Category: Intelligence

Four things that indicate high intelligence in a person.

Being open to experience, cooperative, happy and having strong perceptual skills are all signs that you have a high IQ, psychological research finds.

Of these, being open to experience is a particularly strong sign…

1. Open to experience

Insatiable curiosity, an active fantasy life, a sensitivity to emotions and an appreciation of art and beauty are all linked to high IQ.

These are all aspects of the major personality trait called ‘openness to experience’.

People who are open to experience are more interested in things that are complex, new and unconventional.

Being open to experience is so powerful that it is linked to intelligence when measured almost 40 years later.

Children who scored higher on IQ tests at just 11-years-old were more open to experience when they were 50-years-old, the psychologists found.

2. Cooperative

Intelligent people are better at cooperating with others.

While personality traits like being generous and conscientious have an effect on cooperation, higher IQ is the main factor that encourages people to work well together.

People with higher intelligence use more consistent strategies and consider the consequences of their actions.

That is why people with high IQs are so essential: without them society would not work.

3. Happy

Happy people have higher intelligence.

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

The study looked at happiness in the best-known sense of feeling positive emotions and being satisfied with your life.

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).

4. Stronger perceptual skills

People with high IQs have stronger basic perceptual skills, research finds.

For example, they can tell which way objects are moving more quickly.

They are also better at blocking out background information to make their judgement.

Imagine a ball thrown at high speed — a more intelligent person can pick up its trajectory faster.

A higher IQ makes the brain faster at a fundamental level.

It helps underline that high IQ is about more than just solving puzzles or making the ‘right’ decision.

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Four aspect of personality stands out for their connection to memory, knowledge and cognitive ability.

People who are energetic and physically active tend to perform better on a range of cognitive abilities, including information processing, memory and general knowledge, research finds.

In other words, being an active person is associated with knowing more across a wide range of subjects.

Activity is one aspect of extraversion, one of the major dimensions of personality. Other facets of extraversion include warmth, sociability, assertiveness, excitement seeking and positive emotionality.

The finding comes from a massive review examining the relationship between personality and cognitive abilities.

The researchers brought together more than 1,000 studies involving over 2 million people, covering approximately a century of research.

The study’s first author, Dr Kevin Stanek, explained that the project took more than 13 years and involved over 30 people working to locate, translate, enter and analyse more than 1,300 studies.

Open to experience

The review also found strong links between openness to experience and a broad range of cognitive abilities.

Of the major personality traits, openness to experience is most strongly associated with a high IQ.

People who score highly on openness tend to be curious about unfamiliar, complicated and unconventional things.

They are often interested in exploring new ideas and are more willing to entertain perspectives that differ from their own.

One reason for the connection with intelligence may be that high IQ is associated with a strong appetite for thinking and learning.

Conscientious and agreeable

The researchers also found that industriousness and compassion were positively associated with most measures of cognitive ability.

Industriousness is a facet of conscientiousness, while compassion forms part of the broader personality trait of agreeableness.

The relationship between agreeableness and intelligence is particularly noteworthy because it is not always recognised.

Research suggests that agreeable people can also be more intelligent.

Highly intelligent people have also been found to be more trusting, as well as more straightforward and altruistic.

Study co-author Professor Deniz Ones said that understanding the relationship between personality and intelligence opens up deeper questions about why these characteristics are connected.

She argued that the findings provide a broader picture of the differences between individuals and could help people better understand their own characteristics and abilities.

Neuroticism

Neuroticism showed a contrasting pattern, being consistently associated with lower cognitive abilities.

The trait is characterised by greater susceptibility to anxiety, sadness, irritability and self-consciousness.

People higher in neuroticism tend to perform less well on measures of logical reasoning and are also less likely to accumulate knowledge.

One possible explanation, however, is that the association partly reflects test-taking anxiety rather than differences in underlying cognitive ability, as some psychologists have suggested.

At the opposite end of neuroticism is emotional stability, which is consistently associated with higher IQ.

Emotionally stable people tend to cope better with stress and everyday frustrations.

They also generally have greater control over their impulses and are less preoccupied with how they are perceived by others.

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Stanek et al., 2023).

Study of over 7,000 finds diet linked to IQ.

People fed a healthier diet from an early age have a higher IQ, research reveals.

