations and feeling more confident.
It has been linked to wise reasoning, dealing more effectively with stressful situations and feeling more confident.
Talking to yourself is a sign of intelligence and self-control, research finds.
It is far from a sign of madness, as is sometimes claimed.
Whether we talk out loud or it is a silent inner voice, talking to yourself can help improve focus and boost brain power.
Talking to yourself has also been linked to wise reasoning, dealing more effectively with stressful situations and feeling more confident.
Talking to yourself has even been linked to the ability to find items more quickly.
For example, repeating “keys, keys, keys” might help you find them.
In one study of self-control, for example, people were given a set of written instructions to either read silently or out loud.
The results showed that reading the instructions out loud improved people’s control over a subsequent task.
It is thought that the benefit comes from hearing yourself.
Other studies have shown that using our inner voice to talk to ourselves can also be beneficial.
Inner talk helps to organise our thoughts and control impulsive behaviour.
Dr Alexa Tullett is co-author of a study that found people who used their inner voice were better able to exert self-control.
He said:
“We give ourselves messages all the time with the intent of controlling ourselves — whether that’s telling ourselves to keep running when we’re tired, to stop eating even though we want one more slice of cake, or to refrain from blowing up on someone in an argument.”
Dr Michael Inzlicht, study co-author, said:
“We found that people acted more impulsively when they couldn’t use their inner voice or talk themselves through the tasks.
Without being able to verbalize messages to themselves, they were not able to exercise the same amount of self control as when they could talk themselves through the process.”
The studies were published in the journals Acta Psychologica and The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (Kirkham et al., 2012; Lupyan & Swingley, 2011; Tullet & Inzlicht, 2010).
Larks tend to rise earlier while owls stay up late — each type extends the part of the day at which they feel their best.
Larks tend to rise earlier while owls stay up late — each type extends the part of the day at which they feel their best.
Morning types or ‘larks’ have superior verbal IQ, research finds.
Morning types are people who prefer to do demanding things earlier in the day, whereas evening types consider their best time to be later on.
Naturally, larks also tend to rise earlier while owls stay up late — each type extends the part of the day at which they feel their best.
The results come as a rebuff to other studies that have found the reverse, that it is owls that have the IQ advantage.
Dr Stuart Fogel, study co-author, how his study is different:
“Once you account for key factors including bedtime and age, we found the opposite to be true, that morning types tend to have superior verbal ability.
This outcome was surprising to us and signals this is much more complicated that anyone thought before.”
The study included 61 people whose ‘morningness’ or ‘eveningness’ was assessed, along with their cognitive abilities.
The results showed that people who were at their best in the morning scored higher on tests of verbal IQ.
Verbal IQ refers to being able to use language to achieve goals.
Critically, the researchers had to account for the fact that young people as a group tend to be evening types.
The fact that young people tend to be evening types may make it harder for them to get the best out of the school day, said Dr Fogel:
“A lot of school start times are not determined by our chronotypes but by parents and work-schedules, so school-aged kids pay the price of that because they are evening types forced to work on a morning type schedule.
For example, math and science classes are normally scheduled early in the day because whatever morning tendencies they have will serve them well.
But the AM is not when they are at their best due to their evening type tendencies.
Ultimately, they are disadvantaged because the type of schedule imposed on them is basically fighting against their biological clock every day.”
The study also found that people with regular daily habits tended to perform the best.
Dr Fogel said:
“Our brain really craves regularity and for us to be optimal in our own rhythms is to stick to that schedule and not be constantly trying to catch up.”
The study was published in the journal Current Research in Behavioral Sciences (Gibbings et al., 2022).
Cognitive ability is higher in this personality type.
Cognitive ability is higher in this personality type.
Laid back and unhurried people tend to have a higher IQ, psychological research finds.
Intelligent people become more laid back because they can do things quicker than others, so do not need to rush, the authors speculate.
High IQ people also have a tendency towards procrastination — perhaps because another benefit of higher intelligence is being able to start tasks later.
The study also found that higher IQs was linked to be cautious and being a perfectionist.
This may be because being a perfectionist takes longer and people with higher IQs have the patience to wait until the job is done right.
The conclusions come from a study of 722 people who were given personality and IQ tests.
The personality tests focused on conscientiousness, one of the five major traits of personality.
Different aspects of conscientiousness were examined, including being cautious, deliberate, orderly and having a tendency to procrastinate.
The results revealed a consistent link between being unhurried and having a higher IQ.
The study’s authors explain:
“The common feature of these three characteristics (procrastination, perfectionism and caution) is timing or hurriedness.
One possible interpretation of our results is that people with greater cognitive ability tend to be less hurried in their general approach to life’s activities.
This interpretation implies both positive aspects (e.g., the cautiousness involved in checking details, delaying acting, and continuing with tasks until their product is “perfect”) and negative ones (e.g., the tendency to procrastinate).”
The link between procrastination and higher IQ is down to greater abilities, the authors think:
“This suggests a slower internal pace among more intelligent people that more easily allows for interruptions or the incorporation of new information while completing a task.
This is not to imply that more intelligent people are physically slower in their tasks, as in fact they appear to be faster at most tasks.
Rather, we are suggesting that one way in which those demonstrating higher levels of cognitive ability may differ from those exhibiting lower levels of cognitive ability is a behavioral tendency to pace their work or other tasks at less than their maximum potential ability.”
The study was published in the Journal of Personality Research (Rikoon et al., 2016).
Join the free PsyBlog mailing list. No spam, ever.
