Category: Intelligence

Forget book smarts — this is what really sets intelligent people apart.

Being nice is a sign of high IQ: highly intelligent people are better at cooperating and more generous to others.

Smart people are almost three times as generous as those with lower cognitive abilities.

The reason may be that smarter people are more patient — a quality that is critical for cooperation.

More patience allows people to step back from a situation and exert self-control.

The study involved hundreds of people given a test of a type of intelligence called ‘cognitive reflection’.

This measures people’s ability to override a quick, obvious response that turns out to be wrong, in order to get the right answer.

Here are two of cognitive reflection tests used in the study:

• If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long will it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
• In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?

The answers are at the bottom of the article.

Clever people are more patient when searching out the real answer, it emerges.

Subsequently, people who did better on this test were also up to three times more generous in a game that tested people’s generosity.

The reason could be that people with intelligence have more patience, the study’s author, Dr Lohse, writes:

“Subjects with higher cognitive abilities have been shown to be more patient and to be able to exert higher levels of self-control.

Martinsson et al. (2014) demonstrate that subjects with higher self-control capabilities cooperate more.

Similarly, Fehr and Leibbrandt (2011) show that more patient subjects in the lab cooperate more in the field.”

The answers are…

The answers are 5 minutes for the first problem and 47 days for the second.

If you didn’t get these, remember the test is designed to make you think a little longer and harder.

The study was published in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (Lohse, 2016).

This bold and confident sign is linked to higher academic achievement.

People who are very sure of their intellectual abilities are, in fact, smarter than others.

Intellectual arrogance was linked to higher grades in the study.

People who are intellectually arrogant tend to agree with statements such as, “I believe my own ideas are superior to others.”

People are seen as intellectually arrogant when they are extraverted, dominate the group and want to be the centre of attention.

Professor Wade C. Rowatt, study co-author, said:

“One possibility is that people who view themselves as intellectually arrogant know what they know and that translates to increases in academic performance.”

The study followed the work of 103 students over a semester.

The results showed that those who felt they were superior to others performed better in their coursework.

However, people who were more humble about their abilities were better liked by their peers.

So, intellectual arrogance may come with a social penalty.

The study’s authors were surprised by the results: they had predicted that intellectual humility would be linked to better performance.

However, this was not the case.

Dr Benjamin R. Meagher, the study’s first author, still thinks humility is a vital trait:

“What I think is important about intellectual humility is its necessity for not only science, but for just learning generally — and that applies to the classroom, a work setting, wherever.

Learning something new requires first acknowledging your own ignorance and being willing to make your ignorance known to others.

People clearly differ in terms of their willingness to do something like that, but that willingness to learn, change one’s mind and value the opinion of others is really needed if people and groups are going to develop and grow.”

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The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Meagher et al., 2015).

One musical skill may indicate higher intelligence.

People who have higher IQs can keep a beat more precisely.

Participants with higher IQs find it easier to keep a regular beat on a drum pad.

One reason may be that precise timing is vital for problem-solving and overall brain efficiency.

Brain scans revealed that people with higher intelligence had more white matter in parts of the brain important for problem-solving, planning and managing time.

These factors were also linked to an improved ability to keep time.

This suggests that better timing may be built into the brains of more intelligent people at a fundamental level.

Professor Fredrik Ullén, a pianist and neuroscientist who led the study, said:

“It’s interesting as the task didn’t involve any kind of problem solving.

Irregularity of timing probably arises at a more fundamental biological level owing to a kind of noise in brain activity.”

The study included 34 people who tried to copy the clicking of a metronome by hitting a drum pad.

They were given 20 beats to warm up, then they had to keep the same rhythm going for a further 45 beats.

The results showed that the more intelligent people were, the better they could keep time when the metronome stopped.

Professor Ullén said:

“All in all, this suggests that a factor of what we call intelligence has a biological basis in the number of nerve fibres in the prefrontal lobe and the stability of neuronal activity that this provides.”

Faster brains make quicker perceptual judgements and are also better at solving puzzles or analysing decisions.

For example, people with higher IQs find it easier to tell which way an object is moving.

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The study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience (Ullén et al., 2008).

Research suggests simple ways to use your eyes and voice to appear more intelligent.

Maintaining eye contact while talking is one of the easiest ways to appear smarter.

Other common ways to give a more intelligent impression include speaking pleasantly, clearly and quickly.

The finding comes from a study in which participants were recorded while trying to appear intelligent when discussing an assigned topic.

This condition was compared to people who were given no instruction about how to act.

Judges viewed the video and rated the person’s apparent intelligence.

Maintaining eye contact while speaking was rated as giving the smartest appearance.

Indeed, intelligence tests revealed that people who maintained eye contact were actually smarter.