Children who were breastfed and later given plenty of fruits, vegetables and other healthy foods had IQs up to two points higher at age 8.

Dr Lisa Smithers, the study’s first author, said:

“Diet supplies the nutrients needed for the development of brain tissues in the first two years of life, and the aim of this study was to look at what impact diet would have on children’s IQs.

We found that children who were breastfed at six months and had a healthy diet regularly including foods such as legumes, cheese, fruit and vegetables at 15 and 24 months, had an IQ up to two points higher by age eight.

The results come from a study of over 7,000 children whose eating habits were analysed at ages 6 months, 15 months and two years.

They were followed until age 8.

Set against the benefits of healthy eating, children fed junk food had lower IQs, Dr Smithers said:

“Those children who had a diet regularly involving biscuits, chocolate, sweets, soft drinks and chips in the first two years of life had IQs up to two points lower by age eight.

We also found some negative impact on IQ from ready-prepared baby foods given at six months, but some positive associations when given at 24 months.”

Eating well is particularly important in the formative years, said Dr Smithers:

“While the differences in IQ are not huge, this study provides some of the strongest evidence to date that dietary patterns from six to 24 months have a small but significant effect on IQ at eight years of age.

It is important that we consider the longer-term impact of the foods we feed our children.”

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The study was published in the European Journal of Epidemiology (Smithers et al., 2012).

These household products might be doing lasting damage to fetal development.

Routine exposure to common plastics, cosmetics, and household cleaners during pregnancy is linked to lower IQ scores in children.

Mothers with higher exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals during their first trimester gave birth to children who scored lower on IQ tests at age seven.

The suspect chemicals include:

• Bisphenol A (BPA) and bisphenol F (BPF), a components of plastic containers used for food and drink.
• Pesticides.
• Phthalates, which are widely used in cosmetics, fragrances and household cleaners.

Both types of bisphenol — the original and the so-called ‘safer’ substitute — had the strongest link to lower IQ in children, researchers found.

Dr Eva Tanner, the study’s first author, said:

“This study is significant because most studies evaluate one chemical at a time; however, humans are exposed to many chemicals at the same time, and multiple exposures may be harmful even when each individual chemical is at a low level.”

Boys affected most

The research included 718 mothers whose blood was tested for 26 different chemicals.

All of the chemicals are thought to disrupt the endocrine system.

This vital system regulates everything from metabolism and growth to sleep and mood.

The results showed that mothers with higher levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals had children with lower IQs.

Boys were particularly affected, with an average of 2 points lower IQ.

Other chemicals of concern include chlorpyrifos, polyfluoroalkyl and triclosan, which are found in a wide range of consumer products.

Dr Tanner explained the suspected mechanism:

“Some of these chemicals cross the placenta during pregnancy, exposing the fetus and potentially causing irreversible developmental damage.

While ending exposure to a short-lived pollutant may eliminate adverse effects in adults, exposure during critical periods of fetal development may be permanent, with subtle endocrine changes potentially influencing health outcomes into adulthood.”

The study was published in the journal Environment International (Tanner et al., 2019).

The choices people make throughout life may be shaped by a factor that emerges surprisingly early.

People with higher IQs are likely to live longer, according to research.

Those with high intelligence in childhood are less likely to get heart disease, strokes, respiratory diseases and dementia later on.

Higher intelligence may allow people to learn better health behaviours and cope more effectively with problems over the years.

Some of the lowered risk is down to the fact that more intelligent people are less likely to smoke.

The conclusions come from a Scottish study that included 938 people who were followed for over 25 years.

The results showed that each 15-point increase in IQ was associated with a 17 percent reduction in the risk of death.

This study found that the link between IQ and longevity was strongest among children brought up in poorer neighbourhoods.

The findings suggest that higher intelligence may be especially beneficial for the longevity of people from poorer backgrounds, said Dr Carole L. Hart, the study’s first author:

“The significant interaction found between IQ and deprivation suggests that IQ in childhood is less important in terms of mortality for people who live in more affluent areas in adulthood than for people who live in deprived areas.”

It is not yet clear how IQ is related to longevity, said Dr Hart:

“It is possible that low childhood IQ leads to adult deprivation, which in turn leads to earlier death.”

