Category: Intelligence

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).

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).

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.

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).

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” — Ernest Hemingway

People with higher IQs are more likely to be happy.

The finding goes against both Hemingway and the popular idea that being intelligent is somehow predisposes people to unhappiness.

Dr Angela Hassiotis, who led the study, said:

“We found that IQ is associated with self-reported happiness, as levels of happiness were lowest in the lower IQ groups and highest in the higher IQ groups.

This is particularly relevant when considering the current political debates on happiness.”

For the study, data from almost 7,000 people was analysed.

The results showed that people with the lowest IQ (70 – 99) were the least happy in comparison to those with the highest IQs (120 – 129).

It wasn’t just about IQ, though, as Dr Hassiotis explained:

“When looking at the data we saw that people with a lower IQ were less likely to be happier because of higher levels of socio-economic disadvantage such as lower income.

They are also less likely to be happy because they need more help with skills of daily living, have poorer health and report more symptoms of psychological distress.”

Interventions should focus on increasing IQ levels at a young age, said Dr Hassiotis:

“There is also some evidence that long term intensive strategies directed at young children from socially deprived backgrounds can have a positive impact not only on IQ but also on wellbeing and life opportunities.

Such interventions are likely to be costly but the initial costs may be offset by future benefits such as a reduced reliance on state benefits and better mental and physical health.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Medicine (Ali et al., 2012).

Could one life choice hold the secret to lasting intelligence gains?

Each extra year in school gives a person between 1 and 5 extra IQ points.

The effects of extra schooling are so strong, they are still measurable when people are in their 70s and 80s.

It is well-known that intelligence and education are linked.

However, it has been difficult to prove that education causes higher intelligence.

The alternative is that more intelligent people just tend to stay in education longer.

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

“Our analyses provide the strongest evidence yet that education raises intelligence test scores.

We looked at 42 datasets using several different research designs and found that, overall, adding an extra year of schooling in this way improved people’s IQ scores by between 1 and 5 points.”

The research took advantage of ‘natural’ experiments to reach the conclusion that education does cause higher intelligence.

For example, in the 1960s Norway increased the amount of compulsory education by two years.

The researchers then compared people either side of the cut-off to see how it affected their IQ.

Dr Ritchie said:

“The most surprising thing was how long-lasting the effects seemed to be, appearing even for people who completed intelligence tests in their 70s and 80s.

Something about that educational boost seemed to be beneficial right across the lifespan.”

Many other different types of studies were included in the meta-analysis, which contained over half a million participants from 42 data sets.

Dr Ritchie said:

“A crucial next step will be to uncover the mechanisms of these educational effects on intelligence in order to inform educational policy and practice.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Ritchie et al., 2018).

People with high IQs tend to share this quality.

More intelligent people tend to follow rules and be less aggressive and better behaved.

People with higher IQs are also less likely to cheat and steal.

Young people with lower IQs, though, are more likely to take part in antisocial behaviour, such as harassing or alarming others.

Boys who are antisocial have an average IQ 10 points lower than their more social counterparts.

For antisocial girls, the IQ gap is 5 points lower than their more social peers.

The conclusions come from a study of more than 1,000 young people in the UK.

All were given tests of IQ and externalising behaviour.

For psychologists, externalising behaviour refers to physical aggression, flouting rules, stealing and cheating.

The results showed that fewer externalising behaviours were linked to higher IQ.

In contrast, those with lower IQs were at greater risk of 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.”

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

The behaviour is linked to more white matter, the brain’s ‘superhighway’.

People who take calculated risks are likely to be smarter than average.

People making quick decisions and taking chances have more white matter in their brains.

White matter is sometimes called the ‘superhighway’ of the brain: it transmits signals and regulates communication.

The researchers were surprised by the result as they expected the exact opposite: that smarter people would spend more time evaluating the situation before making a decision.

Dr Dagfinn Moe, study co-author, explained:

“We expected to find that young men who spend time considering what they are going to do in a given risk situation would have more highly developed neural networks in their brains than those who make quick decisions and take chances.

This has been well documented in a series of studies, but our project revealed the complete opposite.”

The research involved young men playing a driving game.

The results showed that high-risk takers did not hesitate as long during the game.

Dr Moe thinks that the ability to take risks is under-appreciated by society at large:

“Daring and risk-willingness activate and challenge the brain’s capacity and contribute towards learning, coping strategies and development.

They can stimulate behaviour in the direction of higher levels of risk-taking in people already predisposed to adapt to cope optimally in such situations.

We must stop regarding daring and risk-willingness simply as undesirable and uncontrolled behaviour patterns.”

Seeking out challenges helps to stimulate the brain, which may be why risk-takers have more white matter.

Dr Moe said:

“All the positive brain chemicals respond under such conditions, promoting growth factors that contribute to the development of the robust neural networks that form the basis of our physical and mental skills.

The point here is that if you’re going to take risks, you have to have the required skills.

And these have to be learned.

Sadly, many fail during this learning process — with tragic consequences.

So this is why we’re wording our findings with a Darwinian slant — it takes brains to take risks.”

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Vorobyev et al., 2015).