Judges also associated two other behaviours with high IQ:

• maintaining eye contact while listening,
• and standing upright.

However, neither of these was linked to people’s measured intelligence.

Still, you could use them, as they create the right impression.

Other ways to look more intelligent were:

• speaking for longer,
• having a self-assured expression,
• and being responsive.

People did not use these methods spontaneously, though.

The study’s authors conclude:

“Looking while speaking was a key behavior: It significantly correlated with IQ, was successfully manipulated by impression-managing targets, and contributed to higher perceived intelligence ratings.”

The authors also identify other behaviours linked to higher perceived intelligence:

“…pleasant speech style, clear or easy-to-understand communication, and faster speech rate all have been associated with higher perceived intelligence ratings.”

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The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Murphy, 2007).

Some video games can act like an IQ test.

Certain strategy games can act like an IQ test: people who perform well at the two games also do better at standard paper-and-pencil intelligence tests.

One of the games is called ‘League of Legends’, a popular game that has millions of players around the world.

The second game is called Defence of the Ancients 2 (DOTA 2).

Professor Alex Wade, who led the study, said:

“Games such as League of Legends and DOTA 2 are complex, socially-interactive and intellectually demanding.

Our research would suggest that your performance in these games can be a measure of intelligence.

Research in the past has pointed to the fact that people who are good at strategy games such as chess tend to score highly at IQ tests.

Our research has extended this to games that millions of people across the planet play every day.”

Along with these two strategy games, the research also looked at people playing ‘first-person shooters’, which mostly rely on reaction times rather than strategy.

The study found that people’s ability to play first-person shooters simply declined after their teenage years.

However, people got better at playing strategy games like League of Legends and Defence of the Ancients 2 as they got older.

Mr Athanasios Kokkinakis, the study’s first author, said:

“Unlike First Person Shooter (FPS) games where speed and target accuracy are a priority, Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas [such as League of Legends] rely more on memory and the ability to make strategic decisions taking into account multiple factors.

It is perhaps for these reasons that we found a strong correlation between skill and intelligence in MOBAs.”

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Kokkinakis et al., 2017).

The type of music that signals a high IQ..

People who like instrumental music tend to have higher IQs.

Instrumental music includes everything that does not have lyrics, such as ambient, classical, smooth jazz, big band and some film soundtracks.

Almost everyone, whatever their IQ, though, likes vocal music.

A preference for vocal music does not provide a signal about intelligence.

The reason that higher IQ is linked to the preference for instrumental music has nothing to do with the cognitive complexity of the music.

Opera, for example, is often seen as complex, but it says nothing about people’s intelligence.

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.”

The conclusions come from two surveys of thousands of people who were asked about their musical preferences and given IQ tests.

Both found a link between higher intelligence and preference for instrumental music.

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.”

An evolutionary explanation

The explanation for this link between IQ and musical preferences may go back into our evolutionary past.

Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, the study’s co-author, thinks that instrumental musical is more ‘evolutionary novel’ and therefore linked to a higher IQ.

This explanation is highly debatable (see Dutton, 2013), but the link is still fascinating.

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The study was published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making (Kanazawa & Perina, 2011).

Genetic study finds that, beyond looks, this is the most important quality in a potential partner.

People are more likely to marry those with a similar level of intelligence to themselves.

It shows that when looking for a partner, people generally want someone similar to themselves.

Intelligence, like many other traits, is partly controlled by our genetic makeup.

So, effectively, people tend to pick others who have similar genetic traits.

The study’s authors write:

“Humans generally do not choose their mates randomly.

In the search for a suitable mate, among the highest-ranking qualities people look for in a potential partner are intelligence and educational attainment.”

And when you look at any random couple, there is a surprisingly high correlation between the two different individuals’ intelligence and their education.

The conclusions come from a UK DNA study of 1,600 married or cohabiting couples.

Dr David Hugh-Jones, the study’s first author, said:

 “Our findings show strong evidence for the presence of genetic assortative mating for education in the UK.

The consequences of assortative mating on education and cognitive abilities are relevant for society, and for the genetic make-up and therefore the evolutionary development of subsequent generations.”

Dr Hugh-Jones pointed out that over time the forces of evolution can increase social inequality:

“Assortative mating on inheritable traits that are indicative of socio-economic status, such as educational achievement, increases the genetic variance of characteristics in the population.

This may increase social inequality, for example with respect to education or income.

When growing social inequality is, partly, driven by a growing biological inequality, inequalities in society may be harder to overcome and the effects of assortative mating may accumulate with each generation.”

In other words, if intelligent people continue to marry other intelligent people, then the genes for intelligence may become increasingly concentrated with certain groups.

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The study was published in the journal Intelligence (Hugh-Jones et al., 2016).