Some studies have suggested that IQ and longevity are linked to the same sets of genes.

Another possibility is that adverse circumstances associated with poverty can reduce cognitive development and lower IQ.

Poor nutrition, limited educational opportunities and disadvantaged neighbourhoods may all hinder mental development.

Other studies have also suggested that higher IQ leads to a longer life.

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The study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine (Hart et al., 2003).

The foods boosts fluid intelligence, which is the speed at which the brain works.

Eating organic food is linked to a higher IQ.

School-age children who ate more organic food had higher scores on tests of fluid intelligence and working memory.

Fluid intelligence refers to how quickly and effectively the brain processes information.

It is like the raw power of an engine or the speed at which a computer functions.

Working memory, meanwhile, is vital to holding pieces of visual, verbal or other information in your mind while you manipulate them.

Better working memory has been linked to improved learning, attention and other vital outcomes.

The higher levels of nutrients in organic foods may account for the boost to IQ, said Dr Jordi Júlvez, study co-author:

“Healthy diets, including organic diets, are richer than fast food diets in nutrients necessary for the brain, such as fatty acids, vitamins and antioxidants, which together may enhance cognitive function in childhood.”

In contrast, eating fast food, exposure to tobacco smoke and overcrowded living conditions were all linked to lower scores on tests of fluid intelligence.

Children’s brains are sensitive

The results come from over one thousand children aged 6 to 11 years old in six different European countries, including the UK and Spain.

The research examined 87 factors that the unborn child might be exposed to, along with another 122 factors that could affect them during childhood.

The brain is still developing in childhood, so it is particularly sensitive to toxicity.

Low levels of toxicity that may have little effect on the adult brain can still influence children’s brains.

Dr Jordi Júlvez, study co-author, explained the main predictors of higher IQ:

“In our study, we found better scores in fluid intelligence and working memory with higher organic food intake and lower fast food intake.”

As for the predictors of lower IQ, Professor Martine Vrijheid, study co-author, said:

“We observed that several prenatal environmental pollutants (indoor air pollution and tobacco smoke) and lifestyle habits during childhood (diet, sleep and family social capital) were associated with behavioral problems in children.”

Professor Vrijheid said the study is notable for its comprehensive examination of a wide range of variables:

“One of the strengths of this study on cognition and the earlier study on behavioral problems is that we systematically analyzed a much wider range of exposure biomarkers in blood and urine to determine the internal levels in the model and that we analyzed both prenatal and childhood exposure variables.”

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The study was published in the journal Environment International (de Bont et al., 2021).

The reason people with a higher IQ also tend to be healthier could be down to their diet.

People with a higher IQ are more likely to be vegetarian.

In fact, vegetarians could be up to 10 percent more intelligent than red meat eaters, according to some studies.

A higher IQ is also seen among those who describe themselves as vegetarian, but also eat chicken and fish.

The conclusion comes from a survey of 8,170 men and women whose IQ was tested when they were 10 years old.

By the age of 30, 4.5 percent of participants had adopted a vegetarian diet.

Within this group, 2.5 percent were strictly vegan, while 33.6 percent identified as vegetarian despite continuing to eat chicken or fish.

People with higher IQs at age 10, the analysis showed, were more likely to be vegetarians at age 30.

There was no difference between stricter vegetarians (ovo-lacto vegetarians) and those who ate some chicken and/or fish as well.

The findings could help to explain why more intelligent people are also healthier, since a vegetarian diet is better for the heart and for maintaining a healthy body mass.

Do money and class explain it?

Part of the link between IQ and vegetarianism was explained by social status and education.

In other words, individuals from higher socio-economic backgrounds are inherently more likely to have a higher IQ and to choose a vegetarian lifestyle.

Nevertheless, even when these two factors were accounted for statistically, the relationship between vegetarianism and IQ remained.

The study’s authors write:

“Might the nature of the vegetarians’ diet in this cohort have enhanced their apparently superior brain power?

Was this the mechanism that helped them to achieve the disproportionate number of higher degrees?

Benjamin Franklin and George Bernard Shaw, both ardent vegetarians, would have us believe so.

According to Shaw in an article published in The Star in 1890, “A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows.”

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The study was published in the British Medical Journal (Gale et al., 2007).